Avishraa Reloaded

An-uxhwi learned quite a few things about Evrith as they travelled under the deepening night of the desert and the opening of the Gentle Eye.

He learned, though what she had already said had hinted at it, that she came from far away, in the regions known vaguely to his people as the Wet Lands. The legends of the Flitting Hargh People had never bothered to describe the original homelands of the Soakers in any great detail, but Evrith seemed to find it soothing to recall her memories of them aloud.

Even with her descriptions, he found it a little hard to imagine them. While he had seen a few trees and streams in his life, a landscape entirely littered with them was something he'd never been called on to visualize, and he had the vague picture of a region that was composed entirely of oasis.

What was even harder to imagine was her account of the sea. Water so wide that the other side could not be seen? Its surface, moving and crashing upon the shore like an angry beast? Soakers building things of wood that would float upon it and carry them to distant lands?

(Though Evrith had obviously witnessed this herself, she appeared to find the idea dubious. Feet or wings were a more reliable method of travel.)

Another thing that An-uxhwi had learned, in fact, was that Evrith did not really have the strength to fly for long distances. Even after his care back in the mines, she had gone from being emaciated to merely thin as an old bone. Well, after all, they did not have a great store of food, and were doing a lot of walking; but, even with that in mind, Evrith did not seem to be eating as much as one might expect, and did not seem to be in very robust health, either.

Possibly she had simply not fully recovered from her illness in the mine. If so, they needed a place where she could do that; but she hadn't indicated that she intended to make more than a brief stop at any point in the near future.

The last thing that he had learned was that Evrith seemed to be rather… moodier out here than in the mines. This, at least, he thought he understood. An-ehwko, his only remaining father at the time he'd left home, had given him a considerable amount of advice to prepare him for his journey - possibly the most that the taciturn male had said at one time since An-uxhwi's childhood - and some of it had been about females.

“Daxelh,” he'd said during this talk, “has given all of us the task and the gift of finding our place in Her world, but She has made males and females different in how they approach this. We leave our mothers and go forth to see the many things that Daxelh has made, to find wonder and humility in Her works, and when at last we find the place we need to be and stop, we can tell our children of the world.

“Females must also find their place, but they take no pleasure in the journey. Each is an heir to a piece of Daxelh's creation, and she wishes to find the one that is right for her and make it her home, so that there is food and safety for her and for her children.”

An-uxhwi had remembered that Je-kan, his sister, had been agitated when they'd been obliged to move into the trading post, and his father's speech had helped him understand why. Evrith's mood seemed rather deeper than Je-kan's had been, but then, Je-kan had not had far to go.

An-uxhwi might not have been overly surprised to learn that his surmise was not entirely correct, but he probably would have been to learn that at least part of the reason had to do with himself.

It was true that the resumption of her journey had put Evrith out of sorts. A cell with chains was a poor territory to call one's own, but it had been hers, and she'd had to leave it. And it had been strangely disheartening, in a way, to be released from the prospect of a relatively quick death into the near-certainty of one further off, but much slower and more agonizing.

And now, a range of futures in which she and An-uxhwi would be… heavily involved with each other was rapidly expanding in likelihood.

It was not, so to speak, that Evrith disapproved of this. If she had, it would have made it easy. She could cut off any future proposals with a word; there were some aspects of one's own future that were very easy to change. Evrith's problem was that she didn't know how she felt about it, and therefore had no idea what to do about it

She liked him well enough. He was strange, but agreeable. But she didn't feel that way about him, at least not yet, and she was not properly equipped for the idea that she might in the future.

And then, too… there might be happiness to be found there, yes. But in all likelihood, it would be brief. In most of those futures, An-uxhwi would find himself in grief and far from home.

Neither An-uxhwi's cultural experience nor Evrith's included the concept of depression as a condition to be treated, rather than as a temporary mood to be cheered up from. This was a pity, because otherwise it might have clarified some of what was affecting her, not that there was any concept of therapy either.

The pair had been traveling for two sixes of vigils. There had been (so Evrith said) search parties and other travelers to avoid earlier on, and brief, violent rains after dusk that had forced them to seek poor shelter under an overhang, but now they were far away from other people, and the desert was lit by the stars and the opening of the Gentle Eye.

“There's a place further ahead,” Evrith said, “where we can stop again for a while. There's water and shelter there, at least. For food-” She twisted her head in a shrug. “You may have to put that javelin to use. There might be animals out at night that you could hunt.”

Water, in particular, was something that they needed. As sparing as they'd tried to be, their waterskins had gotten worryingly light.

The prospect of hunting after all the time spent in captivity was a little daunting - while he felt capable of it purely on instinct, he knew rationally that he was weaker now, and the only muscles the work in the mines had trained were not very useful for the hunt.

Still, it felt as though Daxelh smiled upon them - in part due to the time of the day's cycle, in part due to the circumstance, that in all likelihood anyone that had been pursuing them had now given up and they were much more free to move as they pleased.

That it wasn't necessarily easy to move into any arbitrary direction was another matter.

“Is it shelter enough that would let you rest for a while?” An-uxhwi asked, concerned for her health. He knew he was better off than she was and even he was well noticing the strain of the journey.

Not stopping, she stared blankly ahead into the future. The mountains were still far ahead, and much of their width could be traversed by the Great Dell, a deep, long valley. That part was low enough to be more or less habitable, day or night. But they would still need to traverse the high pass at Barith's Gate, and that was not something to be undertaken at night.

If they kept going at a steady pace, they might make it there and over before the sun next went down. The problem was, without an opportunity to rest and recover, she wouldn't make it that far anyway, and probably neither could An-uxhwi.

“Time is precious,” she said aloud, “but much as I might prefer to press on, doing so would probably be unwise. It's a very sturdy shelter, though I think…” Evrith hesitated. There was a distinct lack of detail in what she could see happening there, but she felt that there was something to be wary of.

“…I think there may be someone already there. If so, we will have to deal with them.”

An-uxhwi tensed for the briefest moment of shared concern, even though it would still take them a while to get there. “Then I will offer my labour and assistance to whoever occupies the place,” he said, hesitantly.

It was, perhaps, not the kind of 'deal' that Evrith was thinking of, and he was transparently aware of that, but a struggle was a poor idea in their state, with their tired limbs and minds to account for.

In An-uxhwi's experience, when not dealing with whole bands, usually differences could be worked out. Agreements could be reached. Sometimes these were some degree of distasteful, but if it was just for a short time, An-uxhwi had learnt not to be fussy.

Of course, usually such scenarios were from xtauh to xtauh, or Soaker to Soaker. Despite everything he's been through, it currently didn't even occur to him that he might have to deal with a Soaker, whose body language he might be less equipped to navigate around. His intuition was for xtauh to xtauh and it would take a prompt to think outside of his intuition on this.

Evrith's expression became, very briefly, pained - or at least more pained than weariness had already made it. Unlike An-uxhwi, her experience was that of presents and futures in which assorted people had intended to do various horrible things to her immediately on seeing what she was.

Of course, there were exceptions, as An-uxhwi was. And usually she could avoid threats when she saw them coming. But, like in the mine, there had been any number of situations where she'd had to fight and kill to stay alive.

It bothered her greatly that she couldn't make out exactly who was at the outpost up ahead. But if there was someone living there, she knew that they might not be inclined to welcome company.

Evrith contented herself with replying, “Possibly.” She craned her head up toward the hills ahead of them, and pointed. “You can't really see it from here, but the place is hidden in the side of that cleft. It will take another nine or ten rests to reach it. It was made to watch for those approaching from the desert, so even in the dark we might be seen coming for some distance.”

As it turned out, she was already one hundred percent correct about this, though it was not with eyes that they were being watched.

To An-uxhwi, 'Possibly' only confirmed his impression that the deal was likely to be a dangerous struggle. That said, if it was set in stone, Evrith would say so. He understood that it made sense for her to speak in probabilities - the future was not so clear as to be set in stone, after all - but in this case, it was disheartening not to know for certain.

He hoped they could stave off an attack if one was prone to happen. They were at a strategic disadvantage if the outlook was being used for its intended purpose - they could hardly invoke an element of surprise. “Then let us hope for the best,” he said. “And when you want me to fly ahead and report back what I find, simply speak your wish.”

Physically scouting was nowhere near as useful as glancing into the future, but if the future was fuzzy, perhaps a more traditional manner of information acquisition would help.

Evrith looked ahead to see what would happen. She slowed to a stop, staring into the air.

After a while, she said, sounding deeply uncertain, “I… can you think of a situation in which you might decide to try to land and enter on your own instead of reporting back?”

An-uxwhi's first instinct was to say that it depended on whether Evrith thought it would be a good idea - but that would undo the usefulness of the answer altogether.

She had to be asking because she was trying to puzzle out something about the future, after all. The probabilities were telling her something, without revealing exactly what, and the more precisely he could answer the query, the more precisely she would understand whatever remained blurred to her, regardless of the reasons it remained blurred.

It was a bit troubling, though.

“…perhaps if I were to see one of my kin trapped and in pain, with an equally clear view of that there was no threat anywhere nearby, and an unmistakable, obvious course of action that might let me free the person immediately,” he offered, straining to come up with scenarios that might force his hand.

“Perhaps if there was a device that was obviously going to sound a kind of notice for the time, likely to summon someone from sleep? Although this seems less likely to me - I would probably instead return and remark of it,” he pondered aloud.

Then he curled his antennae somewhat and gave his muzzle a shake. “Nothing else comes to mind immediately. Did either of those help?”

“Unfortunately, no.” Evrith squinted at the cleft. “There are many futures where, if you fly out there to look… you seem to see something, and land in the cleft. But I can't tell what you see.”

She was quiet for a while. Futures shuffled in her head. Finally, she spoke up again. “The longer I look, the more certain I am that someone's there. And they have… something… that can lure people in. But it seems to be invisible. There's nothing there I can look at.”

She pulled herself into the present. “On the whole, I think it's best if you don't fly ahead - not yet.”

An-uxhwi pondered the notion - something that was concealing itself from Evrith's vision of the future? What might that be?

It didn't bother him on a fundamental level - not being able to see the future was the norm, after all, and it hardly came as a surprise that Evrith's ability to circumvent the usual restriction might itself generally have the one or other restriction - but it did puzzle and concern him.

Maybe there was some kind of illusion that had no physical manifestation, but would still trick him into acting?

“Perhaps they have a way to put images into my mind, to make me see something that isn't there?” An-uxhwi voiced his thoughts. “In any case, I will stay with you for now.”

“Good,” she replied absently. She peered up at the cleft again.

A way to put images into one's mind…

“A witch,” she murmured. “There are witches that can affect the mind.”

An-uxhwi seemed to consider the notion for a moment, but found he had almost nothing both tangible and useful to associate with the words. He had no experience with anything one might consider a witch - except, of course, for Evrith. But he couldn't really guess how unusual she was in ability or personality.

On the other hand, being able to affect minds…

“If they can do that,” he mused, cautiously. “Might they also confuse your future directly? Might they give you the impression that something will happen that will not?”

Evrith opened her mouth. It hung open for a moment. She shut it again.

She found herself really, really wishing he hadn't said that.

“Witches with mind powers,” she said slowly, “can fool the senses. It couldn't be done from that far away…” She started glancing around. “…but, if the witch was somewhere nearb-”

There was sudden, sharp feeling in her head, like something being pulled, and then the past exploded. Evrith stiffened, screamed, and fell writhing to the ground, clutching at her head.

An-uxhwi snapped his attention around, antennae curving in agitation, his lips drawns back from his teeth, spreading his wings as a last line of defence around Evrith's body, letting his attention dart through the landscape, hoping to spot the attacker - if that, indeed, was what it was, but at this point it seemed out of the question that it was anything else.

A bit further up the slope, a head peered briefly over a hummock; it was partly covered by a hood, and the muzzle appeared to be smeared with something the same color as the landscape.

Evrith stopped writhing and slumped, her head lolling, but at the same time, the ground beneath her, though solid rock, seemed to… hollow itself out. Within the space of a few breaths, she had sunk into a shallow pit, and the rock was molding itself around her body.

Evrith now pinned in place, the hooded figure turned its attention to An-uxhwi, and the xtauh felt a sharp pain begin to build behind his left eye.

An-uxhwi's instincts struck out his options in rapid succession. He likely wasn't going to be able to help Evrith immediately - if he focussed on her, they might both perish. He likely wasn't going to cross the distance quickly enough to stop the creature from finishing its attack if he lunged toward it.

Instead, he snatched a rock from the ground, gauged the trajectory with a practised eye and hurled it toward their skull - not hoping to strike it, but to break its concentration for long enough to follow up with a lunge.

With no time to see if the plan worked, he practically galloped toward it, hoping to careen into it and wrestle it to the ground, into a position where he might credibly threaten it, perhaps with its muzzle pulled back and his claws nipping at its throat.

The thrown rock stopped in mid-air, falling to the ground as if simply being let go. But it had the desired effect; the pain in An-uxhwi's head vanished.

The attacker evidently had decent reflexes, however; as An-uxhwi ran upslope, the cloaked figure immediately whirled around and scrambled away, perpendicular to the xtauh's course; they clearly had no intention of allowing themselves to get into close quarters with him.

He hopped atop a small knob, turned around briefly, and made an upward motion with a paw; a thick sheet of rock rose out of the ground in An-uxhwi's path. Without pausing to see the effects of this, the figure scuttled onward.

It was the wrong tactic to deploy against a xtauh, of course - guided by reflexes, An-uxhwi snapped open his wings and veered to the side.

Rather than avoid the obstacle entirely or come to a faltering, skidding stop before it, he used the slanted edge of the stone as a vertical platform, grasping at it and pushing himself off it, past it, and up into the air. Like a thrown spear, he shot from his elevated position down toward the attacker, barely stopping to think about it.

Were he given any reason to believe the creature was no longer a threat, he wouldn't bother pursuit, but at the moment he was driven by one urge - to make this creature run and think more than twice about coming back to be a danger to Evrith and An-uxhwi.

Some primal part of his mind insisted that the only way to distinguish tactical, temporary retreat from flight was to make damn sure it was latter.

The attacker didn't have to look backward to feel An-uxhwi coming. Had there been the time or breath to spare on a sigh of annoyance, there would have been one.

Fine. If agility won't buy me room to act, there's a different way of doing this.

The attacker abruptly dropped, spreadeagled, onto the ground, sliding painfully across the rocky surface, and then began sinking into it, in much the same way that Evrith had been covered by it further down. But unlike Evrith, nothing of the attacker was being left to stick up above ground. Even as An-uxhwi struck where the attacker would have been, the latter was apparently entirely submerged.

There were a few seconds of silence. And then there was surprisingly unpleasant sound of rock creaking and cracking, and then, a thing of takma-shape began hauling itself laboriously back onto the ground, dust and gravel pouring off of it - some kind of stony armor for the attacker within.

An-uxhwi bounded off the ground before hitting it, swerving into an arc that brought him around for a second swoop, should it be necessary - but the situation changed drastically, causing him to shift first his priorities, then his wings to catch his light body into a swift glide, speeding to where the ground had come to clasp around Evrith.

There would be little time. The creature might, if he was lucky, currently be preoccupied maintaining its armour, but it likely wouldn't bother with the shield without immediate combat to enforce its necessity. Once its mental faculties were freed, it would twist at Evrith's mind again, then at An-uxhwi's, no doubt until there was nothing left to twist.

With fervent, resolute motions, An-uxhwi slammed his claws into the ground, digging up rocks near Evrith - not in some misguided attempt to unearth her together with her tomb, knowing that he couldn't move it, but simply to find the right tools for the job he had in mind.

One blunt and one tapering rock later, he gave his first attempt at using one as a hammer, trying to drive the 'nail' into the stone tomb to split it.

He was willing to repeat the cycle as often as necessary - attack the unshielded assailant, return while he was shielded, attempt to break the stone's unnatural hold on Evrith, repeat - but he knew his adrenaline and instinct would only guide him so far.

He knew he'd been lucky so far; he was no witch, it was unlikely he could prevail against one. Fortunately, his mind was uninterested in working out his precise chances, though the crushing weight of responsibility squeezed his throat and the barest hints of tears from his eyes, silent, but reluctant only due to his desert heritage.

Evrith, for her part, appeared to be awake and no longer in pain, but she did not seem to see An-uxhwi; she peered around uncertainly, as if seeking an exit from a pitch-black room. Her forepaws gently flexed and unflexed.

The attacker was apparently disinclined to discard the armor now that it was in place; turning awkwardly toward the hollow where An-uxhwi was at work, the rock-encased takma began strolling down the slope toward the two of them, feet thumping loudly on the ground.

The attacker couldn't move fast. But trying to break rock was no easy task, especially since - whatever the attacker had done to it when trapping Evrith - it now had remarkably few natural cracks in it to widen.

A male voice slid smoothly into An-uxhwi's head. ~You won't have time, you know.~

“What,” An-uxhwi snapped, driven by the white-hot rage of what was, from his perspective, a desperate fight for survival. “Do you want? We have done nothing to you.” His anger came encased in a thin sheath of terror from that this thing was in his head - surely it wouldn't be long now and the pain would return, and if he reacted too late it would all be over.

~You hadn't had a chance to.~ The lumbering shape gently twisted its head, and An-uxhwi's “hammer” started crumbling in his paw. ~Somehow, she knew where my home was, and headed straight toward it - this though no one but me has known about it for eons. That that should be a coincidence strains my credulity.~

He stopped far enough away that he could see any further moves on An-uxhwi's part, and eyed Evrith critically. ~And I could not quite remove the knowledge from her mind, no matter how I tried. And a Chosen… another Chosen? Here? Now? No, that's no coincidence.~

The vacant-eyed, stony head turned toward An-uxhwi. ~I sense you know nothing of this. No doubt she has not told you her true purpose. She will need to be questioned. But neither can I allow you to go free at this time.~

What fell on An-uxhwi's mind was not pain, as it had been for Evrith. It was more like a blanket - far softer than the axtin-hides his family had used in the night-season, and far heavier. It pressed down, gently but firmly, encouraging him to rest and sleep.

As the hammer-stone disintegrated, An-uxhwi's focus whipped around as if he'd been struck by lightning. The word 'Chosen' meant nothing to him, any insights it could grant him disintegrating against his rage.

“Her kind thought her true purpose was to rot in a mine as a slave,” he snarled. “Leave her alone!” he called, and cast himself toward the creature again, deprived of any other options to defend himself, just as the pressure gradually mounted its subduing attack within his skull.

The attacker simply remained still. Even using a weapon, An-uxhwi would have been hard-pressed to damage the armor; there was not enough danger to break the figure's concentration this time.

As An-uxhwi hit, the attacker's voice began crooning soothingly in his head. ~Surely, after so much exertion, you're tired? After coming such a long way?~

“Leave,” An-uxhwi huffed, willing his arms to pound uselessly against the stone armour, the motions increasingly sluggish. “Her,” he panted, fighting for lucidity. “Alone.” The last word came only as a pitiful whimper, almost high-pitched enough to render as a squeal. The sound extinguished against the stone as An-uxhwi sagged into unconsciousness.

The attacker waited for a moment, to be sure An-uxhwi had no further plans to move, and then hollowed a hole through the back of his armor and wearily climbed out.

He dragged the xtauh back to the spot where Evrith lay trapped, and carefully wrapped him up in the rock next to her. Climbing back into the armor, he pulled the chunk of stone containing his captives out of the ground and set it on his back, so that the Gentle Eye shone down on their faces. He began the long climb upslope toward his hiding place, knowing he would need a rest himself when he got there.