Avishraa Reloaded

Planning for the theft took some time - or rather, Evrith sitting in one place with her eyes closed browsing through futures had taken some time, since it was hard to escape the idea that Evrith didn't plan in any real sense. “The future eats plans for its dinner,” she'd said, to which Shyriath appeared to have taken offense.

The sun was almost directly overhead, so there would be no cover of night or shadow, and it would cause an enormous delay to wait for some to appear. On top of that, Oraa itself was surrounded by low stone walls - trivial to fly over, of course, but this would almost certainly attract notice. Only foot traffic going through the town gates would fail to draw suspicion.

As they approached the town in the distance, Shyriath sought clarification. “Permit me to understand: you want us, two Chosen and a xtauh, to just walk through a guarded gate into a takma settlement? That's your idea?”

Evrith glanced at him in irritation. “But they only care about Chosen. They don't often see xtauh in these parts, and hardly ever have to fight them. All of us are smaller than other takmar, so someone who can't see our heads might not notice that we're not all the same kind. So we all approach the gate with cloaks on and hoods up, as if keeping the sun off our heads. If the guards ask to see one of us, Anuwi uncovers his head. You, I expect, can alter their curiosity so that they don't ask to see our faces, or get too certain that xtauh aren't green.”

Great. Theft in broad daylight - literally, although that was indeed inescapable, as well as metaphorically. What could possibly go wrong? An-uxhwi was still not emotionally convinced that this was necessary, but it was impossible to argue with an Oracle - more so with an Oracle he deeply trusted not to fabricate lies.

And so An-uxhwi only flinched a little at the suggestion that he should reveal himself to some takmar that might - as was his previous experience with them - take offence in his very existence. Not that he considered himself incapable of defending himself if it were to happen, but the best kind of combat was the combat that didn't happen.

“Assuming this works as intended, how do we proceed?” he asked in a neutral tone of voice, his imagination running a crude simulation of the plan so far, giving him some basic spatial bearings to work with.

Evrith shrugged, as if it were a question of minor importance. “The house we want is near the city wall on the southeast side. The owner seems to be asleep. We go there, enter as if we have business, and then browse around and quietly as we can once we're inside.”

“And then?” Shyriath demanded. “We just walk out like we came in?”

“Hopefully,” she replied. “If not, there's plenty of rock under this land. We may need you to get us down under it and out of sight.”

Shyriath gave her a sour look. “This idea of yours seems to lean rather heavily on my abilities.”

“For two reasons.” Evirth's tone became sharp. “The first is that you volunteered to come along, so it makes sense, as long as you're here, to make use of what you can do. The second is that, if I were doing this alone, I would almost certainly be approaching it in a different way that wouldn't require your abilities. And if you're about to ask why I don't do that anyway, it's because both of you are along; there are ways I could slip in and out by myself that aren't feasible with two companions who can't see the future.

“And while we're on the subject,” she added, “there are things I can do to directly aid in an escape, if it becomes necessary. But they're dangerous, some of them even to me, and it's best not to use them unless it's that or die.”

An-uxhwi, at least, had the benefit of having witnessed the spoils of Evrith's planning.

Unfortunately, he also had the questionable pleasure of having witnessed the flaws, remembering distinctly how they had to hurriedly accommodate for change. The notion of a similar change of plans here did not please him - but any objection lost itself in the awareness that they had had this exact discussion already and he had agreed to come along.

And all this for a book. It wasn't that he couldn't appreciate the value of such a book, but it seemed like better methods of obtaining one should be available, perhaps if one asked the right xtauh…

“Although I would rather we weren't discovered because we're going to have another argument about it,” An-uxhwi mused, his tone far more placid than he felt. “If the details of the future are still lost to her, it may be best to simply let Evrith lead us and be there to protect her if it becomes necessary.”

Shyriath fidgeted unhappily. He pulled up his hood, as the gate would become visible again around the next curve. “Being the sort of person to spend so much time hiding away,” he muttered, “I'm sure you can guess that I'm not emotionally well-suited to this sort of action.”

“Noted,” Evrith replied testily, pulling up her own hood. “If only I were paying you wages, you would have a bonus for your trouble, I'm sure. …Anuwi, if they ask what our business is here, just tell them we're travelers seeking a place to stay and rest. We don't have any goods to convince them we're merchants.”

Throughout all this, some part of An-uxhwi felt eeriely calm. It wasn't his heart, which was happy to thrum its objection through his body. It wasn't his rational thought processes, which knew there were enough variables involved that this could yet easily end in disaster. But some emotional kernel had convinced itself that all would be well.

And so he said: “Then that shall be my answer.” The beauty of it was that it wasn't even a lie. They were travellers and they were seeking a place to stay and rest. They just weren't looking for it here.

He pulled up his hood and positioned himself strategically to be the most likely candidate of harassment, if someone were to, say, choose to take one of their hoods off for them. There was no position that would guarantee it, but at least he could do his best to increase the odds.

Hopefully Evrith would tell him to shift to elsewhere if the risk actually threatened to manifest.

The walls of Oraa were made of stone, thin and low - just about high enough that an adult takma would be unable to climb over without assistance - and were clearly intended more as a form of movement control than a defense against besiegers. The gate was a simple gap spanned by large wooden double doors, which were open, with a shed just inside for the guards to lounge in.

As they approached, one of the guards meandered out, a middle-aged male clad in leather armor and holding a javelin; he gave them the slightly jaundiced look of someone faced with a minor inconvenience. “Stop there, xtauh. What's your business in Oraa?”

Behind An-uxhwi, Shyriath concentrated on dulling the guard's perception.

In a motion betraying neither haste nor reluctance, An-uxhwi drew his hood back from his head, revealing himself and this laying his emotional expression bare to the guard - a signal that he had nothing to hide, certainly. The biggest risk was in being turned away despite their excuses to enter… and the difference in body language. Fortunately, An-uxhwi was acutely aware of it, not least because he had been travelling with friendly takmar lately, and took care to keep the gestures of his antennae somewhat muted.

After a moment of appropriate but not exaggerated deferrence in body language - a skill learnt in the mines, if only grudgingly so - An-uxhwi responded with the agreed-upon excuse to enter: “We have travelled quite far and thus were hoping to find a place to rest.” He glanced past the guard with a mild curiosity, like someone assessing from some tacit markers gained by experience whether they might be temporarily welcome in such a place, and who held the hope the answer was 'yes'.

The guard approached more closely, looming slightly over An-uxhwi. He squinted a bit suspiciously at him. “We don't see xtauh seeking shelter here,” he commented. “You people keep your own camps.”

He glanced up slightly to look at An-uxhwi's companions, tempted to order them to remove their hoods as well, but something stopped him. The sun was harsh at the moment; no doubt the hoods helped. No doubt a good sturdy building would be much cooler than… well, whatever the little goblins generally used.

The guard expelled air through his nostrils. It was hot out and he wanted to get back to the convivial game of chance they'd had going in the shed; running off xtauh wasn't enough of an amusement to be worth the trouble. He pointed through the gate and down the street that continued on from it. “There's inns that way, if you can find one that'll take you. Be out of the city within two vigils.”

Behind An-uxhwi, Shyriath relaxed a little. Prodding the guard's mind in the right direction hadn't been too hard, but it wasn't effortless.

An-uxhwi had not done very much to hide his mild annoyance at the guard's initial observation, although he had wisely kept a sarcastic remark along the lines of 'I'm sure you know our people's habits better than we do' to himself. It helped that it was certainly true in most scenarios; exceptions proved the rule.

“Thank you kindly,” An-uxhwi dipped his muzzle, then wandered into the gestured direction with an air of casual interest.

If he was particularly tense now, even his fellow collaborators were oblivious to it. Either his faith in Evrith was indeed carrying him past any nervous tics, or he had been suitably battered by the experience in the mines that he was hard to unsettle by the prospect of angry guards that would almost surely prefer to simply drive them away.

After they had continued some way down the street, Evrith murmured tensely, “He's stopped watching us - he's going back inside the shed. Turn right up ahead.”

They were all more comfortable once they did. Although most people in Oraa seemed to try to stay indoors during the worst of the day, there were still quite a few out and about, and the three of them had been on the receiving end of intense looks - many merely curious, some suspicious or even affronted. The turn took them onto a side street with far fewer observers.

It was the first time An-uxhwi had ever openly walked through any settlement much larger than a village - those of the Pa'irket had been the next closest things. Oraa was nothing like them. Aside from the size - not only the number of buildings, but the takma-appropriate scale of each one - the people of Oraa seemed to prefer to build out of dressed and tightly fitted stone, rather neater and far more sophisticated than the rough fieldstone walls of the trading post back at the oasis.

Their penchant for stone didn't stop at the buildings, either. The streets were paved with wide, flat stones. He had never seen such a thing, though it made sense in light of the carts some people were pulling; it was only rarely that his own tribe, either that of his birth or that he'd been accepted into, had needed to pull that much that far along a regular route.

The route they followed, occasioned by terse directions from Evrith, took many twists and turns, before depositing them near a row of homes backed against the city wall.

An-uxhwi quietly pondered the patterns the stones had been laid in and what the most efficient way to do so likely was to prevent the gaps between them widening over time. He had little experience in the way of building things for such a scale, so his imaginings were quite rudimentary, but they helped occupy his mind.

And so by the time they reached their next milestone on the route toward the books, his agitation had barely grown at all. No doubt that would change soon, when their little heist went from pure theory to practice.

The house Evrith approached had a crude sign affixed to the wall, depicting a book in the midst of several very different landscapes. She stood before the door, gazing at it briefly. “Barred,” she murmured. “Shyriath, can you shift it from this side of the door?”

As the Shyriath screwed up his face at the door, attempting to telekinetically lift the bar on the other side, a takma turned a corner onto the street some distance away and approached. When he spotted the trio clustered in front of the door, still far out of conversational range, he stopped dead and watched them intently for several seconds before abruptly turning around and returning the way he came.

Evrith paid no attention to him. Indeed, there was no sign she'd been aware of his presence, much less his scrutiny.

There were two possible interpretations of what had happened: Either the takma that had watched them had no interest in reporting their behaviour (assuming that they had interpreted it as nefarious - from afar it possibly just looked like they were waiting for someone to open the door for them), or Evrith had made a mistake.

As deeply trusting as An-uxhwi was of Evrith, he did not consider her without flaw. She was, at the end of the day, still takma - one of magical abilities, but still as mortal and fallible as any of her kind or An-uxhwi's.

Softly, without panic, he conveyed what he'd seen to Evrith: “A takma just looked our way rather intently. Are they a threat?”

Evrith, who had been watching Shyriath's work intently, blinked. “What?”

She hadn't foreseen any witnesses, not yet. Had she been watching futures inside the house too closely? Her mind roamed backward - yes, there he was, a dark, almost burnt red, a nervous-looking fellow.She cast her mind forward-

…nothing.

In the place in the future where he should have been, there was no one. It was as if he had never been. Where was he?

“I.. I can't see him,” she murmured, looking more puzzled than An-uxhwi had yet seen her. “He came here, he saw us, and then turned around… and he's hurrying down a street right now, but I can't see him in the future.” Though Shyriath had just opened the door, she started to feel worried. “The books are here on the ground floor. I'll take a quick look at them, we'll take some, and we'll get out of here.”

There were futures Evrith could not see.

Even as that occurred to An-uxhwi, it made intuitive sense to him that this would be true. His own vision was also limited. Sometimes, the things he tried to see were occluded by an obstacle, and he had to change position for an unobstructed view. Perhaps something like that was true for Oracles as well.

The disconcerting thing was that it bothered Evrith, suggesting this was a first for her. It didn't have to be unusual - he imagined her having always doing the equivalent of flying and looking down, whereas now a man had slipped in under an overhang and she'd been robbed of her line of sight unexpectedly.

Regardless whether the underlying cause was benign or inherently dangerous, they were blind to their future. They were in danger, right now.

An-uxhwi kept his gaze trained in the direction the takma had been. It was the best he could do right now. Arguing with Evrith would only slow them down - given that speed seemed of the essence, he chose to skip it. “I will keep watch,” he said, simply.

Evrith looked like she might argue with him, but thought better of it. Having someone watch was, under the circumstances, prudent, and although she would have preferred to have Shyriath do it, she wanted someone to look at the writing in the books, and neither she nor An-uxhwi could read. “All right,” she conceded. “Be careful.” She motioned Shyriath inside, and followed him in.

They slipped into a workshop just off the passage leading from the door, with scores of books piled up untidily; these were either blank or, it appeared, in the process of being written. The complete ones were arranged rather more neatly on a shelf, about a dozen of them, and Evrith began looking at each of them, trying to see which ones they were most likely to return from should they use it. She pointed to one, and Shyriath opened at and read it, pausing briefly to marvel at the shapes coiling on the first page: the waves of a sea rushing against a coast of trees and rocky outcroppings.

Outside, traffic on the street - what little there was - passed by largely unheeding. The takmar seemed mostly wrapped up in their own concerns, or were eager to get out of the Burning Eye's gaze. But a pair of them, pulling a cart loaded with odds and ends, slowed down to look at him - they were males of his own kind, and it appeared that they had recognized him as a xtauh from his size.

They stopped, and one, looking pleased to see him, called out to him in an inquisitive tone but using a language he was unfamiliar with.

The greeting warmed An-uxhwi's heart to same degree as it worried him. There was little point in engaging with them if he could not speak their language, much as he would have liked to try and yearned for some contact that was not takmar. Further, if he left his post, his friends were in danger.

He did wander a little toward them, gesturing to best of his ability that he could not speak their particular tongue - swirling his fingers before his muzzle, erring on the side of perhaps giving the impression of being mute altogether - but appreciated the sight of other xtauh - fingers cast forward from one eye, other hand on his chest.

Hopefully that would let them to pass on with minimal fuss, before it bundled more attention to him and, by proxy, potentially his companions.

The friendly one had apparently resolved not to leave it at that, although his associate - though seemingly sympathetic - seemed to be reminding him of a need to move on.

He approached more closely; he was a dark yellow - something like the color of dried yellow mustard, had An-uxhwi ever heard of the stuff - with the tip of one antenna truncated, as if cut off and long healed. He tried what sounded like one or two other languages - one sounded a bit like Poradric, of which An-uxhwi had learned some in his youth, but if so the other xtauh was so bad at it that it was incomprehensible - and finally he resorted to Imperial.

“-then maybe you speak trade language of giants, hey?” He clearly wasn't quite as skilled at it as An-uxhwi was, but close enough.

For an eternal instant, An-uxhwi considered pretending to be mute. It would perhaps decrease their interest in him and let them part ways. But this xtauh was putting much more effort into reaching out than could be expected of any one stranger and An-uxhwi would have lied if he had claimed not to be heartened by it.

“I do,” he said. “But though you are kind to reach out and I thank you for it, I cannot speak to you now. I am expected and worry what will happen if I am not where I should be.” He did not say what he was expected for - less out of a concern of revealing anything, more out of wanting to keep it simple for the xtauh who clearly struggled a bit with the foreign tongue.

Mentioning that there were takmar waiting for him might imply he was some kind of slave, hardly very unexpected. Perhaps he could have even gotten away with referring to the building they were in; An-uxhwi still had no reason to believe it was generally off-limits and everyone would know precisely who was allowed entry. But it was more words than this xtauh likely wanted to parse, and more words than An-uxhwi wanted to speak, besides.

“I wish you and your friend a good journey,” he said, his antennae revealing it was a sincere wish. He yearned to chat more, but it was in direct conflict with his desire for prudence. The conflict was hardly a challenge; the choice was crystal clear. It was also a little painful.

The xtauh looked surprised, and even slightly disconcerted, by An-uxhwi's statement. “Expected? No reason not to speak, yes?”

The other xtauh spoke up; though An-uxhwi could not understand the words, he was clearly annoyed with his companion. [Leave him alone, Tikke,] he growled. [Just because you like to flap your mouth doesn't mean that everyone's as willing to put up with it as I am. Maybe he's busy. Or maybe the poor bastard just wants some peace and quiet.]

[That's boring,] Tikke replied offhandedly. [Anyway, he's not busy busy. Look at him, he's just standing there like a stone, there's nothing stopping him from talking while doing that.] The other xtauh gave a snort of disgust while Tikke turned back to An-uxhwi. “There other xtauh inside?” he suggested hopefully. “Maybe after busy all meet outside walls, we have big talk?”

An-uxhwi considered for a moment what the effect of rocking up with two takmar witches might be, but he figured that outside Oraa, it was far less likely to be a problem. “I will try to find you,” he promised, intending to follow through with it, circumstances permitting.

There was a chance his companions might prefer not being seen by these xtauh, in which case he would look for them on his own. There was also a chance that they would be busy fleeing from Oraa - although depending on at what distance they felt safe, he might double back at some risk to himself, assuming Evrith could spare him for a short while.

Meanwhile, inside, an argument was going on, albeit at an extremely low volume.

“You didn't say there was another Chosen here!” Shyriath hissed. Evrith simply shook her head impatiently, closed the book whose future she'd been examining, and handed it to him. He glanced at its text, but added, “So we're just going to ignore the fact?”

“Yes”, she replied as sharply as a whisper allowed. “It's not our concern.” She took another book, glanced into its future only briefly, then put it back in its place.

Shyriath glared at her in consternation, the faint tingling in the back of his head nagging at him to do something. “So there's one of our kind here suffering who-knows-what, and we're just-”

“Yes,” she cut him off. “Because I do know. She's a slave in the sense of being owned; but she's being treated well and she's loyal to her mistress, and she would not only refuse to come with us if we tried to free her, but would wake the whole house. All right? So we're going to let her sleep. What kind of place is that one?”

Shyriath sullenly dropped the matter. “Some kind of coastline,” he murmured, “with trees and streams.” Evrith gave a curt nod, and Shyriath slipped the book into his pack.

“Let's say one, maybe two more-” Evrith began, and then froze as the future abruptly rewrote itself in her mind. She stared at it in horror.

“How-” She shook her head, glanced wildly at the remaining books and snatched two off the shelves. “We have to go,” she rasped, ramming them into her own pack. “Now.” She scurried back toward the door, a confused and annoyed Shyriath behind her.

Outside, the xtauh to which An-uxhwi had spoken was nodding agreeably. “Yes! We have talk, food, water, maybe nicer drink, yes? We camp at spring toward mountains, near one rest away! Bring friends! We-” He stopped, his antennae twitching, and he cocked his head.

There were one or two isolated shouts in the distance, and a lone figure, carrying a pair of banners, winged its way upward in a long spiral. As Shyriath and Evrith hurried out of the door, it seemed to look their way, and began waving a banner checkered in black and red. There were more shouts.

The two bewildered xtauh squawked in alarm, glancing back and forth between the flying figure and the two takmar who had just burst out of the building. “Friend, run!” Tikke urged, running back towards the cart. “They magic-giants-” His companion interrupted him. [He's with them! But if the guards are interested, they'll arrest all of us just for being here! We have to get away!]

Shyriath stood staring at the two of them, but Evrith ignored them; she grabbed Shyriath's wrist in one hand and An-uxhwi's in the other and started dragging them into the alley between the houses, which ended abruptly at the wall. “Come on,” she growled.

Ax-uxhwi was about to gesture a kind of token apology and well-wishes when Evrith jerked him away from the scene. The time for niceties was perhaps over. He wasn't too worried about the xtauh making trouble for them - they seemed terrified, not combative, although the line between the two states was of course necessarily fluid.

The bigger problem was that Evrith promptly manoeuvred them into a dead end. An-uxhwi struggled for calm - it was there, quite accessible, but also palpably fragile, needing active maintenance. He turned, ready to physically defend Evrith - and, he supposed, Shyriath - if it was needed, even if he was still not the best-equipped for it, as he had long since sworn to himself he would.

Behind An-uxhwi, there was a disturbing rumble as Shyriath used his magic to force a hole into the ground; paving stones lifted themselves out of the street, and something like a hollow tube made of stone forced its way up from far beneath their feet, angling down into darkness. The green takma's jaw was clenched with the effort, and the muscles stood out on his neck.

Meanwhile, the two xtauh - who had briefly tried to pull their cart off in another direction - apparently realized that there would be no escape that way, and came rattling down the short street toward An-uxhwi. “Trap!” Tikke wailed. “No way out!”

Had they done so immediately, there might have been some chance of flying away, but there were already a few figures circling overhead. And, it seemed, they were not unarmed; small stones, of the sort used in slings, hissed at intervals down from above, cracking sharply as they hit the street.

There was a limit to what An-uxhwi could do against flung stones in absence of shields to wield. There was an urge to leap up and take the fight into the air, especially in light of Tikke's wail kindling vivid memories of the uprising at the mines - but all that would do in his situation was leave his companions without cover.

And so he provided it in the most literal sense he could, spreading his wings and bracing for the pain of impact, hoping that whatever damage was done would later heal.

To Tikke he gestured that the xtauh should stay way, trying to convey that they were more likely safe if they did not further associate themselves with An-uxhwi and his unusually small takmar companions. But if they came any closer, he would offer them shelter as well, to best of his scrawny ability.

Evrith glanced at the stone tube, which was steadily getting deeper but not nearly fast enough; then at An-uxhwi, attempting to shield them with his wings. A stone hurled down from above hit the top of the xtauh's outstretched wing, and Evrith growled.

She grabbed Shyriath's arm, interrupting his excavation, and started dragging him toward the cart, which Tikke and his companion were now hiding under; the flying guards had started showering them with stones as well. Ground-based guards with spears and leather armor had appeared at one end of the street and were slowly, but grimly, advancing.

“Everyone on the cart! Shyriath, deflect the stones!” She pushed Shyriath toward the cart, then turned to An-uxhwi to pull him along as well.

It took effort for An-uxhwi not to cry out as the stone hit the membrane of his wing near its anchor, force and momentum nearly tearing through the leathery wing. Instead, it left behind a slightly different shade of crimson amongst the other red spatters of his appearance and grudgingly bounced off.

Caught up in the heat of the moment, An-uxhwi almost protested and refused his participation in Evrith's change of plan, before enough lucidity set in to remember that she knew what their best futures looked like.

The best future could still be grim, of course. 'Better' generally did not imply 'good'.

Either way, he let Evrith pull him along, doing his best not to make it difficult for her, trying to use his own meagre ability to predict the future to ease her plans.

The part of him capable of rational thought noted confusion: Under the cart, like Tikke and his companion, he could understand. On the cart seemed like no improvement.

Shyriath, with sharp movements of his hands, began altering the courses of the raining stones; returning them to their senders against the pull of gravity was a bit too difficult at this point, but sending them at the feet of the approaching foot guards was more than possible. His face, however, was locked in the strain of concentration, and it was clear he couldn't keep it up forever.

Evrith had hunkered down in a kind of crouch. “On the cart!” she shouted at the xtauh below; but they either didn't hear or weren't inclined to listen. She jerked her head grimly; there was no time to argue with them. They were close enough to include in the area of effect… barely.

Her muscles clenched as, like Shyriath, she began to show the silent strain of some great exercise of magic. What it was she was doing could not at first be seen, but after a few moments, the air around the cart began to waver, like the air rising from the desert floor, except that it bent not only the shape but the colors of the images passing through it.

The approaching guards saw it too, because their pace noticeably slowed; those in the air tried briefly to concentrate their aim on Evrith, but were soon unable to find her amidst the rainbow-edged blurs, and the stones, now dwindling as ammunition ran low, began to rain down in the vicinity of the cart without any great precision.

An-uxwhi could feel a sense of dread clutch at his spine that effortlessly drowned out the pain from his stone-struck wing. To his instincts, it felt like he was precisely in the wrong place, like a strange fire was about to erupt around him and engulf everyone, one he could escape as long as he leapt off now.

Fortunately, he held onto his rational faculties, which insisted that Evrith would not spontaneously self-immolate; and if she did, she certainly would not be dragging in two unrelated xtauh into the process, who barely counted as as much as witnesses.

But what use the rising spatial discord was to them, that he did not know, and the uncertainty about it made his heart race, threading a mute terror into his gut.

If he had been less eaten by adrenaline, he might have had the presence of mind to ask about it. Instead, he simply endured his ignorance.

From inside, it appeared that beyond a certain radius, everything outside was being… flattened, the very landscape being pressed up against and stretched against the surface of some invisible sphere, and there was a sound that An-uxhwi could only compare to a bowstring under unbearable tension, singing and creaking. And then-

THWOMMMM. The tension was released, the string snapped, and there was a brief, terrifying moment in which everything beyond the sphere was a confused blur of movement-

In the middle of the street, their various pursuers stared in horror as the shimmering sphere pulsed, contracted, and abruptly collapsed into nothingness, leaving behind it a crater in the street, as if some sharp, precise tool had smoothly sheared away a piece of the ground. Nearby, through an open window in the house that Evrith and Shryiath had recently vacated, several of the awakened inhabitants stared at the scene in astonishment.

As they watched, a huge sphere of rock, meters across, popped into existence in place of the cart, dropping into place with a loud crash, landed in the crater, into which it seemed to fit perfectly.

For those on the cart, there was suddenly complete darkness, and silence… or, at least, comparative silence. There was the faint sound of water trickling down stone, but this was drowned out almost entirely by the shrill shrieking of the two xtauh under the cart.

An-uxhwi jerked to the side, clutching at the side of the cart, blinking vigorously. Complete darkness, by its nature, was indistinguishable from blindness, and in his near-panicked state he wasn't sure which it was. There was no obvious, sharp pain in his eyes that would explain it, but the light had done strange things just moments before, so it seemed just as likely as not that it had, in a curt moment, overloaded his retinas, possibly permanently.

“Evrith?” The question was automatic. 'Where are we?' was not - even if blindness were a factor, it seemed obvious they were somewhere else, but less obvious that Evrith would know where. So instead, he simply polled for her existence and hopefully by implication, her well-being.

With that out of the way with, he reached across the edge of the cart, feeling forward, gradually trying to determine if it was safe to clamber down to check on the xtauh that were clearly nearby. He hoped that they were only terrified by the change, but maybe the cart had partially crushed them. Maybe there was something below them now that they had fallen into. Maybe they had not fully been in Evrith's influence, and had been partially disfigured. “Xtauh friends?” he called for them.

Evrith murmured something, faint and indistinct. Somewhere nearby, Shyriath groaned and muttered, “What in the name of the Eminent was that?”

From underneath the cart, the shrieking, possibly in response to An-uxhwi's call, possibly to the lack of other imminent danger, settled down into panicked jabbering; at least they were getting coherent enough to use words. Out of it emerged Tikke's voice. “Friend! What magic-giant do? Why dark? Where world go?”

Some of An-uxhwi's tension dissipated; they did not, fortunately, sound hurt - only panicked.

I hope you weren't planning to be anywhere, some part of An-uxhwi thought, grimly. Two xtauh whose only crime had been to speak to him had been unmoored from their lives. Could they be returned? He would have asked Evrith now, but everyone would have more pressing concerns now.

“We're safe now,” An-uxhwi postulated minimalistically, deducing that it had to be true. For a while. But he had no other information to share just yet.

Then he looked toward Evrith - unable to see her, simply glancing toward where her voice had come by reflex - and said, again: “Evrith?” Carefully, using the edge of the cart to keep himself steady and his sense of orientation intact, he inched in her direction. “Are you all right?”

There was no air movement. The scent of the air was the one of Oraa, but the general stillness made it unmistakable that they were somewhere else, even to someone confused about the status of their sight.

Evrith murmured a faint, “I need… gimme minute…”

There was the sound, from Shyriath's direction, of someone cautiously moving to the back of the cart and trying to get down off it, somewhat to the audible nervousness of the two xtauh. There was the faint sound of claws clicking on stone, then he spoke: “She… put us underground. Somehow. Hold on, I think we're not far from the surface…”

Shyriath moved partway around the cart, and then there was the faint rumbling of rock being moved through whatever force he could exert on it, and after a minute or two a single finger of light - not direct sunlight, but more than bright enough - speared through the darkness. It was enough to bring in fresh air, at least, and to reveal an intact cart in the center of a perfectly spherical chamber… perfect, at least, except for for the center of the floor, which was flat. It appeared to be the same paving stones they'd been sitting on in Oraa.

That, then, solved the question whether he had gone blind. His eyes thanked him by closing in reflex - it wasn't a lot of light at all by any measure, but it was sudden and unexpected. But since it wasn't necessary to shield his eyes, they opened again just as quickly.

He took a deep breath.

Underground. It felt more like an accidental detail than a conscious choice. If Shyriath hadn't been here, or something had happened to him while they… displaced, it would have been their tomb.

With the light spill now giving shape to his surroundings, An-uxhwi turned his attention to Evrith, driven by a fear that she might be hurt - that the effort of displacing them had been much like the effort of lifting a far too heavy weight, tearing a ligament in the process.

Evrith looked… not physically hurt - she was still standing where she'd been when she'd done whatever it is she'd done - but she was swaying gently, and, as An-uxhwi watched, began trembling with the effort of holding herself up upright. She turned her head to look at him, her eyes unfocused, opened her mouth to say something, and then her legs gently slid out from under her, landing on the floor of the cart with a faint thump.

This was enough, one way or the other, to draw the two xtauh out from under the cart, who peered over the edge at the Evrith's slumped form. [Tikke,] the one barked, [look for the medicine box, will you?] Tikke paused briefly, as if about to object, but clambered up into the cart and began rummaging around in the small stash of things directly behind the front of it.

His companion then turned to An-uxhwi, and, evidently less comfortable than Tikke in speaking Imperial, said slowly and carefully, “We carry things. For sick. We find. Maybe help.”

As Evrith slumped, An-uxhwi instantly jerked forward, trying to guard the motion she was making from doing something like knocking her head against the side of the cart.

Then their chance companions spoke.

“…please,” An-uxhwi said to Tikke's friend, posture alert and peering toward him. He didn't know what medicine might help, or if it would, but it seemed better than simply accepting Evrith's collapse and doing nothing but naively hoping for her recovery.

Shyriath, hearing the discussion, slid down from the little hole he'd made, which had been enough for him to stick his head out but not much more. He glanced at the scene around the cart, and somewhat wearily pulled himself up into it.

Tikke pulled out a clay bottle which, when unstoppered, smelled both intensely herbal and rather alcoholic. “Here,” he announced. “Good for what ails-”

Evrith stirred slightly, and waggled her head. “Nnn.”

“Is good, I make by self,” Tikke insisted. Evrith gave another vaguely negative sound and motion. She gave a slightly gurgling hiss, briefly curled up in pain, and then grabbed the side of the cart; hauling her head up and over, she started coughing wetly.

An-uxhwi could not see what was coming out, which was just as well; but the faint scent of blood became apparent.

After a few more coughs and a forceful spit, Evrith slid back down to the floor of the cart, red around her mouth. She struggled to focus on An-uxhwi, moving her mouth soundlessly as Shyriath probed her side with his hands.

The blood was concerning, but with no external wound visible, it was hard to stop any bleeding. If one of her lungs had been damaged, the best thing An-uxhwi could think of - absent healing magic that, as far as he knew, none of them possessed - was to lay her in such a way that it could escape from the lung, rather than filling it up completely and possibly spilling into the other.

If both her lungs were affected, there was perhaps nothing that any of them could do.

If in turn it was anything less threatening, it should be sufficient to keep her hydrated and well rested.

But perhaps the best person to know how to deal with her pains was Evrith herself; there was, after all, a chance that she had experienced this before and recovered, either with or without help. “Evrith,” An-uxhwi addressed her with a soft urgency. “What help do you need?”

What help? Not to be cursed with the future would be best.

The blood was bad. The pain, like glass shards shredding her insides, were worse. But both were passing, however slowly; and they were no comparison to the sight, in a thousand thousand futures, of it happening again and again, with increasing frequency, until on some horrible day-

Evrith squeezed her eyes shut, as if it would hide the sight. She wearily opened them, raised her head enough to spit over the side of the cart again, then let her head fall back, looking at An-uxhwi's concerned and, from this angle, upside-down expression. “Need to just… not move, maybe, for a while,” she murmured. “And a drink-”

An-uxhwi's face was eclipsed by Tikke's clay bottle moving slowly into view. Evrith had, in fact, meant water, but considered that the dreadful concoction might help with the pain, at least; she took it with a trembling hand, and carefully sipped at it.

Shyriath watched doubtfully. “It's just as well,” he said. “We must not be very far from the city; I could see the patrols flying around at the edge of view through the hole.”

An-uxhwi's antennae flexed with ambiguous uncertainty. Almost reflexively, he glanced up toward the scattering light, as though there were anything to see from this angle. “How long are they going to keep looking?” he asked, in a tone that made it clear he was not expecting more than a guess.

Some small fragment of his psyche insisted that he ought to be asking why they were looking at all.

As if to underline their inexplicable misfortune, An-uxhwi's wing abruptly pined for attention. He hissed softly, jaws clenched shut, and tried to inspect the damage taken by awkwardly twisting neck and wing to look.

Shyriath peered at the damaged wing membrane. “Hard to see in this light,” he murmured thoughtfully, “but I think it's just a bad bruise. If you keep that wing folded, avoid stretching it out-”

He stopped abruptly, he view of the injury suddenly obscured by Tikke reaching past him to proffer the bottle - having retrieved it from Evrith - to An-uxhwi. The green demanded crossly, “Look, who are these people?”

Tikke looked down his muzzle at Shyriath. “We friends of-” He paused, glanced at An-uxhwi, and continued, “-him. Who you, tiny giant?”

Friends. An-uxhwi found himself pausing at the term - even though he had used the exact same one before - to feel profoundly touched.

It lasted three seconds before the pain in his wing pulled him out of his reverie. Dutifully chastened by the ache, he tucked his wing to the side, uncomfortable as it felt to fold it, and aspired to keep it tucked.

“Friends,” An-uxhwi said, cementing the relation in addressing them as such. “This is Shyriath.” Then he glanced to Shyriath to say: “I would introduce you, but I honestly have no idea who these people are, we don't share any language you don't also speak. But they are clearly friendly, and I would appreciate if you could treat them with respect.” The final comment came with the barest hint of a stern undercurrent.

Said, he gestured thanks to Tikke and gratefully took his strange concoction, although he did sniff at it with curiosity before doing anything with it.

The smell arising from the bottle was not unpleasant in and of itself, but strong. Most of the components he didn't recognize, but there was evidently enough alcohol in it to send the unwary drinker into unconsciousness.

Before Tikke could speak, with all the attendant possibility of some snarky remark, his companion did it for him, in his careful, deliberate way. “I Unitti,” he stated, touching a claw lightly to his head. “He band-brother Tikke. We pass outside book-giant house as you come out.”

Shyriath grunted noncommittally. He had clearly gotten off to a bad start with Tikke, who was still eyeing him suspiciously, but these two had evidently gotten caught up in something that they hadn't meant to be involved in. “It appears,” he said tersely, “that we owe you an apology.” Though I don't know why I'm doing the apologizing, since stealing the books wasn't my idea.

He glanced at Evrith, whose gaze had unfocused in a way that suggested that she was either peering through time again or had been taken unawares by Tikke's potion, and added, “That's Evrith. Your friend's name is An-uxhwi.”

The two xtauh bobbed their heads in acknowledgement, though Tikke with somewhat less enthusiasm. “You magic-giants? We no meet magic-giants. We never see one of… xtauh… with them either.” It was clear that Tikke was not very fond of the word 'xtauh', but had used it in the interests of being understood.

“Evrith helped many of us - many 'xtauh' - escape from enslavement. I follow her because I owe her my freedom; my life,” An-uxhwi summarised for the benefit of Unitti and Tikke. “I may leave if the debt is repaid, but I do owe her a lot. And her concern is for the future of all peoples - but unlike you or I, she can see that future, to some degree, and thus has the unique opportunity of improving it.”

Said, he took a few cautious drops of the tincture into his mouth, letting the alcohol burn gently along his tongue. Maybe it would help his wing, or at least dull the pain. With a grateful nod, he returned the flask to its owner.

Tikke took the bottle back wordlessly, he and his companion evidently contemplating An-uxhwi's introduction of Evrith. They both looked at the rusty-brown witch, who had stirred uneasily as An-uxhwi spoke. After an awkward silence, Tikke hazarded, “You see future?”

“Many futures,” Evrith murmured. “Many futures. And the past. The past is easier.”

She waited expectantly, and was not obviously surprised when Tikke then asked, “What happen on day I leave mother's home?”

Evrith closed her eyes, and then, after a moment: “There was an eclipse of the sun. And during the darkness, waves of color appeared and moved across the sky, and you were told it was an omen of an important life-”

Tikke had slowly pulled back from Evrith while she spoke, looking astonished and somewhat frightened; he muttered a exclamation in his own tongue. Unitti, meanwhile, peered at her curiously. “What you do to get us away from Oraa?”

Evrith looked uncomfortable. “It… is possible to switch one place with another. I moved the place we were to here; there is probably a ball of rock sitting where we were.”

“And it hurt you?”

Evrith looked away, and in a tight voice, replied simply, “Yes.”

As the conversation unfolded, An-uxhwi crouched down beside Evrith, carefully extending his hands to rest them on her body, one aiming to hold her hand, the other to rest against a wing-shoulder.

“Magic is still work,” An-uxhwi explained, trying to piece together his own layman's understanding with the new evidence. “Some of it is harder than others. So this is like… pulling a muscle very badly from overstraining it.” He paused, letting the metaphor roll around in his head while he looked at Evrith with some worry. “Is that right?”

As An-uxhwi touched Evrith, he caught flickers of borrowed prescience; these were scattered, leaping from one to another as if trying to escape them. They were difficult to catch, but though in some of them he was there (in a few of them, he seemed very close to her), there was a general theme of Evrith with blood around her mouth.

Through the visions, he heard he say, “Something like that.”

She seemed to stiffen briefly, and then the visions moved on to other things - or, possibly, were directed to them.

A sinking feeling gripped An-uxhwi: There would be more. He felt his features tense at the thought, but kept himself quiet. There was no use berating her for it. She would, he was sure, not choose those futures if she could avoid it.

Maybe the best he could do was be there for her, just as he had always intended. Cautiously, trying not to be overbearing, he leant down a little further to lightly touch his head against her neck, meaning it as a gesture of tenderness and solidarity, as one might in brotherhood or other familial kinship.

Then some curiosity finally ate its way through his demeanour and he straightened a little. “What was it that forced your hand? Something must have disturbed the future you saw. Do you know what it was?”

Evrith relaxed… slightly; she had not been sure how much An-uxhwi had seen and had not wanted to talk about it at that particular point, at least not in company.

That said, the question he did ask was disturbing to think about, in its own way. “I think we… the person who saw us at the book place…” She trailed off, then said, “I couldn't see him in the future. He appeared in the past, but not the future… and so he went to the guards, but I couldn't tell until he'd already done it…”

She didn't know how to convey that feeling to them; the sickening lurch of the future being replaced with sharp suddenness.

“…I don't know how he did that, or what it means. Or if it means anything. But that's when everything started going wrong. I had hoped Shyriath would be able to get through the ground in time, but…” she glanced at Shyriath, who shrugged and said, “The rock was very hard there. It didn't want to cooperate.”

I don't know how he did that. Something prickled along An-uxhwi's spine - the deceptively simple sentence was deeply troubling.

But it could also not be helped. As much as Evrith's very existence was a miracle, it was not a boundless miracle. She too was flawed, even if her flaws were different in nature than anyone he has previously laid eyes on.

“If we come across one such a person again,” An-uxhwi said, softly, in a tone of 'thinking aloud'. “It may then be best to leave as quickly as possible.”

“If I happen to notice them in time,” Evrith replied gloomily. “It was only through sheer luck that we spotted them with our eyes this time; if it we weren't to be so lucky next time, there'd be no warning. I don't recall coming across anyone like that before, so we can hope it's a rare thing, but…”

She trailed off, but the implication hung in the air: suppose she'd just never come close enough to one before to notice the difference?

There was a brief silence. Somewhere in the spherical chamber, water dripped. Unitti and Tikke were looking at each other in the manner of those seeking mutual assurance, as if they weren't sure they understood or believed everything they were hearing. It was, perhaps, hard to blame them.

Then Unitti cleared his throat. “Excuse,” he offered diffidently, “but we and cart underground and we not have chance to buy food before-” He waved vaguely in the direction of the light hole. “At some point we need out. If guards still searching, at some point sooner we need food.”

Shyriath turned to look at the small hole, where light was still pouring in. “We have some with us,” he murmured, “but not very much. And I'll need to get my strength up a bit if I'm going to try to widen that enough to get a whole cart out of here.”

An-uxhwi, of course, had a background in mining. It wasn't a particularly voluntary background in mining, but nonetheless, it seemed suddenly relevant. “Perhaps I can be of some assistance,” he offered. “We do not have good mining tools, of course, but sometimes it is enough to find a piece of harder rock, or the right angle.”

Tikke cocked his head, then rummages around in the xtauhs' stash again; he produced a shovel and wordlessly offered it to An-uxhwi. It wasn't a large one, meant more for digging waterholes or latrines than for mining, but at least it was a metal edge.

“Well,” Shyriath murmured, “Maybe if we both go at it we can at least widen it enough for people and go hunting or something.”