Avishraa Reloaded

After everything, he was still following.

The xtauh had been easily evaded, Evrith told An-uxhwi; she had been able to provide Hyd'natt with early warnings, and they could simply hide the book in a tree trunk or a crevice where no random inspection was likely to find it. But Ynudh was still out there, looking for them; and once Evrith had begun going through the book, appearing on Avishraa again, he was able to track her as he had before.

He was in a worse position this time, of course. His followers had been scattered by the attack, and he could not see the xtauh like he could Evrith; he had to spend more of his time hiding or fleeing. But once all of them had gotten out of range of the xtauh sentries, she said, he'd started gaining on them.

An-uxhwi's gradual recovery had been a source of relief for her on her daily returns to this grassland world, but Ynudh's persistence seemed to be weighing heavily on her spirit. She stared in gloom at the fire Shyriath had made as she spoke, and concluded with, “His master must want me badly, for Him to drive His servant so.”

“Maybe if you were to tell them where you wish to go, Hyd'natt, Tikke or Unitti could be the ones that primarily move the book, while you minimise your time back home?” An-uxhwi reasoned.

Evrith wriggled uncomfortably, glancing over at the others. Hyd'natt, tired though she was after the daily excursions, appeared to be serious about staking her claim in this world, and had been scouting around the base of the rock outcropping looking for sites for a proper tent before Shyriath had made the mistake of mentioning his ability to shape rock. He had, rather grudgingly, been drafted into Hyd'natt's plans for creating a home, and via Unitti she was presenting him with a long list of things she wanted. Tikke was watching them with an impudent grin on his face.

“The trail is easy enough to follow without me until we cross the mountains,” she replied, “but that is not so far away now. Ynudh must suspect by now which direction we are going, whether he can see me or not. And the pass sees many takma travelers, from whom hiding will not be easy - they may let xtauh through unmolested, but they may not.”

Evrith expelled a long, nasal sigh. “And once we get to the other side, my search will begin in earnest; I will have to remain on Avishraa. I'm not sure that hiding here now will accomplish much.”

An-uxhwi considered their conundrum in silence for a while. Then he mused: “If Ynudh is getting help, perhaps we can do the same? Is there an entity that might aid us in a similar way if we ask?”

The slow change on Evrith's face was interesting, and rather concerning, to behold; from gloom, to shock and surpise, to utter incredulity, increasingly tinged with bitterness.

“If you have a reliable way of getting in touch with your goddess,” she replied, struggling not to put sarcasm into her words, “I would be happy to have her help. But the Siathar will not help me; they have not forgotten nor forgiven. No less an 'entity' would suffice. The being behind Ynudh is-”

She clamped her mouth shut, as if afraid to say more, but then continued, almost in a whisper: “In that dream of yours… you saw Him, through the lens of His touch. He is the End; He is Doom. Because I am trying to thwart an end of the world, I have placed myself in His path without realizing it, and now He sees me…”

Her voice trailed off into silence, her expression filled with dread.

“Hmm, perhaps, but there were others in the dream, and at least some expressed an interest in stopping Him,” he continued, as though there had never been antagonism in the air at all. Admittedly, they had also revealed that direct meddling was something they avoided for their side-effects, or something along those lines - he didn't have perfect recall, so it was muddied to him.

“Though what do you think there is to forgive? It seems strange to me that a god of such magnitude would hold a grudge to a single mortal, even a very powerful one such as you.”

Evrith recalled the words that had been drummed into her head long ago, about the nature of the gods. “The Siathar,” she said, “they are the… the guardians of civilization. Of the way people behave toward each other. And some relationships are sacred, so that a crime against them is a crime against all people, and against the Siathar, and I…”

She glanced over at the others again, to be sure they could not hear. In a barely audible voice, she said, “And once… I tried to cause a death, I tried to use my foresight to arrange a death, not in self-defense but out of anger… and he was kin.”

Even given the sometimes vast cultural differences between Evrith and himself, the Flitting Hargh People among whom An-uxhwi had been born taught that shedding the blood of kin was a horrendous crime, a thing that placed one in the furious gaze of the Burning Eye.

It did cloud An-uxhwi's face noticeably, and the silence that followed was perhaps not the most comfortable for Evrith. But after some consideration, he said: “It may have been a transgression, but I will be blunt with you: I still cannot imagine that the gods would care. They have not struck down peoples that have gone to war, or the people who enslaved us in the mines.” A pause.

“And the way you speak of it implies you did not even succeed. May I ask why you planned it?” The question was open to, but not necessarily fully expecting, a defensible answer. An-uxhwi remembered being quite small, and he remembered the stupid things he used to think when he was, and that it had been good for him that he was not always able to act on those thoughts. Not to mention the variety of injustices they'd encountered, which, while they might not necessarily warrant lethal response, could certainly alleviate the guilt about employing such drastic measures.

Evrith squeezed her eyes shut. The words would not come; there were too many of them, logjammed in the river of her mind.

Instead, hesitantly, she placed a hand on An-uxhwi's, and he saw a torrent of images, one srcribbling itself over another in endless succession, of a rusty-red girl and an older boy, dark brown. In some, he was but an adolescent and she a young child; in others she herself was the adolescent, and he a young man; and they could be seen in all ages in between. Words both angry and chilly passed between them. Arguments were had, shouting and screaming. Words that were delivered with sharp heartfeltness and could not be taken back.

And then, a scene. The young man, bleeding and broken, lying in a forest grove. Nearby, the teenage girl, her face smeared with horror and self-loathing, and with the vomit that lay on the ground next to her. She crawled over to him, whispering, “I'm sorry. I shouldn't've. I'm sorry…” And the young man, between gasps, whispered… “Sorry?… You… sent me into that?…”

As the vision dissolved away, the words of the motherly voice in his dream returned to An-uxhwi: 'She wishes not to see things that she is unable to avoid seeing. It does not help that she was taught to blame herself for many of them.' 'She was hurt, and learned by example to hurt herself.' Were these part of what he had just seen?

Evrith withdrew her hand, and stared at the fire in silence.