Avishraa Reloaded

After a number of vigils of travel, the books on Avishraa had finally been carried far enough away from Hyd'natt's former tribemates that they were unlikely to follow further. Hyd'natt had taken the opportunity to adjourn from her role as guide, but for a time, Evrith, who reported that Ynudh was still following, continued to return to Avishraa to maintain her own watch.

When they reached the bottom of the valley that peaked at the pass at Barith's Gate, however, Hyd'natt - who, possibly still uncomfortable being around takmar, seemed to take comfort in asserting herself around them - had, rather unexpectedly, commanded her as a healer to take a break. The pace of travel had clearly been wearing on Evrith, and so, in what was still very broken Imperial, Hyd'natt had said, “Way up easy to see! You eat! You sleep!” Evidently this had been forceful enough to convince Evrith to comply.

But it was felt that the overall pace of things on Avishraa should be kept moving, so others began traveling with the books again. And so it was that, while Evrith lay sprawled on the high rock ledge in the sun, extremely asleep, Tikke came looking for An-uxhwi to take a turn on Avishraa with him.

“Evrith will get rest here,” he said reasonably, carrying some furs that had been crudely adapted into garments. “And you can stretch legs for a time. Maybe not wings, because air is too cold. But it good to get out, to see things.”

An-uxhwi rose, making a motion of acknowledgement. “Where are we now?” he asked, knowing that he would get his bearing eventually once he returned to the books, but that it was remarkably hard to know which way to go if you'd skipped half of the journey intermittently, and their situation compelled them not to make a mistake like that. A few words of guidance would go a long way to prevent it.

Tikke handed him the furs. “It a long valley,” he replied. “High mountains on both sides, a river at bottom. Many giants live in villages along the water, so we must travel higher up along it; slow going. But it hard to get lost; lots of ways one cannot go.”

When they had made the disconcerting journey between the worlds and reemerged on Avishraa, it was easy to see what Tikke had meant. The valley was not narrow, but its walls - one towering immediately above them, the other looming in the distance across the valley floor - were obvious, and the floor itself sloped gently upward, disappearing into a blue mist in the distance, where the mountains towered ever higher.

The Burning Eye must have opened at some point while he'd been on the other world; it must have still been behind the mountains to the left as they looked upstream, for the sky was brighter there, but despite the valley being in shadow, the sky was the sky of morning, though a deeper, almost violet, blue than he had ever seen. And it was cold - he was familiar with the cold of the desert night, raw and arid, but this was different; a more humid chill, and one unrelieved by the heat stored by the desert sands.

Tikke huddled into his furs, and rummaged around in the hollow of a nearby tree, where the pack containing the book had been stashed. “Father always say that the lands of the giants are hot with steam,” he muttered, “but they must still be far away - it damn cold here.” As he spoke, his breath hung visible in the air, something An-uxhwi had never seen before; the desert drank up the moisture from breath, day or night.

An-uxhwi bunched the furs around himself once back in Avishraa, grimacing at how the cold was biting at all edges of his body. His antennae curled down to protect themselves, giving him a distressed, fearful-looking scowl that didn't reflect his mood. He drew a fold of the fur over his head like a hood, hoping it would stay at that. “What awful weather,” he commented the obvious to get it out of his system. “But it is only fair I suffer it, too, it hardly looks like it will be different soon.” Said, he glanced toward the bluish haze in the distance. Then his attention returned to Tikke. “Shall I carry them this round?” It was intoned as a friendly offer, but his facial expression turned it into an oddly submissive one.

Tikke had covered his antennae as well. He shrugged and handed the pack to An-uxhwi. “If you like.”

He gazed down, with a certain amount of longing, at the valley below them. The river sparkled amidst dense trees, and clusters of homes could be seen. It certainly looked warmer than it was up here. “At least we get a good view,” he felt moved to say, as if it made things any better, and then started moving with An-uxhwi along the craggy slopes.

Even with the makeshift hood mashing down his antennae, it was clear that he had something on his mind, and that he was struggling with how to introduce it; given that Tikke rarely felt compelled to choose his words with care, this was a highly unusual circumstance. At last, he cleared his throat and ventured, “It seem that you and Evrith quite close, this past while.” His tone was the deliberately mild one people tended to use when bringing up a topic they suspected would be sensitive.

An-uxhwi would have smiled mildly if the weather had allowed. “I do owe her my life,” he reminded, his tone pleasant as he took the bundle of books and slipped the strap that held them around his shoulders.

“This true,” Tikke replied, a bit more relaxed but still carefully, “but life-debts do not often call for cuddling.”

Someone had been bound to notice at some point. Since their feelings had been brought out into the open between them, Evrith certainly had more prone to remain in physical contact when they were both present. However much she worried she might be about how the others might view an interspecies romance, this had evidently not translated into any urge to hide it.

“Don't worry, it's not contagious,” An-uxhwi said in friendly humour, beginning to trudge along the route, loosely cradling the books with his arms in addition to them hanging from his shoulders, mostly to keep them from swaying and occasionally bumping against his body as he moved.

Tikke's expression, such as was visible, betrayed something between amusement and frustration. Encouraged by An-uxhwi's mood, he decided to be a bit more direct. “I do not object to love,” he said, “and it not rare for mens to like their womens tall; but not often giant-tall, even if small-giant-tall. One see a rare circumstance such as this, and it hard not to wonder why.”

“And I am not offended that you find Evrith disconcertingly unattractive,” An-uxhwi rounded off Tikke's comment. “And I can assure you, no one will try to make you cuddle her. As I said, it's not contagious.”

“I not worried about contagiousness,” Tikke declared. “I just curious, as one is curious of any thing seen for first time. One never hear of a man of the People loving a woman-giant. …Or, too, a woman of the People loving a man-giant.”

“Ah,” An-uxhwi said with the voice of a smile. “I don't think I can explain,” he said, but proceeded to try something much like it regardless. “I wouldn't be here at all without her doing. And she is very alone, and as I have been walking this path with her, I have been alone for a longer time, too, before we met you, before we met Shyriath. More, I have seen some of her thoughts and she has seen some of mine and we are not displeased with each other for having seen them. Indeed, I admire her goals and the nobility with which she pursues them, though I wish she were less punishing to herself. But I don't think any of that answers your confusion, my friend, and I don't think anything I could say truly could resolve it. It is the nature of love to make itself mysterious to all but the one who feels it.”

Tikke considered this, and felt he had to concede the point. “I suppose so. It is so with many other loves I have seen; to expect different here would expect too much. Unitti love Hyd'natt. I have known Hyd'natt long, and I understand the admiration Unitti have, but not the…” He paused, searching for the right word, and settled for, “the attachment.”

He paused, then shrugged and added, “But then, Hyd'natt once say to me that I would make good lover but bad husband.” Beneath the furs, his antennae took on one of the most crooked grins An-uxhwi had ever seen. “A smart lady, her.”

An-uxhwi nodded, sharing in the amusement. “I wonder what anyone would have to say about me in that regard. I probably make a bad husband and a bad lover,” he mused with sarcastic pride.

“Hah!” Tikke barked. “I not speculate on the lover. But you like Unitti - you seem responsible, you seem faithful, you probably do good at husband-things.”

As they had been walking, clouds had been blowing in, high above, like glittering mists. Both xtauh began to feel the occasional cold pinpricks on the tips of their muzzles, where they protruded out from under their hoods; like very tiny droplets of very cold rain, perhaps. There was no sign of it in the air, but perhaps a shower was coming.

“You know, of course,” Tikke said seriously, squinting up into the sky, “that there may be trouble. Others will not like to see you together. The tiny giant,” he added, using the nickname he reserved for Shyriath when the latter was irritating him, “I think he too know. He seem… no anger, no disgust, but upset.”

“I don't think he's the type to turn that into trouble,” An-uxhwi remarked, revealing that the revelation was not a shock to him in any way. “Although I hope if he does hurt from it, it will fade with time. He, too, has been very lonely, so I hope fate will bring him the happiness he needs. The past turns have been more social interaction than he's had for a long time.” He left [18:26] * @Valcen it at that, the final explanation unspoken: Their band of misfits was all Shyriath had, and Evrith was the only that was like him.

He also left unspoken that he privately thought that, since Shyriath had nearly killed both of them when they had first met, despite their friendship now, the distance to cross for deeper bonds was quite large, and crossing the distance would take time, a resource someone starved for social attention would not necessarily think he had.

Tikke turned this thought over in his head, he grunted a reluctant assent, but felt moved to add in a mutter, “Maybe he have more luck being not-lonely by being not-miserable-git.” In a more normal voice, he asked, “He never say why he get chased out of… what-it-called witch place, Citadel?”

“I don't recall,” An-uxhwi said. “If anyone knows, it is probably Evrith. Whatever it was, it was enough for them to want to send others to kill him, at least by his own claims. We haven't seen him attract that kind of attention and I hope we don't, so we - I, rather, not being blessed with pre- and retrocognition - have only his word of it. But nothing he has done since we first met has given us reason to doubt it and he does not strike me as delusional. Perhaps he upset someone in power.”

Tikke did not immediately reply, but the look of disdain on his face - compressed though it was by his hood - spoke volumes. Xtauh societies had their own power structures, of sorts, but not the slavish appeasing of them that seemed to characterize takmar; a powerful person who was seen as being unfairly and loudly upset about something would find herself cast down, her power evaporating in the midst of derision and scorn. Takmar, by contrast, seemed far more keen to do what others said even if they hated them.

He paused in his tracks, for he had become aware that… something was now sifting thinly down out of the sky, something light and fluffy like ash. Baffled, he looked at a piece of it as it landed on a makeshift sleeve; it was white. He glanced at the higher peaks off in the distance, which were mantled in white as well (he had always assumed that that was merely the color of the rock up there). “You seen this before?”

An-uxhwi looked at the strangely geometric white structure with fascination. “No, never,” he admitted. “But I think this is… I think this is just water that has gotten so cold,” he exhaled a cloud of warm breath. “…that it has gotten solid.” His tone was part admiration, part unease - that had to be very cold indeed, although he had no sense just how cold it was. They were still breathing, at least, and while the environment was unpleasant, it didn't seem to be killing them yet, however spooky the idea of snow might be to him. “I've heard of this before, but it looks much stranger than I was expecting.”

“Yes,” Tikke replied, with feeling. “Like little carvings. In the tribe Unitti and I grew up in, there was a woodcarver who made pendants. They looked like this, sort of.” He looked up at the mountaintops again, and shivered. “Maybe it do this up there all the time?”

He glanced around the landscape, and as his gaze took in some of the land behind them, a faint bit of movement caught the corner of his vision, and he squinted down at it. He blinked once or twice, then lowered himself toward the ground. “An-uxhwi,” he murmured, “you see that?”

It was far behind and below them, moving in the same direction as they were but on a shelf of rock that ran below the one on which the two xtauh walked. It was too far off to make out much detail, but it was person-sized, and was dark, intensely dark, like a patch of night moving across the light-colored stones.

“I'd rather I didn't,” An-uxhwi confirmed, his mood clouding as he watched. His tail was doing much better by now, but he till very much remembered what had happened to it, and this did not bode well.

“Maybe if we stay still, and let him go by down there…” Tikke trailed off. No. He had not yet had the opportunity to see what this Ynudh could do in person, but the state of An-uxhwi's tail, and everything he'd been told, suggested that having him in front of them would be even worse than having him behind; the pass toward which they were making was a choke point, and for the dark takma to occupy it before they got through might prevent them from proceeding.

“Or… or perhaps we roll rocks down on him?” he added uncertainly. Looking around, there weren't really that many rollable rocks of sufficient size to make a difference. And unless they could cause a mass rockfall, they couldn't be sure of hitting him, and might succeed only in alerting him to their presence.

That was one thing Shyriath was good at, though. “Not a bad idea - we could ask Shyriath for help with a rock slide,” An-uxhwi whispered. But only one of them ought to go back and get him, if so, and the other stay with their cargo. “Would you go get him?” An-uxhwi asked, unfolding the book from its layers while keeping it awkwardly beneath him to shield it from the snow.

Much as he would rather disappear from Ynudh's vicinity, he would rather see his enemy than embrace a false sense of security. If the book was found, Ynudh would go through it and kill them all the same than if they were found outside the book. This was he at least knew what was coming.

Tikke nodded tersely, put his hand on the open book, and faded from view.

As An-uxhwi waited, the black speck resolved into the shape, if not the visual detail available had light shone on him normally, of a figure in a tattered cloak, trudging wearily but determinedly. His head swung gently from side to side, as if he were looking around, or sniffing out a scent. He was still considerably further back than An-uxhwi when, abruptly, he stopped, going absolutely still.

Around him, Tikke and Shyriath faded in; both sank to the ground. Shyriath peered around, and shivered; he had not been so cold since he'd lived in the Citadel. He focused on the black figure. “What's he doing?”

Ynudh remained still, though his head seemed to be moving very, very slowly. Then it, too, stopped. It was impossible, at this distance, to make out which direction he was looking, but-

With a sudden blur of movement, Ynudh disappeared behind a rock outcropping. They did not spot him again for several seconds, and when he reappeared, he was hauling himself up the face of the rock toward a point on the path they'd been minutes before; if it was too cold to fly, it was clear that he was willing to climb.

“Quick!” An-uxhwi hissed in alarm. “Crush him if you can, or cause a landslide!” He would have preferred to use more polite language rather than demand action, acknowledge that the landscape might not even yield to Shyriath's nudging because of the way it happened to be built, at least sneak in a 'please, would you,' but there simply wasn't time. He was gathering the book back up in a bundle, getting ready to run if they had to.

“I can't cause a landslide here that wouldn't take us down with it!” Shyriath hissed. “And I'd have to get closer in order to-” He stopped, sighed, and muttered a swear word before setting off running - toward where Ynudh was climbing up.

The Doomtouched had made it about two thirds of the way up before Shyriath had gotten close enough to begin taking steps; a column of rock punched outward from the slope face, and missed him by inches. He paused just in time to avoid a second one abruptly removing his head; he gripped it tightly enough with one hand to thrust out the other, and a cloud of black mist streamed upward from it.

In his haste to avoid being engulfed in it, Shyriath ducked back and raised a wall of rock between himself and the mist; while he was thus engaged, Ynudh continued to scrabble upward.

An-uxhwi put down the wrapped book and picked up a rock of his own. With a steady eye, he took aim, and threw it at Ynudh. It wouldn't hurt him significantly if it hit, but it would certainly be a distraction.

The rock narrowly missed Ynudh's hand as he clung to the lip of the ledge; he nearly let go in surprise, but hauled himself up… just in time for Shyriath's wall to be sent hurtling face-on toward him.

Daring the cold, Ynudh opened his wings and leaped into the air; while he almost immediately began wobbling in his path, he was able to swing outward and around, circumventing Shyriath and the darts of rock he was hurling, and to come in with clawed hands extended toward the two xtauh. Tikke, too, started grabbing up nearby rocks and hurling them at the oncoming creature; in his effort to avoid them, he wobbled aside and landed heavily, skidding to a halt only a few meters from them.

An-uxhwi, hoping that Tikke would take to the book in his absence from it, leapt forward in bounding motions toward the creature, upon him in a second, and seized a sizeable rock with both hands in what seemed like the same exact motion as his final approach, then in a motion more primal instinct than intellectual decision brought it down on Ynudh's head, intending to at least concuss the monster, at best crush his skull. Whether something like Ynudh had a skull to crush was perhaps a different question. There was no time to think it through and no time to regret the choice, just the frantic hope of self-preservation.

Ynudh jerked his head aside as the rock hit the ground where it had been; with a growl, more a sound of irritation than anger, tendrils of black mist extended outward toward An-uxhwi.

What felt very much like Tikke's hand roughly grabbed An-uxhwi's shoulders from behind and tried to yank him backward out of the way as Ynudh hauled himself back to his feet.

With instinct still guiding most of An-uxhwi's actions, he let himself half-fall, half be yanked backward, not quite managing to land in a sit. Without a thought to spare, he grabbed a hold of two more rocks - they were smaller than the one he had intended to use as a blugeoning weapon, but also much easier to throw with precision.

The creature stopped, managing to catch one rock and clumsily knock the other aside; the first one crumbled and dissolved in his grip. But before he could charge forward again, the stone beneath him suddenly surged upward in a column, lifting him, clinging desperately to its top, into the air.

Shyriath ran up behind them, panting; he made a sharp downward motion with his hand, and the column abruptly dropped back into the ground; Ynudh managed to leap off rather than be loosed by the impact, tumbling roughly toward the upward slope on one side. Propping himself up against it, he lurched to his feet again. “Another witch?” he groaned.

He started circling slowly around them, keeping an eye on their hands for any movement toward rocks, or possibly toward moving rocks with magic. “Delay is pointless,” he grated. “All of us will die. Give me the book and-”

Quite suddenly, Evrith faded into view, with the bewildered trembling of someone who had just woken from a terrible nightmare, and the scene erupted in confusion. In mid-sentence, Ynudh's head snapped toward her. Hers snapped toward him, but slowed by her disorientation. Shyriath clapped his hands to the sides of his head, as if in sudden pain.

Ynudh hurled himself across the space between himself and the oracle, and Evrith raised her hands only moments before her arrived; he tackled her to the ground, only held away from ripping out her throat by her hands clamped desperately around his wrists. The black mist flared hungrily around them.

In the next second, An-uxhwi was leaping toward Ynudh to try and land on his back, not bothering to growl or snarl. He wasn't cognisant of what he was trying to do, but his instincts knew they were going to tear Ynudh's throat out by reaching forward past his shoulders if given even a moment's chance.

Ynudh was unbalanced by the sudden weight of An-uxhwi attaching himself to his back; Evrith, grimacing in pain, wrenched herself to one side, sending the creature tumbling over with An-uxhwi's claws still in him.

Shyriath had managed to recover enough from whatever pain he'd experienced to plunge his fist into the ground and bring it up encased in a stony glove; he began bringing it around in a wide swing. “An-uxhwi, pull away!”

Again, the action was more automatic than planned - and less of a 'pull away' than it was a 'half leap, half roll to the side', set up to scrape himself on the scrag and rocks in the process.

Ynudh, whether through luck or supernatural warning, hurled himself in the opposite direction as the fist slammed down. This took him toward the edge, where he stopped; but at a frantic slicing gesture from Evrith, the piece of ground on which he had come to rest came loose from the path and slid down the slope, dropping the Doomtouched from sight.

Evrith's head snapped toward An-uxhwi, but seeing that he had not come off too badly, she slumped, partly in relief and partly to devote her energy to shivering and swearing at the pain stabbing at the palms of her hands. They looked like someone had, vigorously but very briefly, applied sandpaper to them.

An-uxhwi grimaced as he unrolled himself from his position on the ground. His left wing had gotten scratched up somewhat nastily and would sting if he tried to fly with it - not that the weather wasn't having the same effect, equally spread to both limbs - but otherwise he was in good enough shape to hurry over to Evrith, all the while taking note of their surroundings. Just because Ynudh had been knocked down the slope didn't mean he was taken care of. And with the stubborn persistence he'd shown so far, An-uxhwi reckoned they had maybe three minutes of reprieve.

Evrith managed, with some difficulty, to get herself to a halfway-upright position without using her hands. She sat trembling as An-uxhwi hurried over, her hands and fingers twitching. She glanced over at the cliffside, where Shyriath was watching intently and making pushing motions with his hands; the rumbling sounds that accompanied them suggested that he was trying to send at least a few chunks of rock down to keep Ynudh company.

She turned back to An-uxhwi. “You're all right?” she asked.

“Quite,” An-uxhwi summarised, eyes fairly wide, still tense with attention. “What about you? What happened to your hands?”

She looked at them, and winced. It could have been worse; they were only bleeding in a few spots, but felt very raw. “I think when I grabbed his wrists…” she trailed off. A moment or two longer and the effect of the mists might have started spreading. She shuddered. Then shuddered again, glancing around at the snow that was now falling silently but thickly.

“I don't think I hit him,” Shyriath called from the cliff edge, “but I don't see him anymore.” Evrith just shook her head. “He ended up in some bushes down near the valley floor,” she murmured. “His arm is broken; he might force himself along, but I don't think he'll be climbing back up.”

The information came as some relief to An-uxhwi, and he could feel it take the worst off his wound-up edge. Maybe they had more than a few minutes, then. “Perhaps it would be best if you went back into the book to rest,” An-uxhwi suggested. “Tikke and I can continue the journey of carrying it.” His breath frosted and drawing it back in was uncomfortable, but he wasn't about to let that stop him. The few bruises he'd gotten from the fight were hardly worth noting, and his coat just needed a little adjusting to keep out the worst bite of the chill, which, for that matter, he was doing now. “We'll try to pick up the pace.”

Evrith's hands attempted to clench, but since her shivering was getting worse and the clenching only made them hurt more, they instead twitched erratically. It was clear that she was not enthusiastic about leaving An-uxhwi out here after what had just happened, but without being able to go on all fours she would only slow them down; and, in any case, the warmth was already being drawn out of her. There weren't enough furs or cloaks for all of them.

“Yes, all right,” she muttered at last, unhappily. “Just be careful.”