“Walk,” the kirin said, lifting Nisus up by her arms. They had removed the chains from her legs, but her arms and wings were still bound. She wondered if they actually thought she could fly away. She wished. Without membranes across her wings like a bat’s, or feathers like a bird, she was as grounded as they were.
The kirin’s magic shrunk the roots and vines covering the cave, opening up to the faintly lit sky. Even though it was a welcomed sight, Nisus kept her head low. The unicorn was watching her closely. Nisus simply stepped out from the cave and flicked her eyes around. All around her she could see old trails made by past hunters, paths she could take to lose her captors in minutes.
It was the break of dawn. The sun barely purpled the clouds and the birds hadn’t yet chimed the start of a new day. Not a full night of sleep then, considering how late they stayed up to figure out how to talk to each other. Nisus hoped the exhaustion was why she could hear a faint ringing.
She had her doubts, though. The sound came from her repaired ear, the left side with a crystal replacement. The sound was subtle, but by the time some birds started to rustle in the trees, she realized her left hearing was becoming mismatched with her right. To make matter worse, the chains tugged at her arm and Nisus winced.
Overnight, the kirin managed to prod Nisus with a needle when she was distracted by dinner. It carried some kind of medicine, one that numbed her wounds better than any herbal poultice. But like any medicine it did not last forever. Even if she couldn’t see past the cloth bandages around her arm, she could feel the pulsing pain, fighting its way back.
How much worse would she get before she found a way to leave the creatures? The unicorn nudged the kirin and pointed to Nisus. They didn’t teach her the words, but she could guess from their tones.
“Watch her,” the unicorn said, or thereabouts. The kirin nodded, but when she turned away she twisted her face in mockery of the unicorn. Nisus also didn’t understand what the kirin was muttering to herself, but it couldn’t have been nice.
While she listened, she also kept her eyes on the unicorn. The two seemed adamant about leaving soon, so what was the unicorn up to? It lifted up its leg and-
Nisus whipped her eyes away. So it, the unicorn, was a he. The unmistakable trickle was familiar after countless hunts with August. And from how the kirin also looked away, Nisus guessed the two were jack and jill. Opposites.
“What you do?” she pointed to the kirin’s bag, trying to speak by piecing together the words they shared last night. Though the response was slow, the kirin seemed to understand what Nisus was saying.
She pointed to the bag, and then the metal contraptions against the side of the cave. “Get more.”
Nisus kept her face relaxed, but she wondered exactly how much more the kirin meant. It looked like they already had enough parts to build an Ironhearth’s tent. Their contraption looked like a massive box, one flat surface full of little knobs and buttons to touch. It was connected to an equally large curved sheet of metal. It looked like a giant bowl or disk, with a rod sticking from its centre.
She spied the unicorn from the corner of her eye. He was distracted, using a stick to dig up enough dirt to cover the evidence of his activity. If she ran while the kirin was busy, she doubted they’d be able to follow her. They were very low in the lowlands, but the mountain was still her home.
And if she left, she’d be back in her camp by the next night, with no idea what these creatures are doing here with all their metal.
The choice was easy. Escaping meant going back to where they started. Would more attacks continue? The dragon was nowhere to be seen, neither was that bird-horse creature. Nisus gripped her kit by its string and held out her chained arms.
“Friend,” she tried, repeating the Highland pronunciation.
The kirin didn’t say anything, but just nodded with a sad look on its face and shrugged. She pointed to the unicorn. “You say to him.”
Nisus frowned. “You can’t be serious. You’re the one talking to me. He hasn’t done anything, why should he have anything to say about it?”
She looked at Nisus with some surprise, trying to figure out what she said. In the end, though, she simply shrugged again. Of course, her words fell on deaf ears. Nisus scratched her left ear.
“Maybe I’m not one to judge,” she whispered. Even her own voice sounded distant.
“What?” The unicorn wiped his hooves against some moss before grabbing his bag from the cave. “Walk now? What you speak.”
Nisus sighed. They needed to fix their language problem. She lifted her chained claws, holding her hunting kit. One problem at a time, though. “I friend.”
She pointed to their large metal disk. “Help get more.”
The kirin fastened her bag to her back and bounced up to her hooves. She stood with a smile and said no words, using just her eyes to cast an expectant stare at the unicorn.
“Walk now,” he told her in his own language. “Talk later.”
-------------------------->>>><<<<--------------------------
Crack. August watched his keus-bhrater stumble back as Muniko’s elbow pulled away. Light from the bonfire bathed the square in an orange haze. Beran retreated from the light, the night’s shadow shrouding the blood on his face.
Crimson red turned to black sludge in the absence of light. The scar across his face might’ve recovered, but it wasn’t completely healed. The soft skin had split open easily to Muniko’s blunt blows. Beran planted his hooves firmly into the ground and grabbed Muniko by the arms before he could land his next blow.
The two Kerns locked horns. Sem’Eo might’ve been an old tradition across all the clans, but the Kerns had their own way of fighting it. Like a long branch pulling up a stone from the dirt, Beran twisted his horn like a lever and cranked Muniko to the ground.
The old Foreteller stumbled, his age showing in his slow recovery to his hooves. For a moment, August took his mind off the hunt. He forgot about his allies and he stopped worried about how many would actually help him find his cousin. Half of the crowd of chimaeras whooped and cheered.
Because Beran was winning. The old Foreteller had two spells left, but Beran was winning. He rushed him down to the dirt before he could stand fully. Muniko’s mark, twin fangs formed on the knees, glowed with some power still. He yelled a spell and his scales turned to spikes.
They rolled and kicked up clouds of dirt. It was hard enough to see with just the fire, their tumbling and thrashing were so hard to follow, all August could tell was that there was a lot of blood sticking to the ground.
“Beran!” shouted Muniko over the chanting of the other Kerns. “You have to stop this!”
“Tired already?” he bellowed back. “If you think you can, then make me! I’m going to prove you wrong.”
“Why risk everything? You know the stories. Dragons were one of the creatures who failed the Elements. They will never bring any good. Fighting them only invites their danger to our family.”
Muniko’s straining voice told the clan what the settling dust was slowly revealing. Beran had him on the ground, head and an arm locked inside a tight grip. Muniko’s scales might have been spikes, but Beran seemed to barely notice the innumerable cuts and gouges over his body. He laid himself over Muniko, his probably nearly double the old jack’s.
With a jerking twist, Muniko’s head turned to an impossible position, and it took no longer than a second for the Foreteller to cry defeat.
August exhaled. Despite his cuts, Beran jumped up, victorious, and waved his arms to the clan. Many cheered, though August noticed that plenty of parents and elders still wore concerned faces. He didn’t blame them. Muniko did a good job stirring their fear. The Kerns already suffered badly from the dragon. Many of their tents, carefully built from their ancestor’s hides, were ruined.
But future tents needed present chimaeras to build them. Muscling his way through problems wasn’t how he wanted to do things, but for Nisus, this way okay. He had to believe Muniko was wrong.
August wormed his way out the crowd of Kerns. Even with their horns, he stood at least half a head taller than the other chimaeras. At his height, he could see to the edge of the Kerns, all the way to the entrance of their camp, where chimaeras from the other clans were waiting to get in to hear who won.
On another day, August would’ve gone straight to Beran to pat him on the back. But their hunt was going to start early. Fahanin and Amorwen would find out if there was anything the highlanders were hiding. But that would be an issue to bring up once Nisus was safe. After fighting the dragon, then the other creatures that they found, and finally trying to chase them down, August knew they’d need more arrows and throwing spears, perhaps even skirmishing shields.
Both encounters with the creatures were hard fights, and they seemed to survive only on luck more than anything else. August felt the exhaustion in his body to prove it. He wanted to lie down and wait for someone to wake him up for the hunt.
But if they were going to succeed against creatures like what he fought, he needed more weapons first before he got sleep.
-------------------------->>>><<<<--------------------------
The orange light flickering from the Ironhearth’s fire snapped at Amorwen’s hooves like hungry wolf-hares. The trees were misted with the cold air that hadn’t yet left the mountain. None of the highlanders wore blankets, and they formed a wide circle around their fire.
“I wonder how our clan is dealing with this,” groaned one of the Ironhearth traders in a deep, breathy sigh. “It reminds me of home. Foretellers say that the cold air sinks from the top of the mountain, from the peaks that never melt.”
“Every single clan camp on the mountain must be like this,” said another trader, a slightly round and older jack. “We had already left when it happened. If it wasn’t for the survivors chasing us down, even we wouldn’t know what’s happening. Probably every other clan, including ours, is just trying to put the pieces back together.”
“Sharing the burden doesn’t make it lighter,” replied the other trader.
A tap on her shoulder almost made Amorwen jump before she realized the only thing that could’ve snuck up on her was her sister.
“How’s it going on your end?” she asked, unsurprisingly.
“I thought you were going to follow the Frostcorns?” Amorwen whispered.
“I am, but I thought I’d get a head start on their Foreteller. The old jack’s on his way here. And, if I had to guess, I bet the Trapcaster Foreteller’s not too far behind.”
“It can’t be that easy.”
“Still need to find out what they’re here to talk about,” Fahanin reminded her, raising her claws up to her ears. “Naeht ohr.”
Amorwen did the same. Their marks dimmed a little as they focused their magic into their ears. They could hear everything. The way the wind danced on the zoak branches, tickling the leaves, became crisp ticks and scratches in their ears. Every sound was amplified until it was as if they had their ears pressed against the source.
Just as Fahanin had said, they saw the Frostcorn Foreteller walk from the dirt path to join the Ironhearths at their fire. The Ironhearth Foreteller pushed the flaps of the main tent open and greeted his highland kin like a friend.
Metal bowls were passed around by the Ironhearth Foreteller while one of the traders put a pot full of meat broth over the fire. Carrots, fish, and lowland spices were thrown into the pot and left to simmer before each chimaera filled their bowls to the brim. Once they had started eating, the Foreteller from the Trapcaster clan arrived off a narrow path in the forest.
“You’re late,” said the Ironhearth, “I already took the good stuff.”
“What else is new?” The Trapcaster took the bowl handed to him by one of the traders and scooped out some of the soup for himself. “I would’ve come sooner but I passed by the Kern camp on the way. Their Sem’Eo was just decided. The Kerns are going to bless the hunt for the beasts.”
“Would’ve helped anyway,” said the Frostcorn, “The kerns are our lowland siblings, after all. Plus, August’s a Ghending. A hunt’s sure to go our way with him.”
“His cousin was the one the beasts took,” the Ironhearth reminded. “The Ghendings aren’t perfect.”
“Well, the lowlanders were naive to send a small scouting party like that. We would’ve loved to help, but they made the decision by themselves.”
“And now we have to help clean up their mess,” the Trapcaster added after emptying his bowl.
There was a moment of silence between the highlanders. The Ironhearth traders swapped glances, searching in each other’s eyes for the courage to say something. Even from the shadowed trees, Amorwen and Fahanin could hear the breath of the forest take back the air as the jacks stopped talking.
“But can even a Ghending,” started the Trapcaster, “stand against these creatures? We all saw that contraption. The next thing we find might be a weapon aimed at us. They’re clearly still gifted by the Element of Inspiration if they have things like this.”
The Ironhearth nodded. “Which is why we have to support this hunt. Obviously, the Ghendings will want one of their own back, but we also have to keep an eye out for more of their crafts.”
“We could make that task a lot easier if we told them what the sonimitter really is,” the Frostcorn suggested. “Isn’t that why the Element of Trust demanded our ancestors not to hold secrets?”
“The Element of Trust also demanded that we know when to tell the truth,” the Ironhearth said. “But once we bring back that jill and end a successful hunt, my hope is that the truth won’t be necessary. We highlanders will be enough, and once we beat the creatures, everything can return to normal.”
“And if we can’t?” the Frostcorn challenged. “Hide the truth long enough and it won’t matter how much things change after the fighting ends, because the fight would’ve been too long to even remember how things were before.”
“You think they can become that dangerous? The Element of Inspiration might still influence them, but their materials are still limited. There’s no way they can make more of their contraptions.” asked the Trapcaster.
“They already are dangerous. Look at how they attacked us. We haven’t heard any news of the creatures and their creations until now, and they targeted multiple clans just after the Melt. They know they have to conserve what they have, plus, they’re an enemy that knows how to fight larger conflicts, not just win small skirmishes.”
“Telling every lowland clan where that contraption really came from won’t change how strong they are,” the Ironhearth leaned toward the Frostcorn. “All it will do is make the lowlanders stop trusting us. Even if we somehow defeat these new enemies, the highlands will not survive if the lowlands break from us.”
The news hit both Skaiths hard. Without context, it was hard to say how much the highlanders were hiding, but it was clear they weren’t being honest. It was easy to guess that the so-called “sonimitter” was the contraption they had brought back, but what it did was still unclear. It seemed whatever it was, all the highlanders understood its importance. Amorwen and Fahanin read each other’s nervousness and noiselessly slipped away from the Ironhearth camp.
“Is my highlander that rough or did I hear them right?” Fahanin asked her sister. “They knew exactly what that thing was.”
“Seemed like it,” replied Amorwen. “Plus, they mentioned weapons. I don’t think the sonimitter is one of the ones they’re talking about, but it must be complex enough to give them a scare. We need to tell August.”
Her sister nodded, but her arms were crossed unhappily. “We need to tell everyone. Why they would hide their knowledge is beyond me, but it’s obvious they haven’t been playing even with us. All of us.”
“Can’t it wait until we find Nisus?”
“Are you seriously thinking about keeping the secret? You’ll be as bad as they are. There might be no ‘after’ for the hunt if the creatures we’re chasing can make craft things complex enough to scare Trapcasters and Ironhearths.”
“You’re right, but I think August is barely hanging on. He’s desperate to get Nisus back. She might as well be his sister with how close they are.”
Fahanin turned away from her sister, looking for the quietest path through the trees. “What is with you and that Ghending? This secret affects all of us. They may be close, but August and Nisus are just two chimaeras.”
“If it were you, sis,” Amorwen said, “I wouldn’t anyone distract me from getting you back.”
Fahanin barely nodded to such an obvious fact. “Yeah, but if you could cast as many spells as a Foreteller, you’d be rushing off without considering the consequences. If you’re worried how he’ll act, think about this: if he finds out there’s a secret while we’re hunting, it’s going to go way worse.”
“Fine,” Amorwen gave in, “but we need to make sure this hunt happens, no matter what. August is rallying them because of Nisus, but if he loses his focus, it’s a matter of time before those creatures are free to strike at the Skaiths.”
“Then we better go,” Fahanin said, leaning off from one tree branch and reaching right for the next step. Amorwen followed, and they both slipped from the camp as easily as the smoke blew away from the fire. Bringing up the secret was going to shock them. Amorwen considered if the highlanders would do anything desperate to save themselves. But what would come, would come. There was nothing in the world that didn’t happen without consequence.
-------------------------->>>><<<<--------------------------
Nisus raised her hands over her eyes, shielding out the morning’s light. Their side of the mountain faced the rising sun, meaning it would be many more hours before the mountain provided it all-encompassing shade.
The unicorn walked far in front, using magic from his horn to chop leaves and bushes out of their path. Nisus, kept her eyes ahead, scanning the way she normally did for animals when she hunted. With so much noise, she was surprised they hadn’t been driven off by a wolf-lion or ox-bear. Of all the predators on the mountain, those were the two with the widest territories. It was almost a guarantee that they were walking through their territory.
Does he have to be so loud? She wanted to ask the kirin, she had no idea how to say it. Hiking together gave them the chance to trade words for other things, like “tree” and “rock,” but they were still far from holding a conversation.
“Hm?” The kirin ruffled Nisus’s mane, tilting her head with an inquisitive look. Speaking might have been hard, but she seemed fine with using simple gestures.
Nisus motioned with her claws to the unicorn and then pointed to her own ear while twisting her face into an irritated expression. The kirin just smiled and nodded, and then spoke a few sentences.
Her words were slow, but all Nisus just shrugged and tilted her head. “I have no idea what you just said. But he doesn’t have to cut all the branches.”
Her words fell flat on their unfamiliar ears. Her ears, meanwhile, were as alert as her eyes. Nisus tapped her left side frequently, trying to get her crystal ear to work with her normal side. Sounds shifted from being off-time to turning completely muffled. Worse still, snaps and pops would come out of nowhere, even if she couldn’t see any source for them.
Focus on the markings. Being her home, she could read the lowlands like a Foreteller scrawling on a sheet of hide. Even so far away from her own clan, there were signs of exactly where on the mountain they were on. The upward hike made the first part obvious. Whatever her captors were looking for, it was higher up on the mountain.
Then she watched the stones and the trees. They were certainly too high up the mountain to be found by any Gadurons or Apelgadurons. The dragon’s cave was the border between the Kern and the Wefans, but she was sure she was much further than that. Wefans grew a special plant that only they knew how to care for. If they were in Wefan territory, she would have seen some cotton-flax saplings by now.
Nisus recalled the lessons from her Foretellers. Leodth, one of the oldest Foretellers in the Ghending, knew every other clan on the mountain, lowland or highland.
“The river that the Wefans use to water their trees,” he used to tell her, usually when she was tired of August’s magic lessons, “is a thinner offshoot of the Longway River.”
Nisus wondered as they walked how big the river was exactly. Both the name and the river came from the highlands, where everlasting glaciers melted new water into a massive lake. Combined, the river and lake were the largest body of water Nisus had ever heard of, excluding tales from Life Hunts of a far-off saltwater lake so massive it swallowed the horizon.
She had never seen the Longway herself, but if they had passed the Wefans, they were sure to find it eventually. The river cut through the mountain from the very top down to even the surrounding hills.
“Stop here,” the unicorn took Nisus out of her daydreaming strut. They had been walking through dense forests, though not aimlessly. On their right, the mountain sprouted up dramatically, almost like a cliff. The narrow path they were following barely held off the roots and bushes around it, but made easy work of the steep slope by winding back and forth.
Nisus quickly checked the trees around them. Paths as long as this one were usually made for travelling between clan camps and blocked off during the winter. But she didn’t recognize where this one could lead. Stranger still, there were snapped branches up the path, cut the same way the unicorn did.
The days since the Melt felt long with all their fighting, but that didn’t change the fact that it hadn’t been long since the paths were fully thawed. No chimaera, no matter their clan, would’ve spent the time to clear out the trees.
They had been here since the winter. That was the only conclusion Nisus could draw. There was no other way to explain how giant dragons and contraptions of metal could go unnoticed. Most clans sent their hunters away tracking herds of animals during the winter, and few ever left the walls of their camp while it snowed.
“What now?” Nisus asked, not caring if the kirin understood her or not. Walking in silence for the past hour or so was beyond boring.
“Metal,” the kirin said in its language before swapping to lowlander. “Metal here.”
Nisus listened and nodded, watching whatever the unicorn did. He stepped off the path to a small ditch that led into the side of the mountain and then suddenly disappeared behind a wall of overlapping bushes. Nisus peered, trying to see what he was doing, but there was no way from where they stood.
Nisus started following. As far as hiding places went, this wasn’t bad, but it wouldn’t take more than a few weeks for the local clan to discover something was here.
“What’s here?” Nisus called out as the kirin quickly matched her pace.
“Wait,” she said, tugging on Nisus’ arm with a field of magic. Her injury shot pain all the way up her shoulder, forcing her to wince and stop in her tracks. She cast a dirty look at the kirin, though she had no words to say.
Before any explanation could be given, the unicorn came out of the cave with a metal contraption strapped to his back. Nisus recognized its arrangement of turning knobs immediately. It was the very same from the dragon’s cave where they fought, and like the one back at the smaller cave.
She watched as the unicorn’s horn glowed, seeming to connect to the contraption. There was a small crystal piece on the front with the knobs. Nisus didn’t pay attention to it at first, but now it came alive with a shimmering display of lights.
“Sonimitter,” pointed the kirin. She repeated the word again slowly for Nisus.
“Sonu-meta,” Nisus tried repeating, trying to follow the shape of the kirin’s mouth.
Suddenly, a crackling sound shot through her left ear. It sounded like a heavy rainstorm, but only on one side of her head. Nisus clutched it, spinning her head around for the source of the sound, but there was only them. The kirin quickly offered her horn as a post for Nisus to lean on.
“What?” she asked, shocked. The unicorn stared as well before flicking his eyes around nervously at the trees.
Her ear didn’t hurt, but the constant buzzing noise was maddening and made even paying attention to the kirin’s words difficult. Nisus wracked her brain to come up with a word, but all she could do was point to her left ear.
“Loud!” she yelled.
The unicorn’s voice betrayed his panic as his words became impossibly fast. He cut his connection to the contraption and levitated it aside, and said something to the kirin, tugging as her hoof to go in some other direction.
Nisus snapped her head at the unicorn. She heard him clearly. In fact, she realized, the moment he set down the sonimitter, the noise was gone. She let go of her ear and pointed right at the contraption.
“What is that thing supposed to do?” she cried out at the two of them, not caring if they understood or not. “Why is it so loud?”
They both looked at each other dumbfounded. “Why loud?” asked the kirin. She pointed to Nisus’s ear. “What you hear?”
Nisus thought for a moment. She cupped her claws over her mouth and made as low of a buzzing sound with her tongue as she could. “Brzzrt!”
The unicorn shook his head, denying it. Nisus sat and listened to him drone on about something, but all she could do was look irritated at him. The sound was loud and clear. The unicorn was in no position to lecture her about what she should or should not have heard.
Part of her wanted to turn it on again, just to prove it was the contraption that made the noise. Whatever was wrong with the piece of crystal that Foreteller Walgpurgia put in her ear had something to do with it, Nisus was sure. But the name, sonimitter, meant nothing to her, it didn’t even sound like a highland word. Though, that made sense as Nisus thought about it. Metal or not, the contraption looked completely different from what highlanders made. Even if they could figure out what it did, they probably didn’t have a word for its design.
As the kirin and unicorn muttered to themselves, Nisus reached out and fiddled with the knobs. The stubby protrusions spun freely, up to a point.
“Hey!” shouted the unicorn, snatching the contraption up with a simple levitation spell. Nisus stood up against him, face to face, scrunching her nose in frustration at how, despite their massive language barrier, she still knew how stubborn he was. She pointed to the sonimitter with a firm glare at could cut through an ox-bear.
The unicorn stepped back, looking at the sonimitter and then back to Nisus with some kind of understanding. “Okay.”
The contraption responded immediately to the glowing of his horn, and again the sound returned, though quieter. Nisus pointed to her left ear and nodded. “But less,” she said in their language to be clear.
The unicorn furrowed his brows and twisted one of the knobs, and the noise suddenly surged in her head so much that the pain almost felt like pressure against her skull. Nisus’s claws snapped back to her ear again and she almost toppled from the surprise.
“Stop,” cried the kirin, turning the knob back. She looked at the unicorn with a funny look. Nisus didn’t need a translation to know what “I told you so” looked like. Now the kirin took her time blasting words at the unicorn. Nearly all of what she sounded like gibberish, but Nisus was just happy to make the unicorn look bad.
Whatever she said, the unicorn seemed to agree with a long sequence of head nodding. Once they were done, the kirin helped Nisus up, levitating her by her good arm this time.
“You follow,” she said, “need speak to dragon.”