Elder Kapha sat behind a table that looked like a flattened stump of a tree. He enjoyed the delicacies that were laid before him and the wine gave him a good feeling. He stared out of the room and looked at the view he would have been provided, had the rain not be so heavy. He sighed and carried on dinking and eating.
The sound of footsteps sounded, coming from a huge stairwell. Kapha was intrigued, he paused eating and turned over to look at the stairs. The sound of footsteps went on for a while before a soaking wet yemephu came out of the stairs. Its hair clung to its body and its eyes were red. Kapha frowned.
"Philo?" Kapha called.
"Council member Kapha," Philo called back. A strange symbol appeared before his forehead and glowed a bright orange and his hair soon dried and his body warmed up. The symbol shone eerily in the dark room before it disappeared. After the symbol disappeared Philo slowed down coming to top in front of the table. He was too short to see the contents on the table, but Kapha was still big enough to be seen without stretching his head much.
"What happened?" Kapha asked Philo. He was worried, he had assigned Philo to look after the strange yemephu. There was no way it could have survived the joint attack of three yemerey, but it had, so he had been hung up in the cave prisons. Kapha had suspected that the demon that surrounded the young yemephu was to blame, so he charged Philo with watching over the yemephu, and reporting to him if anything weird happened to the yemephu.
Philo hesitated. He opened his mouth to speak but then he closed it again. He was considering the right way to deliver the message to Elder Kapha, he wasn't in the mood to earn the ire of the yemerey.
"Out with it! What happened?!" Elder Kapha roared.
Philo gave up and just spoke what was on his mind. "The yemephu is dead."
Kapha studied Philo's face, the distress was plain on his face. "So?" Kapha asked back, a bit scared at what Philo would say next. "Isn't that a good thing? Why do you look so distressed?"
Philo hesitated for a brief moment. "Well, the yemeru who discovered it, Venangs, also discovered something strange."
"What was it?"
"The yemephu was attacked by a ganie,"
"Ah," Kapha had already resigned the yemephu to his fate. Once the ganie got its claws in anything, there was no other fate except a slow painful death. Even a fully grown yemerey might not be able to escape unscathed talk less of a yemephu that hasn't even reached its juvenile stage.
"But that was not how he died." Philo mumbled almost inaudibly.
Kapha was shocked. The yemephu did not die by the hands of the ganie? Then what killed it? Kapha wasn't ready to believe Philo so he asked, "Are you sure?"
Philo tapped his chest twice and Kapha's face darkened. Philo continued, "He saw the ganie get fired off the body of the yemephu, it was even smoking."
Kapha's face darkened some more and he let out a growl. "So how did he die?"
Philo buried his head into his chest and said with an even lower voice. "We are not entirely sure."
"What?!" Kapha roared. "Repeat yourself, I'm not sure I heard right,"
"We are not entirely sure how he died." Philo replied with his head even deeper in his chest than before.
Kapha kept quiet after that, but the darkness on his face did not clear. He spent sometime in deep thought before he spoke. Several moments of silence had already passed. "Do you think the demon has anything to do with his death?" Kapha asked cautiously.
"We called Perio, Kanene, and Renan to investigate, but they didn't discover anything."
"H-how is that possible?" Kapha asked.
"Our magic is not infallible," Philo replied somewhat sternly, "And their somethings that even our brightest minds can't discover."
Kapha kept quiet for some time before he silently came to a decision. He stood up from where he sat and looked down at Philo. "Come, follow me," He said to Philo that stood before him, completely dwarfed by Kapha's height, "We need to pay this yemephu a visit. He's still at the prison, right?"
Philo tapped his chest. "Good, let's go."
Philo opened his mouth to say something, but Kapha had already taken off. With large strides he ran to the edge of the platform, not caring about the rains. He jumped off the ledge and soared into the sky with his huge body. He flew across the sky and through the canopy, then just as he was about to begin his descent towards the ground, he expertly grabbed onto an extremely thick branch and swung himself forward once more.
Philo sighed. In the space of a couple of seconds, Kapha had already travelled more than 150 meters, if he didn't take off now, he would most likely struggle–and fail–to catch up with him later. He began to run after Kapha, but didn't cross 1/100th of the distance Kapha had crossed in a single step. A symbol shining with blue light, soon began to take shape before him. Once it had completely formed it dropped down to the floor, and with a step, Philo was on top of it. White smoke soon began to take shape under him. It quickly formed into a cloud that carried Philo out of the room.
The cloud chased after Kapha and soon caught up to him. Together they made their way through the canopy, approaching a clearing. In the middle of the clearing was a mountain that seemed to have been cut smoothly in half. The top half was missing leaving behind only a plateau like structure. In the center of this plateau was a set of stairs that led into the core of the mountain.
Kapha came to a stop at a tree nearby, and Philo, who was flying on a cloud, slowed down to a stop nearby. Kapha sat on an extremely thick branch and frowned as he stared at the plateau. "Tarisi is here," he said, mostly to himself, but Philo overheard him and a shocked expression showed on his face.
"Elder Tarisi?!" he exclaimed. "What is he doing here?"
"I'm not sure," Kapha replied, "But we're about to find out."
They continued their journey and soon came to a stop on edge of the flattened mountain top. Quickly, Kapha crossed the distance and arrived at the set of stairs, and Philo followed behind, still on his flying cloud.
"Tarisi!" Kapha called out. "What are you doing here?"
Tarisi barely shot Kapha a glance, before turning his attention back to the stairwell. "It you who should be answering that question, Kapha." He replied.
Kapha was confused. "What do you mean?"
"It is not strange to find a yemerey patrolling his territory, but to find another one so brazenly venturing within his territory, there can only be one option. He is here to challenge the other for his territory. So tell me Kapha, are you here to issue a challenge, or do you have some other intention?"
Kapha almost swore, he forgot that the prison was in Tarisi's territory. He shot Philo a glance that could have killed him if he did not hold himself back and made a mental note to teach him a lesson after they returned.
"Don't worry, I'm not here to challenge you. I just got wind of some news and I came to confirm."
"Oh," Tarisi said with a slightly surprised expression, "And what news is that?"
"It was just something about a prisoner, I'm sure it has nothing to do with you." Kapha replied.
"And how sure are you about that? This is my territory after all." Kapha opened his mouth to answer but Tarisi stopped him with another question. "And also, before we go into all that, why don't I ask the question–since we are on the subject after all–how do you know about something that might have happened only a few hours ago?
"Because as far as I know there is only one prisoner, currently resident in the prisons. And I expect a satisfactory answer or else I can only assume the worst and take… appropriate action."