Zern struggled to breathe. The air was thick like smoke and smog but with a wetness unbecoming of both, he could feel his throat burning in the darkness. His vision was blurry. He blinked, it was clear for a few moments before fogging over like breath on glass.
No.
He looked down in his hands, a bloodthirsty pickaxe which seemed to drink up the blood from his broken hands sat in it.
No.
He looked around. It was dark, the room thick and hazy, small candles of light were spread out across the hallway over fifty feet behind him providing the dimmest of light.
No!
He heard a crack through the air.
No!!
Crack.
Crack!
Crack!!
After each one a scream followed, followed by loud wheezing which echoed throughout the stone mines.
He threw down the pickaxe and threw up.
"What are you doing?" A voice said form behind him. "Keep digging before anyone sees you."
Zern continued to throw up. The voice only made it worse. He didn't want to look behind him, he knew who it was.
Don't look.
A shout from the end of the hallway.
"Pick it up!"
Don't look.
The vomit continued to spill from his mouth.
The shouting got louder as another crack split the heavy air.
"Pick it up Loof!"
He began to hyperventilate. The world began to spin. His mind began to spin.
"You're not ready for this are you?" A new unfamiliar voice said
The air and shouts seemed to freeze at the voice's words.
Zern stopped vomiting for a moment but was still too terrified to look up as if the entire thing was perhaps a well orchestrated trick. He didn't want to relive this day, not ever. His mind was feverish, he felt sick.
"No, certainly not." The unfamiliar voice said. "I will wait here until you're ready. Return to your life and dull the only sense that matters. From where you were born, you will return to dust."
The vision began to collapse in on itself as the voice finished.
Zern looked up to see a woman with amber for irises and black for hair standing in front of him. She had deep brown skin, golden runes and geometrical lines spread across her body. She had freckles of gold rather than black and she wore an outfit primarily of reds and blacks. She was perhaps the most beautiful person he'd ever seen.
All he was met with in the end though was the woman's monolithic and expressionless gaze. She was unnerving for all of her supposed femininity and even more terrifying due to the inhumane irises of amber, which seemed to burn through him like a hot knife through butter.
He screamed and threw himself up.
He hyperventilated.
Heede sat awake on a chair opposite to him. He was busy writing in a book he'd been given by Nara and her tatus. The scared man looked up at him, his face illuminated by a candle on a table to the side of him which he'd lit.
"Nightmares?"
Zern nodded. "Memories of times where I did not live but simply moved."
"Rough upbringing?"
Zern nodded as he got up and put on some clothing in which his hosts had provided him. It was a little small for him but still worked fine. The clothes were several layers as seemed to be proper wear in this part of the east. He was given a set of white underclothes along with a set of black garments over that. It was contrasting clothes.
"What time is it?" Zern asked.
"Four hours before dawn, five before our younger host is up and seven before her old man."
"Then why are you awake?"
"You were talking and murmuring in your sleep." Heede said plainly, turning down to the book again and dipping his quill in a jar of greyish red liquid. "Secondly I hardly ever sleep for more than six hours a night."
"That's about half of what you're supposed to be getting." Zern said as he slipped his hand through the black overcoat's sleeves.
"I'm not about to spend thirty percent of my life asleep."
"What's 'percent'?"
Heede sighed. "Don't concern yourself about it now, all I'm saying is there are more important things I could be doing then sleeping for that long."
"I see."
Heede smirked and shut the book with a single thump. "Fascinating, you must've hit your head pretty hard when you died."
"What do you mean?" Zern asked, turning towards Heede now fully clothed.
"That entire time you spoke not within your native Yinitsiri but instead within my starlight spoken Emetate."
"'Starlight spoken'?"
Zern thought to himself about the connotations behind those words. This man spoke not only within Zern's own native Yinitsiri, but also his Emetate in which he implied is spoken only at certain points. There were things that didn't add up about Heede, but he wouldn't pressure that upon the man who had returned to find him too quickly.
"Don't think about that part too much," Heede said, "the fact that you are able to speak a language implicitly without even realising it is the part we should be speaking of."
"What language are we speaking now?"
"Yinistiri."
"I see."
Heede smirked and walked towards the window which overlooked the small valley. "Fascinating, three completely separate languages of no relation to one another, and when speaking you don't even realise you've switched to a different language. Tell me when you speak to others how do you hear it?"
"What do you mean?"
"What I mean is that when our hosts or I talk to you in our native languages how do you hear it?"
Zern thought about it for a moment. How did he hear it? It didn't seem like an important question to himself but it obviously meant something to Heede. What was that man doing? Perhaps the man was trying to document it all in his notebook to establish what was truly going on with him.
"I don't know, I just knew what they were saying, as if it was muscle memory or intuitive."
Heede nodded. "We'll figure it out later, because knowing so would be useful."
"Didn't know you were an archivist."
Heede scoffed. "I've seen enough of the arcane to know this is not just any magic, no it's certainly something different. This is none of the eight schools, with the closest comparison I can see is within the divination school specifically a relatively low skilled by extremely limited language spell."
"We didn't have many wizards or witches in my nation."
"That I am aware of," Heede said, raising an eyebrow, "but it's still no excuse to be ignorant of possibly the most dangerous but also useful thing in most lands."
"Cut the parenting." Zern said sharply while getting his pair of crutches.
"Sometimes even the wisest of men need to be reminded of important things."
Zern scowled and walked out onto the balcony closing the door behind him. He looked out into the still dark valley, the sun was still stuck behind the northern mountains. It would be hours till the first break of light reached this point. He sighed and turned to go back inside before he noticed something.
A great head of hair sat quietly on the far side of the balcony. The head sat within a cross legged position and appeared to be gazing out over its dark home. From this position Nara had somewhat of a beautiful set of mannerisms to her; quiet, calm and demure, such aspects would've been desired by so many.r to
He walked towards her and stood over her. He didn't start the conversation, he waited for her to do it. He stood there for a good three minutes wondering whether his own footfalls and breathing had been too quiet or the woman was choosing to ignore him. Just before he was about to break the silence the young woman seemed to come alive.
"Why are you up so early?"
"Nightmares." Zern said.
"There are still many hours before the break of daylight," she said, "you should rest, rather than waste your own energy."
"I could say the same thing to you. Why are you up so early?"
"Nightmares."
There was a great irony around a person arguing for someone to go against something while at the very same time that previous person was doing it as well.
Hypocrisy, a voice said clearly in his mind.
He shifted slightly as if wondering if a person was behind him before realising it was only a voice within his mind. He didn't like what was happening, he could feel a cold sweat running down his back, not from the heat–although it was deeply humid at some points in the evening–but from anxiousness.
"Why do you speak our language?" Nara asked.
"Because I can."
"How do you speak our language?"
"I don't know."
"It's terrifying," the woman said, still staring out into the dark valley, "we're so close to extinction, to replacement, but now a foreigner speaks it better than its eldest speaker, my tatus. He's terrified, I'm terrified. I couldn't sleep with the idea that a foreigner could speak a language better than its most devoted and determined adherents. My culture, what I live for is approaching oblivion, to be lost in the pages of history and now it seems its fate is to be carried on by peoples in lands far away, beyond what I'll ever see.
"And what's worst of all, is that you do not know why you speak it so well. Perhaps if there was an explanation I would not be so angry, so upset by the fact that my language and its meaning will disappear forever."
Zern stood in silence for a moment, he stared out across the dark valley. The pound was shimmering the last hurrah of the moon parade, the winds rustled the crops and trees in the far distance and he stood atop a stilted house. He sat down next to Nara and put his crutches to the side.
"You don't like either of us do you?"
"No." She admitted still refusing to face him. "When your friend first arrived I wanted to kill him or at least drive him away, it was only after my tatus demanded it did I give in. I was even more angry when we were dragged along to find you, I half expected your friend to be working for bandits and he was simply waiting for a moment to kill and loot us."
Zern nodded quietly. "You don't like people in general do you."
"You're too invasive," she said firmly, "I haven't prowled into your life, why are you prowling into mine?"
"Because I haven't had a chance to talk to someone–really talk to someone–in three years." Zern said firmly. "I've been locked in a cage for more days than anyone would like to count. I've seen hopeful men die, I've seen scared men die and I've stupid men die, but none of them really wanted to at the end. I thought I wanted to die, until those moments when I faced death and fought it. So forgive me when I want to talk instead of festering in silence when I might hear the voices of the dead around me."
Nara turned towards him and scowled. "You don't know the first thing about pain." She said before standing up and leaving.
Zern sighed but turned back towards the black valley. He sat watching the valley, he thought about those visions, that hellish vision that had brought him back to a time he did not want to remember. A time where he struggled to breath, where the scent of air was bloodied and moist. He cleared his mind of those times and watched as the first rays pierced the mountains behind him and fell across the tops of the distant trees. A few hours later Nara–as if nothing had happened between them–and her father were up.
Nara began the day by carefully examining him. She had him take all but the most essential of clothes off as she stretched, twisted and checked every bone and joint in his body. It was a strange thing, he'd never really talked to many women before, he'd never had the option for a relationship with a woman, and now he was half naked in front of one being examined by her.
Soon her tatus walked in and watched the examination as well.
In his mind he cursed himself for feeling so uncomfortable, there was nothing strange about a doctor or surgeon inspecting their patient, there was no difference between this examination and any other.
Finally Nara nodded to him to put the rest of his clothes back on as she turned towards her tatus.
"It appears that he's got a broken leg," Nara said, "it will take longer then initially thought for him to heal."
"Such things cannot be changed," her tatus said, "he remains here until healed."
Nara had an annoyed look and presence but she quietly nodded, it was obvious she was not the head of this house.
Soon after they were all–including Heede–confined to an awkward breakfast before the older man and Heede attended to the crops. Zern was left stuck inside the stilted house with the ever present–and ever scowling or straight-faced–Nara. He sighed knowing that this was to be his fate until his leg healed.
He quickly found mundane activities to distract him from talking with Nara unless absolutely necessary. He would collect buckets of water from the rain that would occasionally occur, fold the clothing that Nara would put up on the line and most importantly of all distract himself with books. Nara's tatus had a large array of books for a farmer, of course Zern himself couldn't read any of them. Heede would question why that was, Zern could only ever give him the answer that he didn't know, he could hear and speak other languages but not read it. Nara seemed relieved when she saw him only able to understand the pictures–which every book had–rather than the seemingly endless words which dominated them. Each of the pictures were beautiful and hand drawn, but they were only pictures, he had to infer what each meant to the story which he could not read.
The house in which he was trapped in was surprisingly large for a simple farmer and his only companion. Three bedrooms, a dining room, a kitchen and a makeshift library which contained a reasonable selection of books and a sword seemingly to ward off the worst of things.
She would occasionally enter the makeshift library in which he sat so often and read some of the pages he couldn't. He didn't know whether it was something she did to make herself feel bigger, make him smaller or a general love for the pieces of literature he was unable to read. She took great care within handling the books and would criticise him when they weren't put back in a specific way. She would never read for long, as if embarrassed to do so and would never do so in front of her tatus.
One day Nara's tatus invited him out for a walk. Zern quietly obliged and followed the man as they walked over towards a small stream. The morning air was still warm despite the spitting of the stream which lead over towards a small waterfall which sprayed mist in the air cooling it.
The older man walked over towards a pair of rocks next to the stream, sitting down atop them and watching the waterfall. Zern followed suit and sat down next to the man.
"Tell me, how is the leg treating you?"
The older man said it rather casually as if he was now used to speaking to a foreigner who could understand him.
"Better," Zern admitted truthfully, "but it still hurts, the splint and the crutches make walking difficult."
"I see."
The older man turned away from the waterfall and towards Zern. He had a withered look to him, as if the man was stuck between two worlds, the living and the dead, waiting to simply fall into that of the dead.
"I am dying." The old man said.
"We're all dying."
"No." The old man said firmly. "No you have a long and luscious life longing for you, my life is withering, wasted and has been worthwhile, but I will die sooner than I'd like. I am dying, I will say this again." The old man stood up for a moment, he slowly took off his upper torso layers of clothing before throwing them to the side and turning around. "I am dying."
The older man's back was black, rotting like a decaying carcase after a hunt or battle. The veins around it were thick and black. His breathing now seemed weak and he now noticed the occasional wheeze in the older man's breathing. There were no hairs on that ash black section of the man's back, but he could see the old man's scars, deep and brutal, ones that could never be erased from a body no matter the time one spent trying to do so.
"What is it?" Zern asked as he watched the man put back on his shirt and turn back towards him.
"No one I've seen knows. I've visited several doctors and shamans," the old man said calmly, "none knows what it is, all they know is that it's killing me. Most say I won't last the winter."
"And what do the rest say?"
"That I won't last till my next birthday."
"Which is when?"
"Soon."
"Why are you telling me this?" Zern asked.
Zern thought it was strange for an elderly man to give such personal information to a man he'd only known for around two weeks at the most. The old man was hiding something, holding something important. He didn't know why the old man was telling him this, perhaps I he didn't think that he would live to see the recovery of Zern's own condition.
"What are you trying to tell me here, old man?"
"I'm not telling you anything, I'm simply giving you what's needed before I ask something of you." The old man said softly and within an organised manner of speech. "From now on, please refer to me by my name Yenjin."
"Alright, Yenjin," Zern said leaning forward slightly, "what is it you want from me?"
Yenjin turned towards the waterfall. "This waterfall, my ancestor's discovered. It's been a responsibility to care for it for generations within my family, yet such a sacred lineage has been broken and I have been unable to repair it.
"I am not Nara's father as you might have presumed, in fact I am her grandfather." The older man said. "She is a good girl but she has seen too many things for a girl of her age. I used to fight in skirmishes with bandits–still do when needed–and invading troops, but what that girl had to see was not something even I, who has lived through the scouring of great empires, should've seen. She is not ready to face this world alone, and worse I fear that such trauma will soon return to her."
"This is about her parents, is it not?" Zern said, inferring the old man's words.
The old man nodded. "I had two kids with my wife. Nara's father and his twin brother. Life was tough on both of them, but while Nara's father developed a more gentle outlook to life his brother did not. Such attitudes were only made worse when, I–who used to herd all types of animals–was away trying to sell my flock's coats, came home to see that Nara's uncle had been taken captive by bandits in exchange for the lives of the family and the house. I saved him, but in the end he resented me for being away when he needed me most, he fell into addiction and abuse, there were no moments of joy in my firstborn after that. He spiralled and spiralled into something I could never imagine for one of my own children to become, and in perhaps a twisted mockery of fate he ended up conducting the very bargain he'd sacrificed his freedom for. He killed my wife–his mother–he killed his brother, he killed his brother's wife and the house he'd grown up in, but worst of all he left his baby niece alive to see it. When I came back I was met with the smouldering ruins of my ancestors and the last of my lineage–for my eldest son had abandoned it–in the form of Nara."
"This son of yours, what was his name?"
The man breathed slowly. "Ittin, although I doubt he'd refer to himself as that anymore."
"Why do you fear Ittin? If what you're saying is true then this'd happened more than ten years ago, why now?"
"Because I am dying, I'm the only thing that keeps that man at bay, once this accursed disease takes me Nara will have nothing to protect her from that man. Only his fear of me keeps him in line."
"What do you want of me?" Zern asked, getting slightly annoyed at the man bouncing around the request.
"In my library you are aware of the sword that sits on top of the redwood bookcase?"
Zern nodded carefully.
"Once I die, you must ensure that you give up that sword to Ittin," Yenjin said, "Nara will try to stop you, you must not let her get into your mind. Restrain, knock her out, I don't care but you need to ensure she stays away from the sword because she won't give it up otherwise."
"What's so important about the sword?"
Yenjin looked back towards the waterfall for a moment as if contemplating his next words carefully. "Tell me, Zern, what do you plan to do once this storm has blown over?"
Zern looked at the older man closely. He still wasn't entirely sure himself, but from what it seemed being stuck down below the shadows of the Gods'pine was only bringing him pain and suffering. Perhaps telling the old man what he'd want to hear was the correct option. But what did the man want to hear?
"Continue my exile to Farsight Keep," his voice said without his mind's permission.
Damn you, Zern thought to the Voice.
The man raised an eyebrow and looked back towards Zern. "Exile?" The man paused for a moment. "I see… very well I may tell you…"
Heede worked hard in the fields. His arms burned from exhaustion and his legs from the constant crouching. He didn't know much about the profession and was only following the very specific instructions–translated to him by Zern–of the older man. The sun was still high in the sky but it was approaching time to at least take a break, the old man would let him do that wouldn't he?
He turned around towards the house and from this distance he could just make out Nara staring out across the valley, although she would never stand out in the sun lest she risk getting tanned. That was one thing strange about the East: the obsession by women to not get even the slightest bit of color from the sun.
So strange, he thought to himself, turning back towards the shed in the distance where the old man had left some cool water for him to drink or wash his face with.
Wait.
He turned back around, he'd thought he'd seen something within the corner of his eye. He scanned the areas in which he'd spun his eyes across before. At first he didn't notice anything, then he could see the small gray speck coming closer. He narrowed his eyes until he saw the speck solidify into a single man, although he could not make out the features.
He turned back up towards the house, Nara still had not noticed the approaching figure. The man still would've been a few hundred meters away but he was coming closer.
Heede cursed under his breath and ignored the break despite his own exhaustion and began to half jog towards the house.