《Under The Watch Of Many (Formerly: Your People)》


 1: Living Reeds

    Across the expanse of water that was only a slight shade dimmer than the blue sky above, the rainforest jungle wrapped the opposite lake shore like a canvas painted thickly with browns and greens of various shapes and tones. Even high above the shore, up into the rainforest canopy, the vines and leafy crawlers intertwined across branches regularly enough that he couldn¡¯t see much further past the closest trees to the lake before it all blended into a great wall of distorted jungle color.


    On top of that, looming over the whole clearing like a great eye staring down at him, was Kimitrius, the greater of their two moons, and on this day, it covered perhaps a full third of the sky. Wherever the trees didn¡¯t, anyway. Kimitrius was a whiter moon than Demnus, the smaller. It looked like an eyeball completely made from ivory, all but for a bright purple band forming a circle placed right in the middle that looked far too close to an iris to be coincidental. It would normally have been a view Banon would have taken his time enjoying. Today, and for the past several, however, he was far more focused on a singular goal.


    Progressing into manhood among his fellow Ooura, and, after passing all the trials, gaining the title of Kohthai.


    Officially, he would be a named warrior and protector among his people, a day he had dreamed of since his first memories. And that would put him one inch closer to his further goals, ones far enough away he was only aware of their distant call, ever present in his mind and alluring. The maze of events needed to occur to get there still, however, felt every bit as daunting as the day he first imagined it.


    But someday he would be emperor, and not merely as a followup to his father. A new kind of emperor. The kind their people needed now to bring them back from the brink of complete destruction at the hands of the Pyathen elves, or the Enka humans as well, since he suspected they would soon seize at the Ooura¡¯s weakness also.


    He sat just above the edge where the knotted-up green mat of mesa met divinely colored water, scanning his gaze along the nearby shoreline, but Banon was not looking for any standard game. He was looking for a tool and a weapon, one he was only now of age to finally acquire, though he had lived this day many times in thought before it actually came to pass.


    The living reeds were numerous in the shallows today, appearing as dark, fist-sized spots just underneath the surface of the sapphire-colored lake water.


    There were plenty of choices, but he wanted only one.


    The best one.


    He would wait here, sat at the edge of the mesa matt, and watch all day if he had to, even this late towards the deadline to bring back an Orux skull, allowing him to enter the next stage of his rite. Each living reed would have to come up for air precisely once during the daylight hours. When it did, its second internal chute would shoot straight up into the air until it equaled almost the length of the main stock still submerged beneath, and it would do that with a force that could shatter bone. The living reed was not in any way similar to most species of reed found in the Ooura rainforests and jungle, but was instead tube-shaped and perfectly straight from flat end to flat end. It looked, actually, much closer to some kind of aquatic bamboo species.


    The unique physical endurance of the living reeds also set them apart; they were technically the hardest to kill organism in the entire jungle, also by an absurd margin. As far as anyone knew that Banon had ever met, they were indestructible. They made fantastic weapons for that very reason.


    A spray of water shot straight up into the sky, pushed by the rocketing chute that had just decided to breathe. Anything sat on top of it at that moment would have been smashed to pieces and thrown dozens of feet into the air.


    They made even better weapons for that reason.


    Banon smiled.


    That was the one. He¡¯d counted forty-three chutes coming up for breath since sunrise, where he¡¯d been camped on the lake in a makeshift hammock he¡¯d woven between the tree trunks with leaves from the huge Moka stock that was growing nearby¨Cits leaves were twice as long as a man and shaped in perfectly uniform strips. They made fantastic cord; if you were willing to separate out the individual fibers and then re-weave them. Then, you could have something capable of holding much more weight than the raw Moka leaf alone, and yet in a much more compact shape.


    Last night, Banon had struggled the find the energy to even string up a few raw leaves shaped in a simple cradle-shaped braid just so he could at least sleep off the jungle¡¯s floor. But now, almost into the next night again of the fifth day of his search for the perfect living reed, while most other boys were long since shifting their focus to their Orux, he was looking upon the fruits of his labor and finding it worth it.


    He¡¯d spent the past five days straight¨Cthe duration so far of the summer festival¨C searching for a special one, while most of the other young Ooura out in the jungle like him, undergoing their transition from boyhood to men and warriors, would have just picked the closest reed they could grab at the bank on the very first day, far more concerned with their eagerness for the next part of this stage in the competitions to decide their future status. The jungle, their extended home, would be teeming with other boys like him in their eighteenth year, all participating in the first stage of selection for the status of Kothai, the name of the warrior who guides the helpless. Before the seventh midnight of the summer festival, each boy would be expected to return to the circle of elders with their new living reed staff and the skull of the Orux they claimed with it, just as countless generations of Kothai had before them.


    Banon, on the other hand, had no value for more time when it came to hunting an Orux. He could have the trail of one within the day, and from there, it would come down far more to brute force and resilience than any training, since all the prospective Kothai out hunting during the summer festival were forced to hunt alone for a creature best taken with a two to four man team, and only after using bows to soften it up first, none of which they were allowed to do now, lest risk complete exile for tarnishing the sacred rite.


    This weighting of scales must have been the exact reason the ancients chose to carve the path for each new generation of warriors in this way. It was because although Ooura were together a strongly woven tapestry, it would still be expected of each and every individual strand to be the greatest of possible stock if they were to be allowed the name and responsibility of being a warrior among their respective flocks.


    If a man did not think himself worthy, he would simply pass on his attempt at the rite and result himself as a Karnuu, those occupying the rung in society between men and women. They would not be maimed of their manhood, like the new kind of Pyathen servants Banon had heard of. They would just be seen for what they were.


    Useful, but lesser.


    Banon watched as the water-polished second-chute loomed out of the water, and he listened to the great sound of its screechy inhale. It was taller than most¨C which was perfect for Banon¨C and paler of color than any he had seen. Its secondary chute was thicker in width than even some of the main chutes of the lessers surrounding it as well.


    But it was its speed and explosive movement that was the true stand out that had made him choose this one. The extra dimensions of it would fit even better in Banons large hands, but the force with which he had just witnessed was¡­


    Well, he hoped it was enough to shatter an Orux skull in one well-placed blow.


    Before he could lose it, or trip over himself in sheer excitement, he dove in. Banon swam down, breast stroking his way out of a dive that took him weaving in between the lesser chutes for the real prize.


    Just as he was swimming in place next to it, admiring what must have been ten whole feet of the second internal chute on top of what he suspected was about twelve feet underwater, which was a perfect match for Banons own height of eleven feet and a half feet, it began to retract into itself again.


    Banon laughed with himself as he climbed down the shaft to the bottom of the lakebed, bubbles from his laugh tickling his face as he descended. Once he reached the chutes rooted in bottom, he stopped letting out air unnecessarily and then planted his feet and began to pull.


    He tore it out quite easily, as to be expected. For all living reeds¡¯ exterior shell durability, their roots were weaker than dead skin. They were that way because of the way the living chutes drift from place to place, shedding and regrowing new roots as they went.


    Banon kicked off the bottom, the force from it sending plumes of sediment spreading up the water column in a trail after his own path of ascent. He breached the surface, sprayed water in the air from his full cheeks, and then held his new staff above his head triumphantly as he swam in place on the surface. Then he began to bellow into to the newly fresh air.


    ¡°Ooura! Hunter, bowman, man of the shield! All fight for the strength to make Ooura succeed!¡± Banon¡¯s triumphant call trailed seamlessly into a short, booming laugh.


    He found himself quiet again and staring up at the twelve-foot-long chute in his hand, its sheen-wet surface gleaming.


    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.


    He also found himself unable to wait until he even got back to the bank.


    Banon felt around until he had it; the small notch in the midsection of the living reed, his new staff, and there he found it. The only weak point in the living reeds outer shells, always found there, in that same spot, and the secret to their use as a weapon.


    Banon squeezed down on the weak point with enough might to pop a Pyathen skull. Just as he felt a slight give in the creased spot, the second chute erupted out, giving his staff an extra ten feet to one side. Even with nothing resisting its explosive motion but air, it still jarred his arm, strong as he was.


    Banon hacked in laughter as he swam back and forth around the shoreline, not even worried if a giant arapaima or jungle kraken spotted him, or a titan boa, or any of the other jungle threats with the far advantage over him in the water. He was too busy basking in success. He¡¯d already known this was the plan; to prioritize his time spent waiting for an exceptionally strong weapon instead of taking as much time as possible in the hunting portion in hopes the extra time would help one find a particularly weak and young juvenile Orux, one at least within reason of killing alone. Though, even an Orux like that would still be a task many of the prospective Kothai would struggle with. More than likely, some would even be killed by their intended quarry during this part of the selection process.


    But regardless of how long he had spent on this fringe idea, leaving him with only two days to hunt, he still couldn''t have hoped for a chute this exceptional if he hadn¡¯t seen it himself to know it was even possible at all to find one so powerful.


    Banon stopped his cackling and rapidly paddled for the shoreline after having an idea. He needed to see what this beast could do.


    Come to think of it, Banon started splashing loudly on his way back.


    Just on the off chance of attracting that arapaima after all. Since, well, it''s not like just because an Orux was what he was really out here to get before the end of the summer festival that he could turn his nose up at the chance to cave in the skull of another treasured monster of nature''s choosing.


    Besides, he was planning on testing his new staff''s striking ability on practically everything, moving and not, that came within his striking distance until he had a thorough understanding of its capabilities.


    After Banon got up on shore, having finished his little bout of flailing in an unsuccessful attempt to attract a predator, he considered abandoning the lake immediately for a part of the forest more likely to find grazing Orux.


    Until he saw a ripple approaching from long across the lake.


    ***


    Banon pulled his larger knife out of the juvenile aeropaima¡¯s skull with a sound that had all the worst parts of wet and hollow. He then set himself to dragging the prey he¡¯d attracted in with his splashing up onto the bank of the partially floating edge of the mesa mat made from intertwined tree roots and thick, grubby weeds. Right there, he proceeded to gut and fillet it.


    They say an Ooura with less than four knives on their person is no Ooura at all. Banon, personally, only carried two knives for cleaning game. A stout knife for skinning with a blade only about as long as his middle finger but close to as wide as that also. A large butchering knife for severing joints and making rough cuts, though it also served the function of a machete, and, if need be, a short sword for combat, and its design was somewhere in between all three functions.


    His other two blades were tiny, no larger in their totality¨C blade and handle included¨C than his two little fingers pressed together. They were hidden, and he kept them for the inevitable possibility of his own capture, whether in a targetted attempt due to his royal status or simply at random in battle. All four of his knives were immensely sharp and made from knapped obsidian, and the two larger ones were passed down from his late uncle.


    Most Ooura carried more, and it was not uncommon for men to carry obscenely large ones purely as an egoic display since the knives Kothai men carried were always seen due to their lack of clothing besides a simple loin cloth.


    It was a cumbersome display, a silly exercise in over-preparing at best. Two good knives and two lesser ones were, among his other physical advantages, a significant part of what allowed Banon to move among the tree canopy so well, even for an Ooura.


    It would be a new trick to pull off the same dynamism he was used to while constantly dragging a staff as tall as him around. But, once he got the hang of it, he would, in fact, be far more mobile than he ever was before. The massive force generated when a reed extended its secondary chute wasn¡¯t only useful for combat after all, though many of his elders may disagree; it was nonetheless another reason he had been so set on finding an exceptional reed for himself.


    With enough added practice with it, in addition to his existing skills, he would practically be running up the tree stocks in vertical¡­ someday, anyway.


    For now, after he finished harnessing the fillets to himself and got on his way,  he settled for his usual routine; bounding from branch to branch among the low canopy, swinging over the gaps too far to jump using the thick slimevines, and just focusing on not sabotaging himself by accident now that he was carrying the unfamiliar new tool along with a full pack out of raw meat.


    It would take some getting used to, but once he did, he would never look back.


    Many Ooura kept the same staff for their whole lives. As long as you submerged it in water daily, which could be found practically anywhere in the Ooura-controlled jungle rainforests, it would survive as long as its outer shell did.


    On the other hand, the perhaps two hundred and fifty pounds of raw Aeropaima meat slung over his shoulder, bundled inside a makeshift pack out of raw Moka leaves, was very dead and permanently so. It was still only about a quarter his own body weight between the two fillets, and normally he might have carried only a single fillet each in two quicker trips, but his time was running short to start his Orux hunt now. Even he could acknowledge that.


    Maybe Banon shouldn''t have wasted the time to kill and butcher it at all, when he only had two nights left before the end of the festival when he would either present a fresh Orux skull and be accepted into the next stage, or fail.


    But, like always, he simply couldn''t help but jump at the opportunity to show off. When he¡¯d flailed in the water, he hadn''t actually expected to attract one; it was just a background idea he had in the moment, but after he had emerged from the water and seen the ripple snaking across the lake towards him, he couldn¡¯t just walk away.


    He¡¯d poised on the edge of the floating mesa, continuing to make a disturbance in the water with his new staff. Then, when its shovel-shaped head had lunged its extending jaw towards the flailing staff, Banon pulled it back out of the way, immediately transitioned to aiming, and in the split moment he found his beed, he activated his new staff.


    Its christening kill was not one that anyone back home would be shocked to see Banon return with, but that was mostly just his reputation. The massive fillets of fish themselves, skin adorned with orange and green armored scales, would still be more than enough to put smiles on the faces of many hungry families displaced by the Pyathen¡¯s destruction of their lands and water supplies, as well as craftsmen seeking the skin for leather and the scales for various purposes varying from ornamental to personalized cod-piece¡¯s and armoring adornments for their Orux skull headdresses.


    Banon himself found the various kinds of armor the Pyathen and Enka liked to use limiting and terribly noisy when attempting covert movement. In that way, he was as his ancestors for thousands of years had been. Unarmored, with only folds of woven cloth and leather to cover his manhood and, hopefully soon, an Orux skull to adorn his head. For all his challenges towards Ooura traditions in the ways of war that had failed them against the Pyathen¡¯s new inventions, he was a traditionalist in every other part of his life.


    Banon smiled as he leaped across a river cutting through the mesa matt, sending a school of shallow jumping carp scattering.


    He only barely made it to the other bank and found himself slipping backward towards the water down the tangled, water saturated greenery exposed on the edges of the recently separated matt. Just when he was about to pitch into the water, he found his balance for a fractional moment, just enough time to slam his staff down, burying its tip into the squelchy matt of weeds and algae.


    Banon¡¯s slippery descent halted.


    Just as he was about to begin picking his way up the hill slowly and carefully, a dull color caught the corner of his eye from the flowing water behind him. Deep beneath the surface was the unmistakable dull purple hue speckled with tiny yellow glowing lures all over the surface of its body.


    A jungle kraken.


    It was almost too far down to see even in the crystal clear turquoise-tinged water, and it might not have had the time to get up to the surface and snag him with one of its tentacles if he hadn¡¯t saved himself from falling in.


    But, mights were how men like him died before their times.


    Banon finished glaring down at it, turning to his staff instead, where it was still stuck into the matt.


    ¡°You have already proved your use to me, my friend.¡±


    He looked around until he saw a slightly drier, thicker patch of matt nearby enough to get to. Banon then tiptoed carefully along the slippery lower edge of the torn edge of the mesa, using his staff for balance, even gripping the wet weeds between his toes for purchase. Just to the right of where he was focusing on his next footstep, almost directly below, the kraken began to shift underneath the currents in response to him.


    Banon stepped up onto the raised surface of the drier, thicker section of matt.


    There was still a vertical bank of slimy mesa in between him and making it back up onto the main surface of the mesa. It rose above him perhaps one and a half times his own height. Too far to jump, even for him. He did have almost half his own body weight in fish meat weighing him down, after all.


    He decided this was the perfect moment to test the reed''s secondary use, that which most Ooura¨C himself not included¨C considered useless for battle. Of course, it was useless in the standard shield wall advance Ooura had dominated their two rival peoples with for generations. But now, with Pyathen death dominating not just battlefields but burning into their homelands as well, and their liquid launchers that burned flesh faster than any fire, the Ooura would have to adapt, whether they liked it or not.


    Banon would see to that himself.


    Banon flipped the staff in his hand, ignoring how quickly the color of the kraken was brightening as it got closer. He then planted the shooting end on the ground, held on tightly, and activated the staff.


    Banon and his more than two hundred pounds of fish meat flew into the air in a madly flailing jumble.


    He landed in a scramble almost three staff lengths away from the top edge where the upper mesa began, which he had not even been sure he would reach just the beginning of, instead only hoping to get his upper body just far enough over he could grapple the rest of the way up to safety. He had definitely underestimated its power.


    Banon groaned before turning over on his back. ¡°Goddess of the trees!¡± Banon gasped up at the tangled jungle-scape around him. ¡°I almost shit myself¡­¡±

 2: Eavesdropping

    Banon emerged from the jungle thicket into a sprawling clearing of exposed mesa mat floating atop a huge sub-surface lake. It was a common enough kind of terrain found all over the rainforest. But here, the remarkable feature was that the entire clearing was bare of undergrowth, having been stripped away by the Ooura that inhabited this place. Its sheer size and openness always took a moment to get used to, especially after wandering the wilds for days like he had. The flat plane of single-tone dark green mulch and weed stretched almost as wide as the open-surfaced lake Banon had just returned from, and was shaped more symmetrically in a distinct circle visible even from the edges as he was.


    Banon leaned on his new staff as he inspected the heart of the Ooura empire, and his home village all the same. A massive Mew tree towered at its center, dozens of outcropping buildings hanging among its branches. The absurdly wide Mew trunk showed no signs of rootage where it passed cleanly under the mat. Instead, like all Mew¡¯s, Banon knew its trunk extended down and into the lake, all the way to its bottom, where it was rooted to the far more secure sediment of the lake bottom. Dozens more vastly smaller trees sprouted around it, their roots merely clinging to the floating mat. The smaller trees were of several different species, all placed sporadically throughout the clearing, surrounding the central Mew that held the chambers for rites among its branches, and the circle of elders far above that, at the very top. In many of those smaller surrounding trees, constructions wrapped around their trunks, though far smaller and closer down to the mat than the mega-structure among the branches of the Mew looming above them. Most of those were family abodes, with lowerable rope ladders descending down to the mat.


    Built directly on the mesa mat, were several utility structures shared communally by the tribe. Smokehouses for meats. Fishing huts with holes inside them cut down through the mat where men dangled lures into the depths. Small clay-walled buildings for mass dehydration and preservation of fruit.


    Even though Ooura valued the seclusion of small communities as opposed to the mega-city-focussed empires of the Enka humans and Pyathen elves, they still had places in the forest that were more special, even sacred, than others.


    The most sacred of which, was located in the very middle of Banon¡¯s own village, here, and carried among its branches the Ooura¡¯s closest construction to a palace.


    Pyathen built their spire cities, using dead Mew trees for the internal skeletons, adding their many structures overtop; made from some kind of new dried mud construction. However, from what little he had learned about them, there was far more to it than simply placing normal mud and letting it dry. By the end of the construction, the Mew tree was hardly recognizable as something natural. The bright white color the mud-based substance became from sun-bleaching took away from it even more.


    What was left was a series of white spires, with massive, fully enclosed spiral staircases leading up around the great trunks to their habitation disks, built among the larger branches in a far more symmetrical and orderly fashion than the tangle of chambers hung in the great tree in front of him. Each habitation disk extended far further out than the branches could possibly, which Banon had wondered about their methods for something like that to be possible for quite some time. He had guessed they used some kind of internal scaffolding, perhaps using metal purchased in trade with the Enka humans like they used for their weapons and armor, though that was just an idea. What material the spire city skeletons were actually made of, if any, he did not know.


    At the very top of each white spire city was a grand palace the Pyathen royals lived in unrivaled luxury. The Pyathen had a unique attachment to royal blood over the Ooura and Enka. It was more than that, though. They treated their rulers like living gods, and only leaned more towards so as they progressed in their recent cultural shift towards science as a veritable deity of its own.


    While Banon looked up at Kimitrius for its abundance of knowledge from all it had seen¨C and his elders if not that¨C the Pyathens looked to names, names that had lasted through such time that their mere mention sewed the same feeling of reverse in their stunted hearts as Banon felt when he went to Kimitrius for his knowledge and guidance. Their palaces placed on the peak of each city were only a reflection of that, and each individual spire city had a single name, a single family that controlled it, living at the very top, in every sense.


    Mirroring their human constructors, Enka cities were far less elegant, yet more than making up for it in their absurd proportions of construction and sheer numbers of the human populations living within them. It was feral, to Banon¡¯s mind, to have thousands of individuals all pressed into one place, one tribe. The Enka¡¯s architecture, while dwarfing the Pyathens'' mere dozen-odd total spire cities, wasn¡¯t even built largely for habitation. Enka built their temples and holy places the largest; stone constructions made from massive bricks, set straight into the earth since they did not share the Ooura and Pyathen fondness for the floating mats of the rainforest jungle.


    A single one of their temples extended over an area that would swallow an entire Ooura village. With each new layer of bricks, the entire outer rim layer was removed. What resulted was an evenly tapering structure built of far more stone than Banon found it sensible to move, even with the strength of an Ooura, which the humans certainly did not have. Their sheer numbers, it seemed, made up for that.


    Pyramids, the Enka called them. Banon found it a gaudy word that spent too long in the mouth to make you say it.


    The circle of elders emerging from the surrounding tree canopies as Banon walked on, however small in comparison to the Enka and Pyathen''s best work, was, in Banon¡¯s view, the mega construction of the three that carried with it by far the most character. It wasn¡¯t unimpressive in its architecture either. It was a network of suspended bridges connecting between isolated chambers made entirely from woven fiber and wood pole frames, built more than strong enough to support the weight of the Ooura that would fill their midst in one night after the next. Each chamber was suspended by dozens of wires connected to the strongest branches above and below it.


    One chamber stood out, though. Far and above the largest and most heavily built into the canopy, sitting in the bowl-shaped cradle formed by thickest and furthest outward splayed branches located about three hundred feet off the ground. The very same chamber Banon and his entire tribespeople would gather come the midnight of the last day of the summer festival, when and where the second stage of their trial to earn the right of Kothai would begin.


    But Banon forced those anticipations out of his mind. The Orux needed to keep its place at the forefront of his focus, for now. That was, after he finished his business here.


    Banon whispered his greetings to the tree of all trees he was lucky enough to live under the canopy of.


    As colossal as even the average Mew tree was in comparison to the next largest species in the jungle, the Mew that held the circle of elders and the chamber of rites was truly ancient, and massive to the point that many mysteries and stories had been spun about it. It was also the only species of tree with nearly enough stability and durability to build any kind of mega construction on it.


    Mew trees were simply a different class of tree entirely, a similarly radical jump up from its nearest sister species as the living reed was. Even centuries after a Mew tree died, it would not move nor lose its integrity. There were Mew trees that could be found that were in later stages of decomposing, but they were both older than his entire bloodline, and, most impressively, they were still rooted in strongly at their underwater bases despite their upper sections beginning to rot.


    And the tree at the center of Banon¡¯s village that held the circle of elders upon its highest branches was beyond exceptional, even for a Mew tree. Mew trees, in general, were doubling even the next tallest species of tree commonly found in the jungle. This one, however, was half again taller than the largest Mew Banon had ever come across, and he had come across many, many Mew trees. He had no idea how many thousands of years it had lived for, or if it was even still alive at all, given Mew trees lack of leaves to distinguish deadwood from living.


    There was a peculiar myth about it, too. One that Banon suspected was almost as old as the tree itself, a rumor Banon himself was unsure of¡­


    But nevertheless, it was still a substantial reason he needed to become emperor. Regardless of the skepticisms Banon had in regard to some aspects of mysticism, he knew and respected the fact that most Ooura viewed every living thing as a part of the spirit of a greater whole, and he didn¡¯t entirely disagree. That was all fine, regardless of there being no way to prove it. Unlike Kimitrius, who was very much a real deity.


    Even a small chance, however, that he could prove the mythos about this tree true, would be enough to work his whole life in the pursuit of.


    The myth, of course, of the last Ooura emperor.


    It was, if it could actually be done, the end game of his plan to restore Ooura dominance. And he had been speaking to Kimitrius for months about it. The moon seldom responded to him, but when it did, he found its answers reaffirming of his suspicions.


    Banon arrived in his home village to praise and awe, as he always did, because he was never empty-handed after a hunt. He even indulged some of the younger boys with the story of what he had been doing so far during the festival days and showed them his new staff. Even tried it out against solid Mew bark for the first time, reluctantly, after their pleas drowned out his cautions. He hadn''t actually tried it on a solid trunk yet, so after the boys followed him over to the huge Mew trunk that held the circle of elders more than a thousand feet above them, Banon made sure they all stood at least two staff lengths away.


    ¡°Ready?¡± Banon asked, smiling at them.


    ¡°READY!¡± they yelled back at him, some of the boys actually jumping in excitement.


    Just to be safe, Banon set his simply woven pack full of arapaima meat on the ground first, braced the staff in both hands, and leveled it facing the gnarled black bark at an angle so any shrapnel would divert away from himself and the spectators.


    The sound of the two solid masses slamming together was deafening. The staff slid in his hands despite Banon¡¯s determination to hold it fast, and a spray of bark bits exploded outwards. What was left, besides the speckling rain of wood bits, was a gouge into the thick Mew bark about a fist¡¯s depth deep.


    Banon almost gasped in surprise at that. The bark, of course, would grow back quickly due to Mew bark¡¯s self-healing abilities; completely independent of the state of the internal tree. That fist-sized hole was, however, a deceptively massive amount of damage.


    To an average Pyathen elf or Enka human, who understood the jungle little, they might not have known the significance. To Banon, that had all but confirmed it. If he could just maneuver an Orux into the right circumstance, that amount of force would split its skull in a single blow; he was completely sure of it. He even wondered if it could take down a truly ancient bull if he could just maneuver well enough to make a strike to one of its temples.


    Banon sighed and forced himself to reign in his mind.


    It would be far too difficult to pull off without a second person holding an older and faster one of the beast¡¯s attention forward, even he could admit. It was still an intriguing thought he filed away for later, after he had passed his rite and was back to a semblance of normalcy again. He was certain of all of this because, of course, Mew bark was the single hardest material Ooura used in any of their craftsmanship. For centuries, the Ooura Kothai class warriors all carried great shields made from Mew bark into every battle they fought.


    Shields that, up until the Pyathen¡¯s new acid weapon, had been able to stop everything the Pyathen and Enka had ever thrown at them, even some of the more recent purely mechanical inventions like the Enka¡¯s crossbows and Pyathen¡¯s notoriously peerlessly crafted metal swords and spears.


    Just after the chorus of falling bark-bits landing ended, the chorused excitement of the little boys of his community filled the air to replace it, until the sound was so deafening Banon winced under the scrape it made on his eardrums.


    Banon gingerly held the staff up above his own head as several of the more ambitious boys lunged to grasp at it.


    None of them even came close. Banon towered over even most adults already. These boys, misplaced by the normally watchful eyes of their mothers, weren¡¯t reaching past his shoulder level, even with their jumps.


    ***


    Banon finished cutting off and handing out the portions of meat to all the closest nearby families in his village within the hour, which went extra quickly thanks to the fact quite a few of the sons of said families had been there already to watch him demonstrate his new weapon.


    After that, he began his walk to find an old friend, the wide-spanning massive branches of the central Mew tree looming in the background above him all the while, stealing much of the sun¡¯s warmth for itself.


    He was almost disappointed he wouldn¡¯t get to share the glory of his stories so far with the only other of the emperor''s sons he found easy friendship in until after the rite was concluded. Until Banon found him where he always found him. Fishing.


    Banon was, ofcourse, distinguished already. His ambushes of Pyathen hunting parties with other village boys who had not officially reached Kothai yet made him notorious alone. But friendship? Banon mostly had people who viewed him either as above them, or too dangerous to budge up against too closely.


    Banon pulled open the wicker door of the third and final fishing hut he was going to check before giving up, the hut so close to the Mew that carried the circle of elders, you could sometimes catch your hook on its roots where they protruded from the bottom of the lake by accident.


    The much smaller man¨C by Ooura standards¨C gave him a piercing smile and leaned his head forwards until it hung over the hole in the mat he dangled a lure through into the sub-mesa lake water below. ¡°And what is that?¡± Lonka gestured towards his reed. Lonka¡¯s long, straight, dark red hair swaying with the exaggerated motion.


    Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    ¡°What?¡± Banon smirked, hefting his new staff. ¡°Feeling jealous?¡± And Banon then gestured, indicating Lonka¡¯s own fishing pole.


    ¡°Hah!¡± Lonka called. ¡°Don¡¯t pretend to ignore me. I am the only person who knew what you were really doing out there, spending all this time searching for a reed instead of an ¡®Ux!¡± Lonka exclaimed at a level of excitement hardly distinguishable from a child ecstatic after their father bringing home a successful hunt. Despite being older than Banon by five years, Lonka unmistakably looked up to his younger brother. And unlike Banon¡¯s other brothers, he seemed to have absolutely no shame in doing so.


    Banon smiled as Lonka stood and moved over to face up to him, discarding his fishing pole without a thought. ¡°That,¡± Lonka said, genuine awe on his face, ¡°has got to be a baby Mew tree you misplaced from somewhere?¡±


    They both shared a vigorous laugh as they clasped hands and then embraced at the shoulder while using their other hand to tap the other person''s opposite shoulder, Ooura¡¯s way of greeting family.


    ¡°So it really worked?¡± Lonka asked after they separated. ¡°You think that can shatter an Orux skull?¡±


    Banon smiled, letting the staff slide down through his grip until its flat end rested on the mat. ¡°Do you?¡± he asked, then gestured for the two of them to step outside the fishing hut.


    ***


    Lonka flew through the air for two staff lengths before coming to a sliding halt on the mat, face down. Banon¡¯s staff, on the other hand, was almost triple that far and still tumbling end over end in the aftermath of Lonka¡¯s attempt at using it, the secondary shute receding gradually as it went. Banon glanced at the Mew bark, noting it was barely scratched.


    Clearly, most of the force had gone elsewhere due to poor form and even poorer arm strength.


    ¡°I told you to brace!¡± Banon called, knowing full well this was going to happen. He could have saved his friend the embarrassment, but, well, that wouldn''t be very fun.


    ¡°You shouldn¡¯t have let me try that!¡± Lonka called, rolling over onto his back in a pained motion.


    ¡°No, I shouldn¡¯t have!¡±


    Lonka let forth a wheezy laugh that lasted all the way until Banon reached him. After hauling the wheezing idiot to his feet, they went off in search of the staff together, Lonka prying detail after detail along the way.


    ¡°Was it one of the reeds you had already scouted last week?¡± Lonka asked. ¡°I know you were worried that would have all been for naught since the reeds move so often in the summer.¡±


    ¡°I visited more lakes even than I had scouted before the festival days. I found many reeds that were above average in the force their second shute generated, including ones I had already scouted. But this one, as you just saw¡­¡±


    ¡°Scary strong,¡± Lonka concluded. ¡°Which fits you!¡± He added a slap on Banon¡¯s bare shoulder.


    The staff wasn¡¯t hard to find, stuck straight up and down as it was. What was more impressive, it was embedded almost halfway into the mat.


    ¡°Thing has a vicious tendency,¡± Lonka complained, rubbing his arm as Banon retrieved it out of the mucky green tangle of intertwined weeds that was the ground.


    ¡°Which fits me,¡± Banon agreed, though his enthusiasm was missing slightly from before.


    ¡°You scared about getting an Orux?¡± Lonka probed, as Banon scanned his staff up and down. He knew it wouldn¡¯t be damaged, of course, he just felt comfort in it.


    ¡°What do you think?¡± Banon asked with a wide grin returning to his face again, feeling a breeze tug at the long tag ends of his bright orange-red hair.


    Lonka scratched his scalp with the one of his hands that was missing a finger¨C arapaima bite. ¡°I think the only thing that scares you is the idea you won''t someday be the scariest beast in the jungle.¡±


    Banon thought he couldn¡¯t smile wider, but he did. Then he pulled out his larger obsidian knife, and held it up to Lonka, handle first. ¡°The binding sap on the handle wrapping still look strong to you?¡±


    Lonka puffed out his cheeks. ¡°It been in water?¡±


    ¡°A little.¡±


    ¡°I may not be the expert, but I learn enough when living under one.¡± Lonka chuckled with some embarrassment¨C he¡¯d always had a soft spot for his mother. ¡°I think she would say it¡¯s still close to perfect. Besides, you don¡¯t have time to wait for a re-binding to dry anew, do you?¡± And he jibed that last part home with a poke. It was unspoken, but Banon knew his older brother was genuinely worried Banon had been too ambitious, taken too long, and been too interested in impressing with an overwhelming show of superiority that he didn¡¯t think to worry about his own ego causing him to overlook the obvious risks, leading him to fail at succeeding to reach the moon just because it was not enough unless he could reach the stars as well.


    ¡°Good,¡± Banon agreed, slipping his knife back into its leather sheath.


    It was just then that Banon paused, realizing something. ¡°Did you leave your line in the hole?¡±


    Lonka¡¯s eyes widened, and he immediately set off at a brisk walk towards his fishing hut. ¡°It would be my luck to get one now! I just made this rod too, it¡¯s a new one! I layered twenty Moka leaf cutouts, twenty! And between each one, a layer of sap-saturated slee leaf surrounded by two thin strips of wood! Mother let me use the filtered clean sap, too!¡±


    Banon nodded as his irritated friend receeded away, genuinely impressed at the quality of that work. Say many things about Lonka, son of the emperor who wished it weren¡¯t so, not even interested in being Kothai. But say he is a slacker when it comes to fishing, and you would be a liar irrevocably.


    Just as Lonka opened the door to his shack ahead of Banon as he caught up to him, the small Ooura made the most pathetic sound Banon had ever heard besides Pyathen¡¯s thin scalps stripping free from their tiny skulls.


    ¡°It¡¯s gone!¡± Lonka whined like it was a loved one he had found beaten bloody in there.


    Banon caught up shortly and proceeded to be the one expected to solve problems, as usual.


    ***


    Banon emerged, Lonka¡¯s new fishing rod in his hands, still struggling with the fish as he barely managed to pull himself out of the hole in the mat with how slippery its bottom edges were.


    It was a relatively small fish, thankfully. A mud pillow, no bigger than his forearm; a fish species that looked uncomfortably close to two plantains fused together, end to end. It hadn¡¯t even managed to drag the rod far from the hole, and Banon had found it floating up against the underside of the mat, thankfully not even requiring him to dive to the perilous bottom of the lake.


    Lonka made a farting sound with his lips as Banon rose out of the hole, water streaming down his huge frame. ¡°All for a mud pillow! I fish all day just for, erg, one¨C¡± Lonka descended into struggling with the fish until he managed to get it under control, then he unhooked it and threw it, still living, back down the hole. ¡°For one of these! Stupid! Fish! Tell your great uncle kraken to stop eating all the good fish!¡± Lonka scolded after the escaping fish with a raised fist, shaking in only somewhat mock anger.


    Banon only laughed, and again was delighted to do so. These little moments of relief were coming on almost rapidly enough to refill his soul after days of single-minded solitude.


    Then, both of them just sank back on the seats positioned on opposite sides of the matt-hole. Lonka, without missing a beat, had already lowered his line back down and was mumbling something more about mud pillows under his breath, something which Banon suspected would make Demnus blush.


    ¡°Ah, well, quite the staff. One for you that matches you,¡± Lonka reaffirmed satisfactorily.


    Banon chuckled. ¡°I would not be called the Konka if I was a runt who needed the staff of a runt, now would I?¡±


    ¡°Konka? Ah, the man who walks among the shadows, a coward killer, you mean. Well, what have their shields and traditions gotten them but death? You have to stop paying attention to what the old women think! Calling you that because of how you like to surprise Pyathen hunting parties with your little ambushes? Is that all they are calling you still? How is it not ¡®emperor¡¯ yet? I hear whispers, as of late, that it was you who defended Bodastam village from the Pyathens! Not from a meagerly defended hunting party, from a whole regiment of Pyathen death droppers! It is the first time a tribe has successfully fended them off in years before they could drop even one of their bags of Pyathen death, no?¡±


    Banon nodded, turning serious. ¡°You heard it truthfully. Bodastam¡¯s water is still pure, and their tribe still farming the mesa and hunting untainted fishes and beasts. The Pyathen were hardly difficult to thwart. Relying on the element of surprise only lasts as long as your enemy is willing to not return the favor. And among the high canopies, we reign, not them. They were thrown from the branches in the night like the gnats they are.¡±


    ¡°I also hear,¡± Lonka went on, ¡°that it was your guerilla tactics that put their village in the sights of Pyathen eyes in the first place, that you deliberately carried out your ambushes near their woods so that you could attract them to their community like bait, when you could have easily evacuated them before the strike, at least.¡±


    Banon nodded at that. ¡°Right and wrong, as usual. The ambush would not have succeeded if the Pyathens forward scouts had not seen the village as active, so I did not tell them of the threat. But it''s not like direct casualties are common in Pyathen bombings either. It was only their water and land that was at risk.¡±


    Lonka chuckled, turning more cheerful as he met Banons eyes. ¡°Good, then. Just do not expect me to ever stop interrogating you. Now that you are forging the new path of war for us before you are even officially a Kothai warrior yourself, it is up to your friends to make sure, in your inevitable rise to power, that you do not lose sight of the means for the goal, you know.¡±


    ¡°I know.¡± And Banon leaned forward and, with his long and much more muscular arms than his brother, gave him a slap on the shoulder, which Lonka hardly stayed upright under the force of, only saving himself with a propped elbow at the last moment.


    ¡°What catches from the festival so far?¡± Banon gestured broadly at the lacking signs of fish carcasses atop the matt around them.


    Lonka made a dismissive noise. ¡°Ehhh, the fish are following the spirits. It''s always the same. The summer festival puts the vigor of youth in the air, the water, the matt itself. All the fish, even the oldest and most desperate, have the blood of youth for these days of fire. Even the mud pluggers are too perceptive for my bait, now, as it seems. And mud pillows¡¯ aren¡¯t even fish, in my book.¡± Lonka waved an annoyed hand.


    ¡°Well, if the fish are eluding you, which it is, of course, that, and not that you are eluding the fish again¡­¡± Banon trailed off.


    Lonka waved an angry hand and laughed once despite himself.


    ¡°We could,¡± Banon continued, ¡°do something far more interesting to pass the time?¡± Banon gestured straight upwards, to where the elders were conferring and undertaking their own rituals related to the summer rite, all the way up in the highest tips of the more than a thousand-foot tall Mew that hung over half their entire village with its furthest extensions.


    Lonka puffed out his cheeks, looking reluctant, until he folded and smiled through mismatched teeth. ¡°I¡¯ve never been above a little eavesdropping, but you can¡¯t possibly have time to waste on this? Unless¡­¡± Lonka¡¯s face twitched in awe for a moment. ¡°You haven¡¯t gotten your Orux already, have you?¡±


    Banon waved his hands defensively. ¡°You think too highly of me. No, it is simply that I was already here to deliver an aeropaima to the families.¡±


    Banon watched Lonka¡¯s face drop.


    Banon smiled back at him and continued. ¡°It seems the only answer to the blood of youth is to have it in your own veins.¡±


    Lonka sneered at him, then broke out laughing.


    So did Banon.


    ¡°You are in the midst of what, for most men, is the most challenging trial of their lives! And of course! Of course Banon Kerithian would still be hunting aeropaima just for the fun of it.¡±


    Banon tried to respond but chuckled instead.


    ¡°Still,¡± Lonka continued, only once the laughing was truly over, ¡°you can¡¯t afford the diversion in such important times. Go fetch your Orux and leave me be to my empty hook.¡±


    Banon considered that, but he had already decided beforehand. ¡°I think, to be honest, the heat in my blood now will cloud my mind too much for that moment. No, I have tonight and tomorrow. It will be plenty if I do not sleep. For me, I need to do something familiar as much for the sake of hearing what the prattlers up there are actually saying as for the simple sake of it.¡±


    Lonka pulled his line up and then set the rod against the shack¡¯s woven wall gingerly. ¡°Fair enough,¡± he said with a cheerfully mischievous grin. ¡°Let¡¯s go learn how the old men plan to deal with the Pyathen enovy. Three golden termites says it is: kill them all and string up their bodies in the trees around their cities, especially if it is true they are sending a royal from the Donai family.¡±


    Banon paused at that. He had heard of the envoy already, three days before the summer festival, and his trials began, which he was forced to prioritize despite begging to lead a scouting party of his own to assess greater detail. His father''s single forward scout assigned to watch the Donai¡¯s spire city¨C by far the closest one to the Ooura¡¯s border¨C had been the one who brought the startling news.


    It would be the first time since the Pyathen had discovered Pyathen death and the liquid fire they shot from their launchers, beginning their decades-long massacre under their new guise of scientific pursuit, that they reached out in a non-murderous way to the Ooura. Three decades, it had been. Longer than Banon had lived, long enough Banon would never get to meet many good Kothai he might have, if not for their mass losses in the endlessly one-sided battles.


    But this part about the Donai coming in person was something new and even more unexpected, given how highly the Pyathen treasured their royalty above their common people.


    ¡°A royal? Which one?¡± Banon could not hold the urgency back from his voice.


    ¡°Uh oh,¡± Lonka said, sheepishly remembering at that very moment the almost constantly present idea Banon had been pushing for permission from the emperor to attempt for years. That being, capturing a royal and ransoming them back in exchange for the secret to their liquid fire¡¯s precise acidic mixture. That or the recipe to Pyathen death, though Banon highly suspected they would be more likely to give up the liquid fire recipe since its destruction was far smaller scale and required the precise technology their launchers used to shoot in streams that rivaled the range of a short bow. Banon, however, had long hoped to use their underestimation of his peoples¨C of his¨C intelligence and ingenuity to leverage a secret from them they might part with purely because they thought it impossible for Ooura to reproduce it in large enough quantities nor find effective enough usage methods to be a real threat. He might not be able to reconstruct their launchers, exactly, but he had ideas.


    Lonka paled in moments at the same rate Banon¡¯s smile spread across his face.


    ¡°Oh, this is going to be more than eavesdropping, isn''t it?¡± Lonka asked with a hesitant chuckle that he didn¡¯t fully believe in tacked on the end.


    Banon was already out the door and shooting skyward using a staff strike, flailing his weight forward mid-flight to make up for his slight miscalculation and only just catching hold of a higher tree branch of the ancient Mew than he had intended instead.


    Banon heard the rustling of the fishing shack door being thrown back open as Lonka emerged and looked up at him.


    ¡°Now that¡¯s just not fair!¡± Lonka¡¯s voice came from far below.


    ¡°Become a Kothai! Get a staff for yourself!¡± Banon called as he clambered up to his feet, standing on the thick branch.


    ¡°You can¡¯t fish up an Orux!¡± Lonka whined, as he began to ascend, much slower, one branch at a time and using the texture of the Mew bark alone when branches were too far between to jump.


    ¡°No, no, I suspect you can¡¯t. But you could, for once, find something to do but fish.¡±


    ¡°That just sounds miserable!¡± Lonka said, hanging straight below him from the same branch now, his hands grasping onto the branch on either side of Banon¡¯s huge bare feet.


    Banon shrugged, then planted his staff¡¯s shooting end directly between his feet, and Lonka¡¯s hands. Then he smiled at Lonka.


    ¡°WaitwaitwaitWAIT!¡± Lonka¡¯s voice quieted off as Banon shot high into the air away from him.


    He glanced back mid-flight, just to see Lonka shaking back and forth on the rapidly vibrating branch like a leaf in a storm. It didn¡¯t take long for the branch to relent enough for Lonka to scramble off of it, from which point he proceeded to climb after Banon in a desperate pursuit to get revenge.


    Together, they ascended the over-a-thousand-foot-tall Mew to shove their noses where they didn¡¯t belong.

 3: Circle of Elders

    The actual circle of elders was built far above the larger, fully enclosed rooms where the Kothai rites would take place at the end of tomorrow night, rooms that were held in the bowl-shaped lower canopy of this great and central Mew tree. It was, in fact, built even slightly higher than the tree¡¯s very top. Banon and Lonka were within a hundred feet of the treetop now, and finally starting to slow down in their ascent, more for fear of being heard than falling. Ooura who were unsure of their selves among the trees were no Ooura at all, Kothai or not.


    The circle¡¯s construct itself was just a network of intertwining woven fiber cables suspending six individual platforms barely wide enough to sit on. One for each elder, laid out horizontally like a spider web, held up by connections to the highest branches that curled upwards beyond even the tip of the main tree stock. The seventh and final platform was at the very center, where the emperor would sit and address the six best men appointed from all corners of the Ooura empire. Corners that shrunk closer and withered with every passing day they didn¡¯t come up with a solution to the Pyathen¡¯s new weapons of war.


    What it really felt like, when you were up there, was like you were standing on the shoulders of a god. It was the highest single point in the entire jungle. Even a hundred feet removed from the top as they were, it was still another hundred down to the next tallest Mew in sight. From up there, you could even see the distant wedge-shaped mountains from which the Enka to the south dug their stone, lit in the sunset like a great wave of dull orange fire.


    The tips of the nearest Pyathen spire-palace were visible, also. The very same palace that housed the royal family who, apparently, were sending one of their own to visit the Ooura. Banon, however, intended to reign in whatever the old men were planning for them. Because he knew well their bitterness, he knew they would see only the opportunity at vengeance. One of them especially. Banon also knew that the elders were beginning to lose sight of the reality around them, primarily how precarious their position really was now. Their numbers had been gradually depleted for three decades, their blood draining slowly in one-sided battle after one-sided battle during the Pyathen scourge.


    Things were more desperate now than ever, no matter what the old men''s egos told them. If they had open hearts, Kimitrius would have already warned them as much. Perhaps he had, actually, and they just had refused to listen to reason, even when it came from the lips of God.


    Banon and Lonka didn¡¯t have to climb much further before they started hearing voices.


    ¡°...It cannot be anything else!¡± one elder was saying, projecting his voice to cover the space between the elder''s suspended platforms. Banon always found it silly that they wouldn''t simply build a closer-knit version so they didn''t have to yell to one another. But, for their spying purposes today, it was quite ideal.


    They continued inching their way as close up below the suspended platforms as they dared as another elder began responding.


    ¡°The Pyathen chose to come to us during the days of the summer festival intentionally, which is why we should meet them in force! They affront us because they know they can,¡± Tema¡¯s voice said, causing Banon to scowl deeply as he crept upwards, holding on by the mere texture of the bark between his calloused fingertips and bare toes alone.


    ¡°No! They affront us because they think they know we will respond with everything we have left, and they know that is not much. And they would be right about that presumed attack if you were emperor alone. They still do not know our number accurately, but they will expect that if we meet them to fight at all, it will be in the closest we can muster to overwhelming force, given their march is headed straight for this very circle, our sacred heart. It is my opinion that this is a trap, that they must have some kind of hidden force shadowing their smaller visible one, perhaps using a new invention we have no knowledge of yet. As much as it pains me to say, even with their purported one hundred and forty men accompanying twenty fully mobile acid launchers, it would be far from a clean battle to say the least, even if we had time to rally the other tribes. And we don¡¯t.¡± By the end of what he was saying, Banon was close enough that he was able to recognize the voice. Leikai, elder and representative from Bodastam, the same village Banon had used for bait to illicit a Pyathen bombing. Their bombs never fell, of course.


    Only their torn-apart bodies.


    ¡°That is one way to put it,¡± boomed Benka, the deepest voice among the council, and most reasonable after his father, Banon thought. ¡°It sounds to me more like some of our fellow eldermen view it better to send our army against a mere envoy because they are afraid to stand in front of the Pyathen face to face again after so long.¡±


    Banon almost chuckled. He certainly agreed with that.


    ¡°How many of you have grown so weak¡­¡± Growled Tema, the elder who opposed Banon and his lack of care for battlefield tradition most among them. Hated him for it, even. ¡°If we let the Pyathen walk into this very village, we have failed our ancestors! Failed our dead whose voices are not here to be heard because they respected the strength in acting along with what was right! We sit here¡­ debating¡­ while the enemy walks through our land un-resisted! If it is peace, negotiation you want, you will not have my vote.¡±


    Next, the smoothest and quietest voice yet spoke, though it carried through the air just as clearly as Tema¡¯s feral anger. The emperor himself. Banon¡¯s father. ¡°There are more options between outright peace and standing in the shield wall, my friend.¡±


    No doubt as to which elder that was directed at.


    ¡°Your son is a coward who fights the coward''s way!¡± Tema bellowed, though Banon caught a slight hint of desperation leaking through the anger. No doubt as to which son that was directed at, either, despite there being a dozen of them. ¡°Hiding in the brush and shooting unsuspecting berry pickers is not our way! Besides, even if it was, he and his group of low-spirits are not enough to put a dent in a hundred and more Pyathen.¡±


    ¡°You are right,¡± the emperor agreed, sending a small pang of confusion through Banon until he listened to what was said next. ¡°Even Banon and his men could not come up with a scheme where twenty Ooura could take on that many, with their mobile launchers, anyway. Regardless, my son is not a coward. He throws our enemies from their perches even before he is a named warrior. What have you done recently, Tema, besides sit up here with us and talk, and pray, and talk and pray and again Kimitrius will be silent to us? What more proof do you need of my son''s path being right than the moon god speaking to him but not us.¡±


    ¡°He lies! Only you are too blinded by pride to see it!¡± Tema hissed so loudly it sounded like his throat was trying to pull itself out mid way through.


    Lonka let out a barely audible whistle. ¡°Great timing for us. Seems we skipped right to the juicy stuff,¡± Lonka whispered from where he sat on a particularly spindly branch, propping his back against the main tree, looking completely relaxed as his red hair and beard were blown about by a gust, despite the over a thousand-foot drop from here down to the mesa mat below them.


    Another elder, Osaro, the often mediator, began speaking only to be cut off immediately. ¡°I know you trust the boy but¨C¡±


    ¡°My son is boy only until the next night of the summer festival is over. And I believe in the capabilities of the group of like minded young he leads completely. He is our greatest asset in the new wars to come, wars that can no longer be fought by natural might alone. Wars that need the aid of our god for us to succeed. If you cannot see that much by now, Tema, you are stuck inside the ghosts of your dead friends, of our dead friends. The fact is, if my son were not undertaking his rite, I would have absolute faith in him to formulate a plan for the Pyathen and then to execute upon it.¡±


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    A long silence held, one in which Banon was pretty sure he heard Tema grunt angrily. Which was as good of a response as anyone often got from him.


    ¡°Well, that¡¯s your cue,¡± Lonka said, then whistled a piercing snake-owl call straight up towards the circle of suspended platforms spread out above their heads. Banon waved angrily at Lonka to quiet. He found it did not matter, however. They were given away.


    ¡°Banon,¡± the emperor called. ¡°We know you must be listening in on this from somewhere. Come, show yourself.¡±


    ¡°I have smelled him for minutes now,¡± Tema agreed. ¡°That call was too sharp, by the way!¡± Tema called loudly and disparagingly.


    Banon sighed, glaring down at Lonka.


    ¡°What?¡± He held up his hands in mock innocence. ¡°You were only going to wait for the right moment to make some dramatic entrance. It gets tired, you know. Make some room for a little humor in your life! Besides, I needed to get you back for vibrating my brain to pieces before.¡±


    Banon just shook his head. He only took a moment to compose himself, closing his eyes and squeezing the bridge of his nose between two fingertips.


    ¡°So, my sons, are you just content with listening, then?¡± their father asked from above.


    Banon and Lonka shared a glance.


    How did he know? Lonka mouthed, then scowled when Banon imagined he realized the emperor had just invited the both of them. Banon knew exactly how his father knew, though. His father had a better sense of smell even than Tema, and Tema could tell an Orux¡¯s age from one whiff of its scent, and tell many things about its health and size by tasting its dung.


    Lonka just sank deeper into his slouch. ¡°You go,¡± he whispered. ¡°I stay.¡± He shook his head. ¡°I¡¯ll listen. It¡¯s my best skill, besides fishing anyway.¡±


    Banon couldn¡¯t help but smirk. ¡°Marika convinced you that¡¯s what it is again? Not just a good excuse for you to take it when she yells at you for standing wrong.¡±


    Lonka¡¯s eyes rolled until they couldn¡¯t roll any further.


    Lonka was the emperor''s son, yes, but also the only one of the twelve of them Banon had never seen a fragment of ambition creep into his heart for ruling, or much of anything, really. He hadn¡¯t even attempted his rite at Kothai. Lonka simply liked¡­ well, the simple. Content with listeneing. Content with taking what he was offered.


    Banon wasn¡¯t.


    Banon lept for a nearby slimevine, then used the peak of its stretch under his bodyweight to propel himself upwards into a disproportionately high swing. He let go at the precise moment to generate the most upward momentum, and with his mightily proportioned body, that was quite the amount of momentum.


    And then the air was flooding past his ears with the speed. He sailed entirely above the platforms, having enough time before he touched down to turn himself in the air until he was perfectly upright. He landed on the same larger central platform that his father sat on, without stumbling, then gave a small bow to his father.


    The emperor returned it with a faint smile.


    Banon glanced momentarily at each of the sunset-lit elders around them, sitting crosslegged on their individual smaller platforms.


    ¡°Banon,¡± the emperor said, his leaf-spread headdress shifting in the wind. ¡°Have you downed an Orux yet?¡±


    Banon shook his head, slamming his staff down with a sharp clack in front of him. ¡°No, father. I have only just gotten my weapon. I wanted to wait until I found the one stronger than its brothers, the one capable of downing an older bull than then has ever been seen in a rite. A weapon worthy of an empire.¡±


    ¡°Oh course you did!¡± And his father chuckled in good nature. Banon imagined Pyathen and Enka royal families had strained relationships within themselves, given the exclusively hereditary nature of their power structures. Of course, Banon¡¯s family had them too, if in less grave of a sense.


    At least his father''s death was not the only event that could shift the empire to a new leader. Ooura valued names, and bloodlines, yes. But no more than they valued the individual man. His father, needlessly supportive as he was, would likely smile with pride as Banon finally usurped him. To do that, however, he would need to earn the vote of each and every one of the gnarled faces around him, men so war-torn and weathered by the permanent scowls they wore; their faces exuded rage even when they were speaking as calmly as mothers to babes, Banon imagined, anyway. He rarely heard them speak so calmly.


    He had about half of the elder¡¯s support, now, so it was still a long road ahead yet. Those who opposed him did so in equal measure because of his new-aged tactics of small-scale ambush warfare as much because they resented his excelling in every way imagineable in his life. Whatever they thought of him, they could not ignore the speed and decisiveness through which he accomplished his goals. Not at least with pure of heart and good of faith, since one''s mind would need to be blind to think his next brother lesser was hardly more than a bitter shadow of a need to be seen as the eldest brother and so the best.


    Banon was proving him wrong each and every day he kept on living.


    ¡°If it pleases my father''s elders, I will donate the best cuts of the prize bull I will win tonight to their mouths.¡± Banon did his best to sound casual, which wasn''t easy. Even he knew his strategy was a bold one, and his time to complete it shrank rapidly. He just¡­ needed to be seen as exceptional for his actions, not his name. He wanted to be able to return with a fully grown bull, one so full and mature it surpassed all his fellow tribesmen and every tribesman remembered from before him, for that matter. He simply couldn¡¯t help himself, regardless of the risks.


    ¡°The recklessness of youth be upon us all!¡± Elder Brahman called from his place seated among the outer ring. Several chuckles followed him. Tema was not among them.


    Banon could have ignored him, but power jibing the perceived lesser tended only to sting when the lesser viewed himself as much. ¡°And I shall see that it is¡­¡± Some of the chuckles were still dying off, but Banon decided it was the moment anyway. ¡°I shall see not only an Orux brought by my hand to feed the honored Ooura relishing in our festivals, those who your station would not exist without, but I will also see that for our Pyathen visitors, an even more special prize is brought.¡±


    The chuckles had died. His father was leaning forward to listen, and Banon expected some of the elders were also. Those who weren''t too shocked and affronted to allow themselves to react, anyway.


    Banon smiled as their attentions fixated on him closer and closer, even Tema¡¯s. ¡°If the Orux is the forest spirit worthy of the passage of another generation of warriors, then there must be something more that is worthy of this once-in-generations meeting of peoples. I pledge, here and now, in front of you whose control it is to elect the next great emperor among us, that I will return by tomorrow night¡¯s apex, the summer festivals end, with both an Orux skull and the corpse of a dragon eagle.¡±


    Audible gasps and scoffs filled the air. Tema, oddly, was smiling. One elder was mumbling loudly to himself about it being out of breeding season, and that dragon eagles were impossible to catch by hand in the summer.


    Banon would agree, normally. However, his staff''s extra power was something he had planned for more than just to use as the extra might needed for an adult Orux kill.


    He planned to use it to jump, to jump far further than a normal reed would have taken him¡­ far enough to snatch the dragon eagle he had watched sunning itself for five days of the last seven on the same branch of a large Mew tree located along the opposite edge of the same lake he had found his living reed staff in.


    There was a parallel tree top that ran just alongside the one the eagle liked to perch on. Too far to jump without the aid of a springy slimevine, but that would be too cumbersome and slow. The eagle would see it coming. Too far to jump even with a reed, normally. But Banon would bet this one he gripped comfortably in his hands was the only one that had a chance to clear that gap.


    It was an outlandish promise to make, especially given it was against Ooura law to hunt dragon eagles with any ranged weapon, and this time of year, they were not nesting. A promise he hadn¡¯t intended to make until he saw the sheer power of this new weapon he held. But, he also hoped, a promise so outlandish that when he kept it, he would only soar further notches into the realms of recognition. He knew his name was already beginning to be heard along with the accompanying sentiment of a new movement of warriors that were more capable against the modern Pyathen, with their liquid fire launchers and dry acid that killed entire water systems.


    Dropping the corpse of the dragon eagle onto the plate of whatever ambassador the Pyathen himself would, well, push his name to the heights of praise on every lip in the jungle and even beyond into the Pyathen¡¯s own world.


    It would also get him one step closer to superseding his family''s legacy and, more importantly, one step closer to proving himself a worthy successor beyond all doubt. The elders'' shocked faces around him only confirmed it.


    Before the night after next¡¯s end, even Tema could not deny him.


    ¡°Skys and trees, Poh, what did you feed that boy to make him this way, eh?¡± Brahman asked with his hands held out widely.


    Emperor Poh pondered on that for a moment. ¡°After the tit, it was straight to Mew bark and Pyathen blood.¡±


    Every elder besides Tema chuckled as the wind picked up, causing the elders¡¯ platforms to shudder slightly.

 4: Proposal

    Banon stared off towards the direction the Donai¡¯s spire city was, long away at their border, while the elders prattled and made jokes about his eccentric promise for minutes and minutes.


    After most of that finished, Banon resigned to sitting down next to his father. From there, he was content to hear each of the elders'' various plans on how to deal with the Pyathen before he presented his own. He wanted all the information first, and deeply valued even Tema¡¯s suggestions, regardless of how much it sounded like he was angling towards some ends of his own, even beyond his perfectly in-character calls to stand in a ground war and be demolished. But Banon tucked that unknown motive away as a more secondary concern.


    One exceptional piece of information caught and ripped his mind so far and so fast into one line of thinking he wasn¡¯t sure he could even remember all the steps to his new plan only a moment after formulating it.


    ¡°The Donai are sending their princess, not some tertiary member of their house, the next in line for the throne,¡± Tema spat.


    And that was when Banon¡¯s mind began to spin. He hardly even noticed the elders'' quibble their various responses among one another after that.


    Why would they send her? Did the Pyathen really have that much confidence in their accompanying force of a hundred and forty and the liquid fire launchers to risk such an important figure? He supposed twenty liquid fire launchers were an incredible number to bring mobile through the jungle. They were normally designed around entrenched positions, and so Banon could only assume their mobile versions sacrifice some ammunition capacity. Even still, half of their number alone was surely just to crew those launchers. It was, along with the Enka-purchased crossbows they carried, to be fair, probably enough to deal with anything the Ooura threw at them, like the other elders¡¯ had already said.


    While he stared out at the ivory-white spear-point shapes of the Donai¡¯s palace where it peaked over the horizon of tree canopies, it became so obvious. So clear in his mind now. So visceral and certain that he was sure he must be seeing a vision of the future beamed into his mind by Kimitrius.


    Maybe he was.


    Now he knew what to do, and to his mild amusement, it was what he was already planning from the start. The dragon eagle¡­


    Banon preceded his speech with a raised hand.


    The elders, despite themselves, quieted down relatively quickly once they noticed him. The emperor was the last to quiet and didn¡¯t make himself fully silent until Banon made eye contact. His father''s prominent nose, cheekbones, and battle-hardened features were nothing like Lonka¡¯s face, which exuded a feeling of poorly suppressed silliness. Banon lacked a certain harshness of his father''s predisposition, himself. Though, he supposed the emperor¡¯s harsh mask was a balance on the other side of the scale for his smooth way of speaking, lacking any of the gravel that Banon sounded like he had grinding in the back of his throat when he spoke.


    And while most other Ooura, including the other elders here, had hair that was any shade between mahogany and rich red, his father had impossibly crisp, bright, orange locks. Banon¡¯s were even one notch brighter, to the point where, despite the clear difference, his peers his age ever since childhood had always said he had white hair like a Pyathen. Until he out-grew them all, anyway. The one commonality among everyone who sat atop the circle of elders now was their skin, the same grey as a storm cloud filled sky.


    He shared a smile with his father before he began angling towards this new proposal, the one that refused to leave the forefront of his mind like a persistent itch. ¡°Elders¡­¡± Banon began slowly, deliberately stretching Tema¡¯s irritation. ¡°Is it known without question that the envoy carries the princess of the Donai among them?¡± Banon made sure he was faced away from Tema when he finished asking, but wasn¡¯t all the way turned around, just enough so he still got to see Tema double over forward in a pained motion from the corner of his eye. Tema didn¡¯t interrupt, though, just sounded like he was trying to grunt out a harsh shit.


    Banon rumbled a grunt of acknowledgment in response to it. ¡°I know the six of you, and you, father, have forbade me from this before, and I listened to you then. I will also listen to you now, but only after you listen to my new proposal.¡±


    Banon blinked once, wrangling the words waiting to be spoken until he could make them come out orderly and without improper showing of emotion. ¡°I want to capture the Pyathen princess. But not now, while their guard is high. We must wait until¨C¡± Banon was cut off by Tema, causing him to bite his lip to hold the words inside instead of yelling over the elder like he wanted to.


    ¡°Their guard will be high every moment until they are back within their own walls! It is an already discussed problem that we have no way around! It would be the same, regardless of the goal, we would have to kill them all to reach her.¡±


    Banon opened his mouth, but it was Brahman filling the silence before he could, and with a newly acquired opinion he had no idea where from. ¡°But why not take them now? By night, perhaps? I, for once, am considering the idea of using Banons ambush tactics on this envoy, even still if he cannot be the one to lead it directly in person. If it would mean access to a royal we could trade the life of for something useful¡­ an antidote for our forever rotten waters from their powder bags carrying death, perhaps. In that case, it would be worth the many lives sacrificed to achieve it. It may even be enough to save us all. Necessary sacrifices will have to be made¨C¡±


    It was Banon who jumped in before others could this time, barely keeping his voice maintained below roaring levels. ¡°Lives we do not have to spare! This is not like one of my raids. For those, we prepare for weeks, and we only attack groups no larger than twenty. My older brothers, I do not mean to be callous, but is it possible that age has slowed down your attention? We are one chink in our shields away from being relegated to the deep jungle only. An alliance between the Pyathens and Enka like we have heard on the breeze for months now would take us completely off the map.¡± Banon made sure to look long and hard at Tema and Brahman before finishing. ¡°It is not worth attacking now when there are other ways.¡±


    Tema nodded at him, eager to respond. ¡°Heard talk about? We have heard more than that, but I suppose you have not been here in several days.¡± Tema seemed very pleased to be in on something Banon was not aware of.


    Banon frowned in confusion until his father took mercy on him, thankfully. ¡°The Enka prince Tomuin is to marry the Pyathen princess they send us in this very envoy, and soon,¡± emperor Poh said. ¡°My forward scouts have watched the envoy for the entire duration since we first spotted them leave their city before the summer festival even started. My scout team has made three calls and responses so far, the same way you came up with, Banon. One permanently stationed watchman and three who ferry the information back to me at regular intervals of time for maximum real-time knowledge. Among other intel of less import, the scout overheard the news while the Pyathen were camped overnight, from some Pyathen on night watch oblivious to the jungle¡¯s habit of hearing those who are not meant to be within it. It is true, the next Donai in succession heads for where we sit as we speak.¡±


    Banon took a moment to insert those new pieces into his puzzle.


    His father seemed to take his reaction as him being upset. ¡°I did what I thought you would do, though I do not have the same natural inclination for the decisive right move.¡±


    ¡°No! You did¡­ well. Your scouts did very well!¡± Banon had to restrain himself. He was struggling to keep it hidden just how perfectly this all played into his hand.


    Banon had to focus everything on simply recentering himself, so his next line would not come out sounding like a giddy child, giving Tema more excuse to disagree. ¡°It is my view that we wait until the Pyathen are gone to move on the princess,¡± Banon concluded, making sure not to be too presumptuous during this tipping point in the conversation.


    ¡°You want us to wait until the envoy is on its way home? Why?¡± his father asked.


    ¡°No,¡± Banon said with a smile. ¡°I want to let them return to their city entirely.¡±


    The elders erupted like a gaggle of parrots caught off guard by a bird of prey.


    Banon kept everything hidden, stone-faced, while they squawked. He needed them to think his stakes in this were not so large as an entire empire, but they were. After all, Tema had his own sons, and though it would take one more vote to gain the majority decision for one without the current emperor''s blood in their veins, they were just as eligible to rule this empire as he was. What remained of it, anyway.


    Banon waited patiently, taking the time to organize his thoughts.


    Ever since he had been a boy of ten, and first seen the spire city of the Donai family up close from the tree line, he had dreamed of climbing it. Now, he finally had a good excuse and a plan worthy of a bedtime story about heroes of old. A large part of Banon doubted it would be that easy. He knew it wouldn''t, in fact. The Pyathen cities were designed specifically to negate unwanted Ooura climbers.


    But Banon had a new plan for that.


    A plan based on so many suppositions about both the Pyathen''s reasoning for coming, their willingness to bargain, and his own ability to perform a feat considered impossible before the real plan could even begin, that in this moment, about to explain what parts of his plan he could, he felt like an arrow unable to stop itself from loosing toward the many perils underlying each step. It was up to the elders whether to believe him, or laugh him down after he said what he was about to say, and he could not question it since he had made that promise already.


    He watched in his minds eye, seeing all of the floating pieces fitting themselves together into the right order. And thus far, besides the slim odds of two crucial steps, he couldn¡¯t spot any gaps too daunting to bridge within his plans. What he presumed, based on the fact the royals were sending their daughter in person, was that his raids on their hunters and gatherers, and especially his recent defense of Bodastam, had struck a deeper cord than he might previously have thought. That was one of the suppositions that needed to be true. Even if it was just morale he was hurting in the grand scheme, it still might be enough to force the Pyathen to come to this negotiation in person like they were. If all of that was true, the Pyathen would have some kind of proposition for them, one that likely involved the ceasing of Banon¡¯s raids.


    One that likely involved them offering something in return.


    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    But that was only the second base truth he needed for his new plan to come true. The first, if he was anyone besides himself, was even more of a long shot than reading the Pyathen¡¯s intentions with their visit perfectly. It was only sheer luck that allowed even the possibility, as well. If he had not stumbled upon the occurrence of the lone dragon eagle repeatedly revisiting that one branch, he wouldn¡¯t even have the initial branch under his feet from which to spring.


    But impossible was a word that never quite made the same sense to him as it did to others.


    Banon suffocated a smile before it could become obvious.


    ¡°Father,¡± Banon said, just as the chorus of descent and confusion around them was pittering out. ¡°Father, I know it can be done.¡±


    Poh nodded, then shrugged, gesturing in the direction of the other elders. ¡°I believe you. But so must they.¡±


    After the elders had quieted fully, and not until after endruing a long staring down from both father and son, then Banon began to explain what parts of his plan he needed the elders to know, careful not to share too intimately the more extraordinary and unlikely details that might sway them away from accepting it.


    ¡°During the negotiation, I plan to feed the flesh of the dragon eagle I will claim to the Donai princess. And after that, she will have the overwhelmingly pungent sweetness the body exudes for weeks after eating dragon eagle flesh. After letting the Pyathen return home, I will climb the Donai spire city when they least expect it; in the wake of what we made them believe were successful peace talks, and I do beleive it is peace talks they intend, and likely because of my own actions. I will then track her directly to her room at the top of the palace by the scent left by the eagle alone. I will incapacitate her beyond an ability to call for help, take her, and then I will descend the spire once more.¡±


    Tema actually sprung to his feet with the haste with which he intended to interrupt. Banon held up a finger, which, to his surprise, Tema quieted down at.


    So, Banon continued, ¡°You all know as well as I do the Pyathen spires are built against climbers, built against us. Their spiral staircases are guarded on the inside by, no doubt, hefty defenses. The first hundred feet up, the outsides are covered every inch in poisoned spikes. They have crossbow-armed watchmen standing on outward-facing posts above that who would alert them of anything somehow managing to get past. I have several ideas on how to mitigate these problems, some of which I have considered for years. However, they all depend on this revelation of a negotiation directly with the Donai princess.¡±


    Banon paused, feeling their attention on him like streams of air stoking his fire hotter. He made sure to seem cold and reserved, even so. ¡°If you would all give me leeway to speak with the will of our empire when the Pyathen arrive, I will attempt to trick them, bargaining my way into something I need to overcome the largest problem, ascending the spire. But again, I have other ideas. It is only a matter of how quickly I can have the better ones ready, considering the scent she will have will be on a timer from the moment she takes its flesh into her stomach. Two weeks, maybe three at most, until even Tema¡¯s snout would not be enough to track her. Regardless, all of my potentially successful scenarios require the dragon eagle. It does not matter if I could make it past the spikes and the watch if I have to stumble through every room in the palace to find her. I simply could not pull it off without alerting someone to my presence before I could kill them. If the whole city was alerted, I would not survive the retreat. This is not a request I make lightly. I know the consequences of failure. I also know that those of you who view me as a threat would benefit from this potentially as much as those supporting me. If you believe this to be my end, your vote is still as acceptable to me as those who vote based on fatih of my success. I simply need permission to try.¡± Banon flickered his glare at Tema before assessing the other elders'' faces. Most of them were surprisingly contemplative, not so eager to jump in with responses before even letting him finish. ¡°I hope you will find, in the ear that is closest to your heart, that when you hear my words, you know I believe in them.¡±


    While the elders grumbled among each other, Poh was completely silent.


    Until he wasn¡¯t. ¡°This is what you want, Banon? This act of insanity is what you want our empire to hinge on?¡± Some grumbles of agreement came from around them.


    For a moment, Banon was sure that this was the end, that this scheme would finally be the one that pushed things too far, that his father was about to fold. Until Poh crept a smile across his lips. ¡°Then so be it. I ask you only to consult Kimitrius first, and be true to his answer. If you give me that, I will give you leeway to negotiate. If you breach any unspoken boundaries during the negotiations, however, I will make them spoken. You are not emperor¡­ yet.¡± And he nudged his son with that last word, driving it home.


    Before Tema¡¯s gaping mouth could form another protesting word, the emperor abruptly stood, waving downwards until all but the quietest of groans subsided. Tema looked like he was literally chewing the still-born words around in his mouth. Banon wouldn¡¯t be surprised if he chipped a tooth on them.


    The emperor took the time to make eye contact with each and every one of the elders before he spoke, a recurring habit his father had that Banon deeply admired and copied when he could remember to. ¡°I will sanction a royal hunting party like is normally reserved for the winter festival. This will give us the best chance of taking a dragon eagle from its perch. However, if no one is capable of succeeding there, I have to say, your plan cannot go forward, Banon. If there is anyone capable of plucking the jungle¡¯s greatest treasure under such circumstances and entirely out of season, it is you. But it is also like you said, this cannot go forward if you do not accomplish that already unbelievable feat, and then on top of it, find success in whatever it is you need from the Pyathen negotiation. So, I am putting to vote only this first part of your plan, and will have you explain to us the further steps only after you finish those monumental prerequisites.¡±


    Banon nodded without missing a beat, despite the fact that the royal hunting party would most definitely not be capable of achieving such a thing at this time of year when the eagles were especially active. The gesture from his father was more about showing his support in front of the others.


    In reality, it was all on him.


    ¡°Agreed,¡± Banon said.


    Brahman slapped his legs. ¡°Well, if it is this that ends our empire, at least we will have a pretty story to go along with it.¡±


    Banon suppressed a chuckle that only came out as a single huff instead.


    ¡°Now,¡± his father called. ¡°Let us vote.¡±


    ***


    It came to a three-to-three split, Banon¡¯s own vote not counting, being neither elder nor emperor.


    Tema was the last and deciding vote. ¡°I will vote¡­ in favor¡­¡±


    Banon¡¯s heart surged.


    ¡°But! Only if a secondary agreement is come to.¡±


    Banon suppressed his dissent and gestured for Tema to continue instead.


    ¡°If he cannot fell a dragon eagle, we will cut off the Pyathen before they can return to their city instead. And we will stand with force, under a shield wall, our heads adorned with the Orux¡¯s we took as Kothai!¡± he sneered that last word towards Banon. ¡°And it will be me and my son standing at the head of that force. I also say that Banon not be allowed to pursue capturing the royal unless he can down an Orux and pass his rite as well. For the matter of the dragon eagle, as a measure against him cheating around our laws for his own fame and gain, I will request to see the eagle''s corpse myself. I will feel its still warm flesh and ensure there are no arrow marks to be found. He will kill it the old way, or he will not kill it at all.¡±


    Banon nodded when his father looked to him for confirmation of his agreement to the new terms. He had to. He was too close to worry about stipulations.


    ¡°Is this secondary motion acceptable?¡± the emperor asked.


    The elders voted unanimously in favor this time, regardless of some of the elders'' previous descent at the idea of all-out war, which was all the more reason Banon needed to succeed. It wasn¡¯t just his plan that was on the line. Now it was the lives of countless Kothai as well.


    Maybe even his entire people as a whole.


    Banon stood up, looking over each and every elder before speaking his final words. When he spoke, he carried all the grace he had learned from years of watching his father''s uniting way of speaking to people. ¡°Tomorrow, we will face the people who have taken us to the brink of extinction. Tomorrow, we face Pyathen, and we stand against them just the same as all Ooura have withstood to the Pyathen and Enka throughout time. Tomorrow, whether with words of with fire, we fight!¡±


    Banon raised his staff high, noticing the sun''s last rays shining on only his chest and above, the sitting elders being excluded now to the shade.


    The sun felt good, only for a moment, until a sound caused Banon to whirl with his staff pointed towards the potential threat. Yet it was not a bird of prey, nor an assassin of some kind.


    It was one of his father''s scouts.


    The man came to a tumbling halt on the platform in front of them, clearly overtaken with urgency. Banon nodded to the scout and he nodded back as he rose, despite his disheveled appearance.


    ¡°Emperor! Treasured elders! I am so sorry to have interrupted your important tasks.¡±


    ¡°Whatever it is, it is clearly worth interrupting us,¡± the emperor remarked. ¡°So, what is it?¡±


    ¡°The Pyathens are already arriving, as in now. They doubled their speed of approach once they passed over the unspoken border.¡±


    ¡°They are going to arrive tonight?¡± Banon asked, trying to stay composed.


    ¡°They are arriving now!¡± he replied.


    ¡°Now?! And how are we just hearing about this, then, huh?¡± Tema made sure no mistakes were made about his level of agitation.


    The scout looked apologetic but could only shrug. ¡°The last relay messenger relayed their position right before they began to move at double pace. The last relay saw them not even mobile yet after the night, and now they are well less than an hour from reaching us.¡±


    Banon sighed. There should be tells before something like this could happen, like, for one, the sounds of battle as the Pyathen entered this village without announcing their intentions. It was a grim realization, however, that with so few eyes remaining, even their watch over their heartlands had grown this pathetic.


    ¡°Good,¡± Banon began, taking the reigns of reason back into his hands. ¡°Then we have time to greet them, all of us together, and then we will start the royal hunt only after things are settled to the degree you can handle it on your own, father. It should probably take so long to round up my brothers, anyway.¡±


    Poh nodded at that, but looked conflicted. ¡°I hate to remove some of the night from you¨C¡±


    ¡°No, an hour of bureaucracy is fine. We can be well on our way to the deep jungle by the time the sun is only halfway back on its way to the horizon. By the time the darkest hours we need for hunting come, we will have the time to use them to our best ability.¡±


    Poh looked unconvinced.


    ¡°Besides, even if I do not claim my Orux tonight, I will have until the apex of tomorrow night.¡±


    It was Poh¡¯s turn to sigh. ¡°You will not have time to quarter it by then. It is a close call as it is, and that is if you stick to the beginnings of the deep jungle. I imagine you already have a candidate bull in mind, though?¡±


    Banon nodded. ¡°I do.¡±


    Poh squished the bridge of his nose between his index and thumb exactly as Banon did when he was anxious. ¡°I have no doubt this royal hunt will not fail, my son. I just wish for once that you would set your sights on something this insane and be humbled. If not about something as important as your rite, anyway.¡±


    Banon chuckled. ¡°Some day it will come. Some day.¡±


    ¡°Indeed,¡± Poh said, snatching Banon¡¯s staff from his hands with striking quickness and proceeding to inspect it more closely. ¡°I don¡¯t know where you found this¡­ but it suits you.¡±


    ¡°You know, you are not the first person today to say that to me.¡± Banon smiled, taking the moment of pause to lean over the central platform''s edge, glancing among the treelines far below on the edge of their village clearing, and thankfully not seeing any Pyathen emerging from them quite yet. ¡°Now we just need to keep the ones among us with mud pillow for brains from getting us all killed.¡±


    His father and Brahman barked laughter while the scout''s reluctant chuckle trailed behind.


    Tema looked ready to spit his teeth at Banon like viper venom.

 5: Princess bathed in fire

    Banon reached the mesa mat long before all of the other elders besides Tema, who was the only to have bitten wholeheartedly at Banon¡¯s unspoken challenge to race.


    For all his ignorance, the elder was an exceptional climber, and perhaps even better at descending quickly. Banon would like to blame the new and unfamiliar mass of his staff for slowing him down, but no, Tema would have won anyway. He was also the only elder Banon was absolutely sure he would lose to in an all-out fight, a fair one anyway. Some of the others among his father''s six chosen might be able to kill him, but Tema was the one that Banon genuinely feared confronting in such a way, which might well come to pass, given their very public qualms with one another.


    Banon slammed down on the mat, sending a spray of green bits from the impact. As he stepped out of the small crater his landing dug in the upper matt, he was already preparing for whatever scathing display of victory Tema was planning when the elder merely looked him up and down over arms crossed instead. The elder and war chief then spat into the matt, made a disappointed noise, and simply turned and walked away. Probably off to find his son, Banon imagined, since Banon had seen Haeran earlier, just at a distance, and he had already returned with the skull of a young Orux for himself. Tema was probably going to drag his son to meet the Pyathen as well, probably was dying to see his son standing next to Banon, who was without an Orux skull to adorn his head yet.


    Banon would still be taller.


    He only hoped their welcome precession was limited to as many as that would make. It would not do for the misplaced curiosity of the large number of non-Kothai among them to cause the Pyathen to feel threatened. Banon steadied himself, holding that reminder in his sleep-deprived mind since he was almost certain there was a possibility some of the very same boys that had grabbed at his staff earlier would be among the most likely to prod the Pyathen just a little too closely, leading to a misunderstanding they could not come back from.


    All around in the huge clearing, rumor of what was about to happen was spreading as fast as the younger boys racing each other to tell everyone could speak it. Kothai and non-Kothai alike were emerging from their previous preoccupations, shooting curious glances around, then disappointed ones when they realized nothing was happened quite yet. Apparently the scout must have informed someone else on the ground before ascending up to the circle to inform the elders. And they, it seemed, had thought it necessary to inform the entire village.


    Which figured.


    By the time the other elders, his father, and the scout reached the mat, Banon had already begun gathering as many Kothai as they had on hand to guard their emperor and elders during the impending standoff.


    By the time the Pyathen arrived, Tema and his son had already returned and taken their places standing in the command group alongside Banon, the emperor, and the other elders at the center of the large half-circle of Kothai formed around them. The elves'' presence was announced first in song, or their view of what music was, at least. It sounded like a series of long, hollow whistles, echoing eerily from somewhere distant in the forest, still obscured by jungle tangle and trees. A few minutes later, the never-ending series of flute notes was followed by the sight of its perpetrators.


    A fifteen-wide rank of Pyathen clad in silvery metal woven in complexly linked chain patterns emerged from the jungle, but then halted just before advancing out onto the mat. Their strangely ornate armor clung to the wearers'' form like second skin, and yet, despite its tightness, they never seemed to lack flexibility. The chain weave was never featureless, either. Each and every Pyathen was like a walking painting, patterns representing exaggerated versions of various jungle creatures displayed prominently on their chests. Each man, if you could call such puny, pale things that, had so much individuality to their chest armor patterns, Banon could only assume it was some key part of their warrior culture. So much effort to make something so pretty, all for them to pierce and tear all the same.


    Raised above the level of the heads of the standard foot soldiers were the acid launchers on their mobile platforms carried by other Pyathen soldiers. Each launcher had a gunner manning it wearing full body chain armor noticeably thicker than normal to the point where the only visible skin was their hands and a thin slit of determined eyes.


    Inside the block-shaped formation of acid launcher crews and spear and crossbow-wielding footsoldiers, there was a distinct open space in the middle where flickers of blue flame danced, visible to his eye between the gaps of their front lines. It was only after their front rank parted that Banon got a better look at what it was. There was an inner core to the block of soldiers, a spacious cavity where a secondary formation took its place, though this formation was not for the purpose of defense. It was for the same purposes the Ooura always kept six in their circle of elders, and an emperor at their center instead of any other kind of arrangements.


    It was a display for Kimitrius, their six-minded God, and the last semblance of their previous connection to the Ooura, though Banon doubted they saw it that way. They did not have a god in their ear keen on re-telling histories as they actually happened, after all. Or perhaps some of them did but saw their own wills¡¯, along with their own names and their sciences, as greater regardless.


    As the soldiers parted, the far more ceremonially appearing procession approached forward out of the gap they had been occupying on the inside. There were six naked Pyathen men spaced out in a circle, all of them painted black and with their hair and eyebrows shaven. In their hands, they each carried a black torch that burned a blue flame unnaturally bright.


    Naked¡­ and with their anatomy either tucked away or, Banon hoped not that it had been entirely removed for this purpose. Though now he was more concerned with his immediate compulsion to have empathy for any of them. They weren¡¯t his people, were they?


    They were the murderers of them, though.


    At the center of the hexagonal formation of torchbearers, the princess walked with her face tilted down but her eyes scanning the Ooura relentlessly.


    The Pyathen who were a part of this strange ritual appearance were all completely blank in the face save for the princess herself. She looked utterly determined in a kind of way Banon almost respected, actually. In fact, he did respect it, it was just a difficult thing to admit amid the clouds of animosity swirling unseen around them.


    The rest of the armed and armored Pyathen surrounding her and her torchbearers from behind looked one unexpected cough away from pulling their triggers, men bathed in the thick scent of fear hanging tart on the air. She, on the other hand, with a body painted the black of the night sky, slicked down hair and eyebrows colored a bright white to contrast, and a gaze like stone, looked more fit to bathe among the flames of the ephemeral fires in the purple-ringed eye of God.


    Her skin wasn¡¯t just black like those accompanying her, either. She was covered toe to scalp in intricately painted Pyathen script. Over her skin, she wore only a thin green dress that had gaps in it where Banon could see things he was surprised were to be shared with any eyes willing to look. The Pyathens¡¯, despite being desperate to be seen as the civilized heights of society, were in many cases just more blind to their own particular kinds of barbarism.


    After their flute song hit its highest notes, and the smaller procession stopped only a few strides outside of their accompanying guard force, which was still all the way on the edge of the clearing, Banon realized it was going to be up to the Ooura to approach them.


    So they did.


    The Ooura crossed the mesa with no malice spared in their shared expressions. The Pyathen simply watched them, though their spear-points, crossbows and acid launchers were all kept ready and aimed. As they approached, Banon was reminded once again just how pathetic they were when you chose to ignore their inventive advantages. On even ground as they were, he and his fellow Ooura were taller than the tallest Pyathen among them by heads and arms. More precisely, an average Pyathen man came up to the bottom of his stomach. A Pyathen woman, well, most of their heads were the same elevation as his waistline or lower.


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    Fragile creatures, all of them. And Enka were even smaller.


    Banon could claim more meat on one of his arms than some of the spindlier, especially among the obviously younger generation of soldiers present in their guarding regiment.


    The princess, on the other hand, was not what he was expecting at all.


    For a Pyathen, especially a woman, she was shockingly tall. She was also quite a lot more to the eye than most others of theirs were. Maybe Banon was fantasizing one notch too far, but he was sure her cheekbones were so wide and prominent they began to form the same strong triangular proportions in the lower face that Ooura women were known for. The charcoal on her skin didn''t help her case. Ooura were multiple shades brighter, closer to dark gray than the absolute black of charcoal. Still, in comparison to their native brighter-than-ivory tone, this was almost like looking at a half-breed.


    A thought that was.


    She was, however, nothing of the likening to Ooura when it came to her hair. It was white, completely. As white as a cloud and thicker, shinier, more dense. He doubted that could be natural, but it was a strong reminder nonetheless that she was no Ooura, no woman. No kind of woman for him to be considering, anyway.


    And yet, he was curious enough to hold his gaze, watching for the right moments as the gaps in her dress shifted.


    She did stand like a princess, even despite the circumstances.


    The Ooura came to a halt at a cautious distance. Close enough to speak and be heard, yet not so close the acid launchers range could reach the back ranks of Kothai who trailed further from the main pack as a precaution against clustering up. Several of those standing back from the rest carried Ooura great bows, knocked but not drawn yet. Even if the Pyathen decided to fire everything they had all at once, the real threat to them was the simple fact the closest Kothai could almost definitely still reach their ranks before the Pyathen had time to kill them all, let alone how easy it would be to make a lunge for the princess and her little precession of unics.


    Which was all the more impressive to Banon that she looked completely focused instead of terrified.


    It was then that Banon heard two familiar voices.


    ¡°They are tiny!¡± one of the boys from earlier called, as he slipped past the Kothai until he stood next to Banon, though only because a warding arm stopped him from wandering even closer.


    ¡°I am taller!¡± another boy agreed from his tip toes once he joined them, also stopped from venturing further by an arm.


    Banon shifted his grip around until he had one boy in each hand, grasped firmly under the nearer shoulder blade. Banon then turned, picked a gap in the Kothai and threw the two of them into a tumbling start of a run for their nosy lives. ¡°Do not poke the beast whose claws you have not yet seen!¡± Banon called after them.


    One of the boys yelled back something about dung flinging and a species of monkey called a wop wop that they called each other as a disparagement of intelligence.


    Banon found size was better than smarts, most times.


    When he turned back around, he was greeted with something that turned eyebrows up across many faces. The princess approached on her own. She only took a few steps until she stopped again, but she was now close enough that it was plain to see she was risking her life should the Ooura decide to spring an attack.


    At the same time, with all the acid launchers pointed at the Ooura¡¯s position, Banon supposed they would perish along with her if they tried for a quick kill. That begged another question: why was she still not worried? Why would she not assume the Ooura would be willing to strike at her in such a surprise attack, regardless of the costs? After all, it could have been any group walking out to meet her here on the edge of the clearing. It''s not like she knew who they were by face or likely even name. Poh hadn¡¯t been emperor when the Pyathen scourge began, and as far as Banon knew, their interests in sending spies to learn more of the Ooura''s successions, or anything about them, were non-existent. Either that or their spies were so canny they were never once caught, which he found impossible.


    Which led back to one conclusion. The Pyathen didn¡¯t even deem the Ooura a threat enough to have plans worth eavesdropping on. They thought their mastery over science made them masters of everything. And yet, now, here they stood in front of us, vulnerable.


    Why?


    It was easy to think back to his reasoning that his raids and the defense of Bodastam had started to swing the tides of their morale, but staring down a Donai royal in the flesh, surrounded by ritualism and an arsenal enough to spook a Mew tree, Banon found it very hard to think this was all happening just because of something he did.


    Banon watched as the tension in the air was plucked until it frayed, and then was about to break. Whatever such thoughts he was having towards a more violent end to this confrontation, Tema¡¯s mind was probably a sea of rage beyond comprehension, thanks to the ease with which she stood in their presence.


    Best to shift the focus of that tension onto shoulders built stronger for carrying it then.


    Banon took two deliberate steps forward. Not close enough to feel the Pyathen would fire on him, though he was straddling that line. It was simply his way of responding in kind to her lone advance. Still, it was a measure of caution worth taking that he never once twitched or moved faster than a mouse, for that matter.


    It caused a small kerfuffle when Banon went to sit down. A few of the crossbows pointing at him quivered as if their user was unsure whether this was the prelude to some trap or surprise attack.


    Banon tucked his legs in so he became comfortably cross-legged. The princess still stood up straight across from him. Her eyes, however, were now much closer to level with his. He nodded at her in the best courtesy he could. She didn¡¯t even blink back at him. ¡°It is my understanding,¡± Banon began. ¡°That you speak our language. You will forgive me for not understanding yours well enough to risk¡­ a misunderstanding.¡±


    She did finally blink, though her stare remained surprisingly blank. She looked at him for so much time Banon was considering turning around to ask the elders if they thought he had done something wrong. Eventually, she spoke, and it was a sound like water soothing its way through an endless stream. ¡°Your people,¡± she began, in almost perfect Ooura, ¡°and my people have not been on speaking terms for many years.¡± She looked briefly to the elders behind Banon, probably due to the embarrassingly animalistic growl Tema was making behind him. To her credit, she continued on without much strain. ¡°I have come to break that trend.¡±


    ¡°Why!?¡± Tema¡¯s son barked from behind, causing several crossbows to switch beads onto him instead. One crossbow actually went off, though it was not followed by more, and Banon heard no immediate shouts of pain, so¡­ luck had been with them, if only for that moment.


    ¡°This is WRONG!¡± Haeran continued, only increasing tensions. Banon glanced over his shoulder to see, of all things, Haeran posing like he was ready to leap into battle, two long knives drawn and held splayed out away from him, and of course, an Orux skull headdress adorning his forehead so freshly harvested it still had visible bits on grisstle attached inside the nose canals.


    Banon returned his attention just in time to see the princess shooting a series of angry glares about. Mostly in the direction of the disturbance, but also sometimes back towards a Pyathen man that stood out as the likely commander of this opperation on the military side. If Banon wasn¡¯t so caught up in the moment, he¡¯d swear she was begging the man to stand down.


    Good, that meant Banon was not alone in the goal of making a seamless first contact, at least. He had considered more than a few possibilities where that was not the case. Among them, a more prominent theory he had been dreading was that this would be more a courtesy visit, purely informing them that after the Enka prince had married into the Donai family, their entire forest would be overrun with human raiders within the week. It certainly was not out of the realm of the level of cruelty they had already experienced. But in those glares he saw her shooting back at the man in command, Banon was sure he saw something more.


    They needed something from this, something more than to make merely a gesture for one purpose or another. No amount of feigned stoicism could hide the grey clouds of desperation underlying her every movement.


    It was a negotiation, after all, then.


    The only concern after realizing Banon was not, in fact, one-sided in having hopes of this talk going smoothly was that¡­ well, to tamp down the opposition to that idea. To take the rough edges among them and shove them beneath the water until they drowned. Haeran¡¯s rapidly approaching footsteps behind him only confirmed what he needed to do.


    Just as the peak of unease was sweeping across the ranks of the Pyathen in front of him and no doubt the same in the ranks of Ooura behind him, Banon began to laugh.

 6: Unexpected challenges

    Lonka stood on shaky legs, peering out from his hiding spot behind a nearby fishing hut as the first contact between peoples took place. Everything had seemed to go oddly smooth. Banon stepped forward to take the roll of speaker as expected, then he managed to approach and even sit down in front of that princess. Lonka found that entire image hillarious for so many reasons only someone who had known Banon their entire life would understand.


    Showing his belly to a woman, at last. Well, it was bound to happen someday.


    Odd choice, though.


    It was only a moment after that cheery revelation that the tension broke, and chaos began. Tema and his son were frothing like rabies apes and Banon¡¯s surprisingly successful opening to the conversation had been cut off entirely by the display. When Haeran started walking up behind the seated Banon, Lonka sharply inhaled as he winced back, despite being nowhere near the action himself.


    It was when Banon began to laugh from where he sat that Lonka knew something bad was going to happen.


    ¡°This is so fitting, my brothers¡­¡± Banon said between chuckles, ¡°that we would survive all this time¡­¡± and Banon got up to his feet slowly, turning to face Tema¡¯s son as he approached him,  ¡°just to be snuffed out by this stupidity.¡± Banon made sure to stare Tema¡¯s son down as he finished that sentiment. It was hardly necessary. Whenever Banon did his slow turn to face you thing, you already knew he was mad.


    Tema¡¯s son stopped just short, glowering up at Banon, growling something guttural in the back of his throat.


    ¡°This is wrong!¡± he spat into Banon¡¯s face, who didn¡¯t even flinch. Haeran, on the other hand, was tensing up like he was about to throw a punch, or worse, cleave something with those blades in his hands.


    Lonka considered yelling something himself, warning Banon in some way, but he knew there was not a point. Every day of Banon¡¯s life was spent preparing for moments like this. For all there were things to be said about his younger brother, say Banon was un-prepared to fight something or someone to the death at any given moment and you would be a liar irrevocably.


    ***


    Banon let just enough of a slit into his lips to show teeth, glaring down at Haeran and daring him with his eyes to do something.


    ¡°Why should we follow you?¡± Haeran demanded, jutting his jaw as high as he could towards Banon¡¯s. The boy was his same age and similar in bulk, but lacking in some of the vertical stature Banon had. ¡°You have nothing to your name but the reputation of a coward. So tell me, why should the boar follow the fearful fawn into the maw of the crocodile?¡±


    Banon kept his easy smile. ¡°Because the crocodile will chip his tooth when he tries to bite down on this fawn.¡±


    Haeran¡¯s eyes did not show hesitation as he stared up into Banon¡¯s, to his credit. He was really about to do something. This wasn¡¯t descent from the sidelines, this wasn¡¯t insubordination¡­ it was a planned and accounted for political maneuver.


    Banon watched the first twitches in Haeran¡¯s shoulders before the blades ever began swinging at him.


    This was a play to power. In that fractional moment, Banon realized it was true.  He realized Tema had most definitely put the boy up to this, or he had had the idea himself, it didn¡¯t matter. Either way, it must then have become something that was discussed and measured, then agreed upon. Because of all times, now, to start a fight?


    It wasn¡¯t a coincidence this was happening in front of the Pyathen, and the other elders, and much of his entire village watching from a distance. It wasn¡¯t a coincidence that Tema had for once been in support of Banon, if without being such a pushover as to arise his suspicion, which worked perfectly. And Banon had thought they finally saw eye to eye on something¡­ Nonetheless, it had been nothing but a lie to put Banons mind at ease so the real plan could take him all the more by surprise.


    It was then time sped back up again.


    Banon flung himself back while rolling his shoulder right, angling himself away from the expected attack lines. Haeran¡¯s black blades, each as long as forearms, split the air inches in front of his face.


    While Banon¡¯s upper body flung back, his lower body turned and pivoted, allowing him to keep his balance as he caught his momentary off-balance whirl about, setting himself instead into a series of widely sweeping steps to circle around his opponent as he drew his own large knife. Just the one. He valued a free hand in combat like this, where locking up your opponent''s defenses meant an open line of attack. Despite the rare use of a skill like having practiced in Ooura on Ooura hand-to-hand knife fighting, it was one of the exercises Banon had his small force of like-minded boys who would soon become Kothai alongside him did most often. Mostly, it was a morale booster, a fun game to pass the time with mock blades and a points system for different body part strikes.


    Also, it had been a fantastic excuse to train himself almost constantly for the inevitable possibility of in-fighting among the Ooura¡¯s ranks in the panic caused by the twilight of their species.


    Banon let the grin spread across his face without relent as the other boy hissed at him, mock lunged, yelled various taunts, and, most commonly, tapped his blades against his Orux skull headdress with a mocking sneer.


    A fraction of Banon¡¯s mind was curious about what the Pyathen thought of this whole mess. To them, they may not know the un-spoken rules of public combat like this, nor have the same views on such things having a place in their society, let alone in a moment as important as this. Usually, those rules only applied to Kothai, but the fact Haeran had made the first move meant he was not so stuck up on tradition to that degree of pedanticism.


    Banon hoped, however, that his opponent would abide by the other rules of single combat among Kothai. Haeran¡¯s initial attack may have seemed out of nowhere, but it was entirely within Kothai tradition, the only stipulation being that the aggressor, should they lose, would be forbidden from ever challenging the winner again unless the previous winner was the one to make the challenge. Beyond that, the rules got a bit more fuzzy. The unspoken rule was that scuffles like this one over dominance within a given tribe were subject to ending by either first blood or incapacitation.


    Looking into Haeran¡¯s eyes, however, Banon was even less willing to lean on tradition and unspoken rules than usual. Not that he was especially keen on ending up bleeding or unconscious either.


    So, Banon tuned his mind to the uttermost bounds of attention, seeing every move and switch of momentum coming before his opponent could catch up with him. He saw Haeran¡¯s strikes in the slightest twitch of muscle fibers halfway across the body from the attacking limb. He saw his further-out intentions in the darting of his eyes and the angles he set his feet. Banon danced with death. And had never felt so alive for it. Every time Haeran made another swipe as they circled each other, Banon backpedaled just a little further than the last time, until he began to notice Haeran compensating for it, leaning out further, lunging with his lead leg instead of keeping his balance.


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    Good.


    Banon danced away from one, two, and then a third probing attack. Each time, Haeran¡¯s long, unkept hair swung out in front of him almost as far as his knife was, but on a small delay, giving Banon the perfect opening just after Haeran¡¯s next strike. On the fourth, Haeran¡¯s growl was building up in the back of his throat and his slash was completely off balance.


    The instant Haeran¡¯s swing passed its apex, Banon dug his toes into the matt, and, using his exceptional reach and the new grip his feet provided, he darted forward, throwing his free hand straight towards Haeran¡¯s face.


    The moment Banon felt his fingers tighten around the loose strands of hair flinging towards of him in the wake of the unsuccessful attack, Banon yanked with everything he had. Haeran was so caught off guard by the sudden change of momentum that he didn¡¯t even manage to put his hands between their bodies to form some kind of defense.


    Banon¡¯s fist crunched into the smaller Ooura¡¯s forehead with a sharp crack.


    He went limp for an instant, his half-formed strike barely grazing Banon¡¯s side. Then as he was stumbling back, blinking his consciousness back, Banon ruthlessly pursued him.


    The immediate kick he followed up with took Haeran off his feet and knocked his Orux skull from his head after he hit the ground¨C Banon¡¯s punch probably loosened it, and he probably also broke his knuckle doing so.


    Banon fell upon him before Haeran could shake off the disorientation and mount a defense. He elbowed the boy again and again, watching the deep gashes form and blood begin to pool. He didn¡¯t stop until Haeran¡¯s head was sunken almost a foot deep into the green, weedy mat from the force of everything he threw at him.


    His next thought was to turn his attention to Tema, wholeheartedly expecting him to attack the moment his son fell. Banon was surprised to find Tema on his knees, held under the blades of two knives perched next to either side of his throat. The knives belonged to Poh and Brahman, who had obviously taken it upon themselves to restrain Tema at one point or another.


    Tema¡¯s guttural cry crackled through the air. He struggled once, rising halfway to his feet, only to be pushed down by the other elders surrounding him.


    ¡°Your son struck first. It was his choice,¡± Poh said. ¡°The price he paid for the advantage of surprise is now your price to bear. There will be no revenge, Tema. If you disagree, you know the consequences. I will not hesitate to put you up in the pecking box until you are ribbons of blood and flesh attached to a skeleton, but make no mistake, you will still be living to feel it.¡± Poh¡¯s voice sounded so strange making threats, like a monkey making bird song.


    Banon only spent a moment lingering on the shuddering scowl of madness wrapping Tema¡¯s features before turning his attention back to the Pyathen princes, who, to his surprise, was still standing right where she had been, looking more impatient than anything. Banon stepped over the unconscious body and then took his place, sitting where he had been before, his large knife cradled neatly in his lap because, in honestly, his hand was cramped around it so badly he was probably going to have to pry one finger at a time away. Banon slapped his legs in resignation before realizing a quick movement and the sharp noise it caused were both good ways to get shot. Thankfully, no crossbow bolts or acid peppered him, so he smiled good-naturedly at this continued streak of good luck.


    The streak that was still yet to be broken since the day he turned ten and caught plucked his first bird of prey all on his lonesome.


    After meeting her conflicted stare for long enough to tell she was well and truly disgusted with what she had just witnessed, and perhaps feeling a great many other things given the different way their peoples viewed such outward displays of violence between allies, he took a deep breath, then gestured vaguely, mimicking an opening and closing beak with his free hand. ¡°The birds chirp awfully loud today. I apologize for you having to endure their calls. I promise they are just as sharp on the ears of the better minds among our kind as they are to you.¡± Banon paused, sure he caught a flicker of something in her eye. Amusement? That wouldn¡¯t be a grim enough of a word as he would use, but it was something. Something strange indeed.


    Banon allowed himself a small smile in response to her reaction. ¡°Let me assure you,¡± and Banon slipped the rolled-up leather sling from his waistband, holding it up to show her, ¡°that I am quite the sparrow hunter.¡±


    That did pluck a string deep enough for the corner of her lip to flicker, if only briefly. Banon seized at the moment to ease her back into his hand. ¡°Now, let us talk.¡±


    ¡°Before we do,¡± she replied without missing a beat, ¡°I should ask to who it is I am speaking. Are you the chosen representative of all Ooura?¡±


    ¡°I am the future emperor.¡±


    ¡°Future?¡±


    ¡°That,¡± Banon pointed back at Poh, who still held Tema down by the tip of his blade, ¡°is my father.¡± He wasn¡¯t sure she would take that on its face and be happy to proceed, given she didn¡¯t even know who Poh was, more than likely. But the dozens of Kothai arranged in a half circle guarding them seemed to speak to its own kind of authority.


    She stared for a moment before proceeding to introduce herself, which was an unnecessary notion given the Ooura¡¯s spies had given them far better knowledge of the Pyathen than they likely expected. Even if Ooura could not climb their spires, their cities were located in the middle of open clearings, with massive tree walls surrounding them, and Ooura ears could hear the flitting of butterfly wings from twice the distance an arrow flies.


    She certainly didn¡¯t need to know that, though. So he acted as if it was all new.


    When he made her pause to re-pronounce her name again for him, he was fairly certain he irritated her at how badly he was butchering it. It was hardly his fault, though, when your full title was ¡®Princess Pressasca.¡¯ Something about the way the p¡¯s lined up with one another just rolled around in his Ooura mouth wrongly.


    ***


    Banon came to three agreements with the Pyathen princess during their preliminary negotiation that was really, in less words, just a quick and dirty arrangement to not kill each other immediately.


    Firstly, they both agreed upon keeping the Pyathen war encampment on the edge of the clearing as not to rub up against the Ooura going about their lives in preparation for the seventh night¡¯s apex. Secondly, they agreed, of course, to shove Tema¡¯s son down a hole and leave him there for good. Or, to the same effect, being that their agreement was actually just for no Ooura to approach their camp besides Banon or Poh without invitation or be sprayed by liquid fire on the spot.


    The third, and final, and strangest revelation was that the Pyathen would be joining them tomorrow night in the chamber of rites for the second and final stage Banon and the other eighteen-year-olds among them would need to undergo to become Kothai. This third agreement was one Poh had interrupted to stipulate. Since the Pyathen had come during their most sacred time, Poh declared they either participate, or not be engaged with at all.


    Banon had hidden the smile that had caused him, though his amusement had only been half for Tema¡¯s unseen expression in reaction to it. The other half had been that Banon genuinely thought it was a fantastic idea, a perfect front since the Pyathen knew at least one thing. The Ooura stuck to their traditions like a boa coiled around prey.


    It played precisely to the kind of naivety the Pyathen likely expected from them, especially a more excentric emperor, which Poh was normally most certainly not. Yet, he played the role without hiccup.


    It was genius, Banon ruminated.


    What his intent really was, Banon expected, was to put them on uncertain footing, literally in the case of the fact they¡¯d have to climb to the chamber of rites to get up there. But also in the fact that during every stage of the upcoming negotiation, the princess would have it in the back of her mind that she was under their ceilings, stuck and unable to leave unless the Ooura let them. Even if they were able to fight their way out, they would be slaughtered in the majority.


    Banon had held in his shock when she had accepted the offer, but it was there barely restrained. It had only been after watching the Pyathen retreat to the edge of the trees to form their camp that he had realized why she had.


    Because the Pyathen were desperate, for some reason which he had not yet considered, or possibly because his previous thoughts on it had been far more true than he could have imagined.


    Maybe he was reading too far into it, but, underneath her projected appearance, there were cracks in thinly veiled seams and rumbles of crumbling foundations. Something was wrong with the way she was acting. Though, then again, maybe he was the idiot for expecting her to feel anything besides fear during this whole endeavor.


    Maybe he was the idiot for thinking about how she felt at all.


    The unending hate between their peoples was so absolute it had polluted every part of both of their societies, Banon imagined. Even if tomorrow there was a sweeping peace agreement, the very name of Ooura would still turn knots of fury in the stomachs of Pyathen, and likewise for his people in response to the utterance of theirs.


    And yet, Banon couldn¡¯t help but wonder how things might be if they were otherwise.

 7: Royal hunt

    Hundreds of feet up, in the canopy of a Mew tree that was just as tall under the mat of the floating mesa as above it, a troupe of Ooura hunters moved silently among the branches despite their frames that dwarfed both human and elf even if they were stacked on top of one another. Swinging from one tree to another using the naturally grippy and obscenely strong and elastic slimevines, bounding between the thickest branches available, and all without a single fearful thought among them.


    Tonight was a hunt for special game, the kind only eaten during moon convergence festivals, and aswell, in this case, political negotiations between two empires that hadn¡¯t communicated on formal grounds in three decades. Three decades in which the Pyathen had gotten closer to wiping them out than any time in living memory, and in most part due to their so-called alchemical shamans or a similar sort, though they called them scientists. The Pyathen had always been obsessed with their word ¡®science,¡¯ only now their worship of it had finally, hard as it was to admit, surpassed the power gained through worship of Kimitrius.


    They claimed science was a method that would pass above religion, above common reason and generational knowledge, above even the virtue of the individual. Whether Banon thought their movement of science was far more fanatical than that of any religion, or bond of simple community, was irrelevant in the face of facts.


    Science had created what the Pyathens had used to win this war.


    Or start swinging the tides, anyway, though even that would be an optimistic view of where they were now. Thirty years ago, more than two hands worth of years more than Banaon had years on his life, the Pyathen had made their first strike with their new weapon, the ¡®Gaelo Cocaulo,¡¯ it was named in their language.


    Banon¡¯s people only knew it as Pyathen death.


    What it really was, was a kind of acid. One that could be dropped in ambush attacks in the dead of night from the high tree canopies. The Pyathen death droppers, as they had come to be called, held it inside pouches in its inert form that was like sand to the touch but fire to the nose, until they were ready to mix it with another liquid activator and then deploy it into the Ooura villages below.


    When the red substance fell from the sky, you knew it would not be a quick death. It would be one of thirst, for the acid killed a water vein immediately, polluting the drinking water of hundreds, sometimes thousands, just with one successful deployment of it. That water stayed poison, permanently, as far as they could tell.


    The Enka, despite their numbers that dwarfed both Pyathen and Ooura combined, should have been just as at risk, if not more so, due to being on more equal ground with the Pyathen elves physically. Only that their cities were stone, built out of the foundational ground rather than atop the floating mesa mats, and having water sourced entirely from bedrock aquifers that simply could not be targetted from the outside, not without finding a way to sneak into the single most guarded part of an Enka city.


    The Ooura, on the other hand, were more scattered. An empire, still, as his own lineage proved, but fragmented as to make each piece stronger individually. Though it was during these times of innovation that this strength flipped and became their greatest weakness. Ooura had thrived for all of history in small communities, though never far apart from each other, and reserved mass gatherings only for holidays of religious or astrological nature, which were often the same thing. Their homeland was floating thickets of weeds and roots that formed the mesa mats that separated the above jungle from the depths underneath it. Though Ooura lived in the trees as much as on the ground also, it was still the mesa and the sub-surface lake and river systems that provided for their water and much of their food. Water that they were losing more and more of, and spending more time and effort on defending instead of hunting, fishing, foraging, and tending to their families. These were strained times. The most strained, from what Banon could tell based on the oral histories told by his elders, especially that of his own family''s legacy.


    The Pyathen, in other words, were the oppressors of his people, the radicals untethered from the gods and traditions of the Ooura and the Enka Humans. Pyathens were what happened when you separated the body from the soul.


    They believed in nothing, and so they were nothing. Nothing but pale wraiths with hollow minds bent on unraveling natural order.


    And on the seventh night¡¯s apex of their sacred summer festival, the Ooura would be holding a banquet in their name, sitting and eating alongside them and much more, allowing them to witness one of their most sacred of rites. And now, here, at the top of the tree canopy, Banon and his fellow men were on their way to hunt for the prized dish of the night, the one whose taste would be so excellent it would smooth over a generation of massacre and the uncountable generations of war before that. Or, that was how it would go if this were one of the stories of raw spirits and gods brushing up against one another in the times of such fantastical things.


    Banon pushed the thoughts aside as he leaped from tree top to tree top, trailed by the rest of their party as he led the hunt deeper into the jungle.


    Their troupe counted seven Ooura, all warrior men or soon-to-be. Five, including himself, were all the emperor¡¯s sons Banon and Poh had managed to round up on such short notice. Sixth was the emperor himself, and the seventh man was Elder Brahman. After what happened with Tema, the three of them involved closest in the conflict thought it best to separate themselves for the moment while leaving the other four elders to deal with the situation back at the village now that bloods had cooled and a stalemate was achieved until the negotiation tomorrow night. Tema was no doubt watching over his son, despite the final outcome being in the Mother Dryad¡¯s hands alone, though healers would be surrounding him and making attempts to dimm pain and salve away rot from the wounds even so.


    That image out of his mind, Banon¡¯s mind was free to feel the stress again.


    No matter how many bodies joined the hunting party tonight, no one had the knowledge of the sunning dragon eagle Banon had been watching throughout the past several days of the first trial, and more bodies at one time were useless in hunting dragon eagles the traditional way¡­ by hand.


    If Banon thought he could get away with shirking tradition, he would have stashed his great-bow before the Kothai trials ever began in a place where he could pick it up discreetly, but there were some traditions that had the kinds of costs for breaking that the risk wasn¡¯t worth it, even for Banon. It would be especially impossible now that Tema was set on checking the eagle himself after Banon caught it.


    Another slight hurdle it would be, even just going about that interaction without getting his head knocked off by Tema, and that wasn¡¯t talking about the likelihood of pulling this off to begin with. His idea to find a more mature Orux than the other boys was a gamble but much, much less of one now that his original gamble to find an exceptional staff had paid off. He already had three Orux dens scouted out. One that was of a young bull only barely of age to mate. The second was one just older enough to be impressive compared to his peers, and probably, if just barely, still one young enough a normal staff could take it down. The third and final, however, was the one he knew he needed to have now.


    An ancient bull living among a den built so large he had initially mistaken it for a natural formation, or perhaps a mangrove spider den in the early stages before it began building its web around it, one so old its horns had curled back around almost to meet at their tips, and whose fur was so long and thick and tangled it formed such a tough cushion of natural fibers it could likely stop a great-bow¡¯s arrow before it even reached rawhide.


    Oh, and there was also the new promise that was now a necessity for his other insane plan to even be allowed to begin.


    A dragon eagle.


    Ambition, Banon mused, would most certainly kill him someday.


    Banon glanced upwards at the receding behemoth of a moon that was Kimitrius, shrouded by a black cloak dotted with white spots as the night began to replace day. Not that ambitious, older brother, he thought, nodding subtly to the moon God. He didn¡¯t get a response besides a warm feeling, which might have just come from inside himself.


    It might not have, also.


    Banon bounded between three gradually higher tree branches, then swung his staff around and planted the shooting end against the thickest section of the branch next to the trunk as he leaned forward, holding on and aiming himself as best as he could at this level of experience with it. He sent himself flying, air hissing in his ears, squinting so his eyelids didn¡¯t inflate like balloons. He caught the top branch of the next tree in the cradling arch of his nimble feet and, while only barely, stayed upright as the tree swayed angrily under him. He leaned back and forth to counter the bucking tree top while holding his staff high above his head and tilting it back and forth as an added counterweight.


    Lonka whistled from somewhere long behind, among the rest of the pack of seven coming along for this hunt. ¡°Sheesh¡­ he¡¯s going to be a contender for scariest jungle beast besides Tema within the week, isn¡¯t he?¡±


    Tamil, Banon¡¯s one-year-older brother, sighed while he swung in a far outward arc on a particularly long slimevine to catch up with him. ¡°I don¡¯t hate that he¡¯s trying new things. What I hate is that it most definitely looks like a way to end up overshooting or undershooting and falling to a splattery death. Living reeds aren¡¯t entirely consistent with their force output and speed, you know?¡±


    ¡°Maybe yours, but his?¡± Lonka said.


    Banon smiled as the main group caught up with him, leaping to the next branch of a nearby, much greater Mew with just the strength in his legs as he continued listening to their chirping.


    ¡°Shutup man! He¡¯s not some spirit hunter from a story, nor does he have a perfect staff. No one does. If his plan is to regularly risk using it like that, like I said, plop.¡± As always, Tamil was a man ever set on refusing to join Banon¡¯s exploits and mostly viewed Banon as a reckless idiot. Shame, since he was an extremely promising young warrior, blood relations irregardless. There was small consolation in the fact Tamil at least didn¡¯t hate Banon like some of his other brothers, mostly because Tamil thought Banon would die doing something stupid before he ever got to the chance to rule their people and have a chance to make any truly damaging reckless decisions.


    To be fair, Banon found that all completely reasonable to assume about him. You would have had to be a part of his inner circle among his organization of ambitious young Ooura for these past few years to fully understand the rigor and dedication with which Banon approached every new action he took. And if you had been a part of that inner circle in the beginning, you would have been right about the recklessness. It was Hoetia¡¯s losing of an arm during Banon¡¯s second raid attempt on a Pyathen hunting party that shocked him into the realization that him and his group of ambitious young non-Kothai were far from invincible, even as dominant physically over the Pyathen as they were. He still remembered the verbal tearing-up Hooetia¡¯s mother had given him and Hoetia both, and for good reason. They had still been little more than children at the beginning, after all, and even now Banon still hardly felt like they were more than just¡­ slightly more cautious and better-organized children.


    War, he had found, was not some honorable pursuit. It was dirty, confusing, chaotic in all the ways he had least expected, and boring at many of the points he thought would hold the most glory and excitement.


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    ¡°It¡¯s funny, but I can¡¯t see why you¡¯re wrong,¡± Lonka responded, with that same ringing tone of half-care Lonka always had when he was doing anything but fishing. ¡°It¡¯s a silly thought but it might genuinely be true. Banon¡¯s pursuit of fun might actually be what kills him. Not some monster, or Pyathen¡¯s, or Tema.¡±


    ¡°Tema still might kill his corpse,¡± Tamil added.


    Elder Brahman sighed longingly as he swung out in front of the main group briefly on a particularly long slimevine. ¡°You sure have produced an eclectic group of boys, Poh.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s not just fun why he uses it like that, by the way,¡± Lonka responded to Tamil again, somewhat less humorously and completely ignoring of Brahman¡¯s jibe.


    Tamil made a considering noise as he made a series of rapid lunges between close-together branches of a particularly large skee tree next to Banon and then lept to another tree below the main group where the next few gaps between trees were lesser. ¡°I suppose he is right. Being able to suddenly shoot yourself long distances might be his idea of the next stage of his ambush tactics. So, Tyube, is it?¡±


    Tyube, Banon¡¯s one-year younger brother, and who was also his only brother who took part in his core circle that attacked Pyathen hunting groups, made an annoyed noise.


    ¡°Oh, that¡¯s right. It¡¯s all a big secret among you not-even-Kothai.¡± Tamil tapped his bare head to indicate where his Orux skull headdress would be during a proper battle. ¡°Tell me, what amazing secrets are you hiding from your older brother? It could not possibly be something that would be more than me, a real man can handle?¡±


    Tyube grunted something hoarse. ¡°Keep your own mind to your own path. I follow him because I believe in his vision, not him as some hero.¡±


    Lonka made a farting noise with his lips. ¡°I do.¡±


    ¡°So why not aid him?¡± Tyube asked at Lonka now.


    ¡°Me?¡± Lonka gestured at the general lack of Kothai-ness all over his body and facial features. ¡°I fish. No fight.¡± After leaping out ahead, Banon glanced back just in time to catch the same leaned-back eye-rolling gesture Lonka always made repeating itself again, even as they bounded over death drops.


    ¡°I hear you put the beatles to Tema¡¯s son,¡± Dartome, his much older brother who had been silent up until now, added abruptly. ¡°Bold move, even for you.¡±


    Banon grunted in the affirmative from his place far ahead of the main group as they continued deeper and deeper into the jungle, though he knew they would hear the subtle noise perfectly. Ooura hearing was orders of magnitude sharper than human or elf. Banon could practically hear the seams of Lonka¡¯s cheeks bursting as he began to reply to Dartome.


    ¡°Heard? All the rest of us saw it! Only you could be capable of missing the most important moment of our lives for a piss.¡±


    ¡°It was a lengthy piss,¡± Dartome admitted. ¡°Smelled like snails.¡±


    Banon rolled his eyes. Dartome was notorious for his snale eating. They all ate them, of course. They occupied a small portion of every Ooura¡¯s diet, but Dartome had a taste for them like Lonka had a mind for fishing. To call his breath bad would be to call a mountain a strange rock. In honesty, Dartome himself, even in his flesh, was part snail to the extent he simply smelled like one all the time. The only reason Banon wasn¡¯t smelling snail right now was that he was leading at the front of their group¨C which was no coincidence.


    As chuckles trailed behind that statement, Banon found his eyes picking up flickers of white through the jungle thicket far below. It was a mangrove spider¡¯s nest, a large and fully formed one. Perhaps a large enough one for his favorite maneuver, one which all among their hunting troupe besides Tyuebe were yet to have seen him, or as far as he knew, anyone do. Banon felt the grin creeping as he measured the distance. Their path would take them directly over the massive spider¡¯s den in about a half minute. Perfect. He¡¯d been looking for a way to escape anyway, if not one so theatric.


    Who was he kidding? Theatric was perfect.


    ¡°How many Pyathen are staying in our village tonight?¡± Dartome asked as he swung up to the branch beside Banon, dangling on a slimevine by one hand.


    ¡°My scouts say one hundred and forty,¡± Poh replied swiftly. ¡°One royal.¡±


    ¡°Which royal?¡± Dartome asked.


    ¡°The young princess.¡±


    ¡°They halt communication for decades, burn us with their water and soil killer, target individual villages, sometimes without a single warrior to protect them¡­ and they send us the daughter alone?¡±


    ¡°It is more than they have sent since before I was born,¡± Banon said, scanning the treeline where it intensified in density, starting a half mile from their current position, marking the beginning of the deep jungle. Banon wholeheartedly agreed with Dartome that it was strange, actually. He knew himself from subtle tells that the princess had something unknown hanging over her mind as well. He just wasn¡¯t sure enough as to what it was to warrant discussing it openly yet.


    ¡°So you will advocate for peace?¡± Tamil asked, disgust thick in his voice.


    ¡°My voice is no stronger than yours, brother,¡± Banon replied, not hesitating in the slightest at the sudden aggression. ¡°Tell me, is my father, the man who killed Dorse of Ain and ate his heart and spleen in front of his village Kothai, the kind of man to show weakness, to throw away an opportunity like this?¡±


    ¡°He is the kind of man who listens to his son, unfortunately,¡± Tamil said.


    ¡°You sound like Tema.¡± Lonka¡¯s barely audible mumble was overlapped by Banon¡¯s response, but Banon still heard it and flickered a grin in response nonetheless.


    ¡°Only because I am right,¡± Banon replied to Tamil.


    Poh only sighed. ¡°I listen to the wise, and I listen to reckless just as much. And I do not mean that in the way all of you may think. In every person''s speech, it is my job as emperor to parse out what is true and not something simply said to me because of who I am, or due to an ulterior motive to manipulate my good grace. Unfortunately, as Dorse proved, the only way to know the real truth of the man without barriers is to consume that which produces his honest thoughts.¡±


    Banon grimaced. Watching his father quarter Dorse had been and was still one of the worst things he had ever witnessed. Cannibalism wasn¡¯t a commonality among Ooura, but there were exceptions, mainly during the specific case of a chieftain opposing his emperor. It was something that had happened countless times in history, and some said it was the measure of every great emperor that they would eat at least one of their rivals after defeating him in single combat. Knowing that hadn¡¯t made it any less monstrously disgusting to witness, especially at the young age Banon had seen it. Poh himself hadn¡¯t shown even a flicker of a grimace while he ate him. Banon hoped, he really hoped, that it was just a sign of his strong mind.


    It was an uncomfortable ponderance to think of your father enjoying consuming the flesh of another Ooura.


    Banon came to a halt after surging ahead of their group. He looked down and saw far below exactly what he had hoped for; a full-sized mangrove spider den, its highest parts stretching almost halfway up to where he was now. It was a sea of white silk, completely empty since its inhabitants would be at ground level. Mangrove spiders, thanks to their unimaginable size compared to most spider species, simply had to live on ground for most of their lives.


    ¡°I wonder,¡± said Banon in response to his father, ¡°has Lonka ever had an honest thought you couldn¡¯t tell by the fishing rod in his hand?¡± He hoped that would lighten up the mood away from memories of Dorse of Ain¡¯s attempted rebellion.


    Even Tamil and Brahman allowed themselves to laugh at that as all the rest of their party caught up to the branches around him, where they all paused together in response to Banon¡¯s own abrupt stop, probably assuming Banon had deemed the next jump unsafe.


    Oh, how wrong they were.


    Despite Poh being the oldest in the group of ten, he was fastest only after Banon in the trees, and a smile creased Banon¡¯s lips as he realized there was still just barely enough of Poh¡¯s old fire in there to pull some of the old competition out of him.


    ¡°Father,¡± Banon began, speaking loud enough for the whole group to hear, ¡°you have gotten slower than said fisherman, by the way.¡±


    Banon heard the branch Poh had been wrestling his body over the top of creak as the old man sunk his fingers into crumbling bark. Banon promptly made several consecutive bounding jumps until he had ascended to the very top of the tree their whole troupe clustered upon.


    ¡°Still, you are our greatest hunter besides me, so I have decided to leave you to carry the weaker. Show them the way you cook the ass of the round-legged monkey, will you?¡± Banon turned his attention to the rest of the group before Poh could decide whether to toss him from the tree-top, and began speaking earnestly. ¡°It¡¯s the tenderest cut, of that I can assure you. Twice as flavorful as wood fiber and only half as hard to catch.¡±


    He ignored the scowls of all but Lonka and Tyube, who was laughing with his paw of a hand covering his newly whiskered mouth.


    Banon looked once over the horizon before departing. ¡°I¡¯m afraid the jungle open only open to spirits is calling my name.¡±


    Banon stepped off the top branch, only to land on another one much further down, putting him level with his father but on the tree¡¯s opposite side for a fractional moment until he used the massive downward momentum and the extra spring in the branch it caused to leap far out and away into completely open air, not one branch within a dozen feet in any direction for him to grab. He fell like a stone over hundreds of feet of open nothingness, booming taunting laughter all the way.


    Below him, the sprawling white-grey silks strung thickly between every surrounding tree hundreds of times over rapidly approached. The mangrove spider¡¯s layer was a thick mass spread between the trees, not like some much smaller spider species that made flat webs. And it was huge, almost the size of a small village, a blank white patch where the jungle simply ended, and the white ocean of spider¡¯s silk began


    It was also the only natural structure large enough and soft enough to break the fall of a full-sized Ooura from a thousand feet, well, almost anyway. But there was a trick to that ¡®almost¡¯ becoming an ¡®almost definitely¡¯ if you knew how.


    The web also housed a proportionally large resident, along with thousands of its much smaller children.


    Banon grinned all the way down.


    ***


    After Tyube managed to convince Lonka and the others that Banon hadn¡¯t just killed himself for the sake of making a joke and was instead just doing something the followers of Banon simply called ¡®spider falling,¡¯ the hunting party surmised that Banon had made his exit and was off to do Banon things of which only Banon could do.


    Which figured.


    From there, the remaining six hunters in the royal hunting party continued their journey along the top of the jungle under ever-brighter stars. Lonka lept along the canopy along with his brothers, his elder, and the ever-presence of his father. He had planned to stay quiet for this hunt since quiet was the only way one ensured a lack of self-embarrassment. But, of course, he had found himself embroiled in petty jibes once again after Banon had departed, up until he made a particularly sharp joke about dung beatles and swamp lions. After those laughs died, the cool hand of his father took control once again.


    ¡°So, my sons, since we have quite the fisherman among us, and the night is when the deep jungle gigantism sets in, what do you boys say to a trip to the lake of eels?¡±


    Lonka almost slipped and fell to his death out of the sheer rush of fear that name brought.


    Poh shot Lonka back a knowing look over his burn-scarred left shoulder.


    Lonka resolved himself to move to a different village after this was all over.


    Poh cleared his throat, which was a surprisingly soft noise, yet it silenced them and turned attention to him through some subtle note in the sound that meant a request for attention. ¡°Perhaps we leave the joking, Lonka, and the man of men contests, the rest of you, out of this night until we have claimed a forest spirit to be proud of, one worthy of presenting to our long enemies. This hunt is how we show our strength. So strength! And eyes sharp! And the best man to the killing blow of the worst beast of all!¡±


    ¡°To the worst!¡± Tyube agreed.


    ¡°The worst!¡± the other sons except Lonka chorused.


    ¡°I think he only just left us,¡± Lonka muttered.


    His father and brothers chuckled one more time before they all became silent, silent so long they eventually began to feel more of their animal selves.


    All senses, sensations, and intuitions. Scanning out into the night with eyes a hundred times sharper than Pyathen or Enka, hearing the slightest of changes in the intensity of the breeze and smelling the animals whose essence wafted along with it. No thoughts and feelings to be found as they descended deeper and deeper into the jungle, bent on claiming something truly exceptional. Even regardless of whether Banon should succeed in his insane promise of a dragon eagle or not, tomorrow would be the greatest feast in Ooura living memory between their ¡®visitors,¡¯ the Orux carcasses being roasted over a hundred fires, and whatever monstrosity this royal hunt could claim tonight.


    Banon might not expect anyone besides himself to have a chance with a dragon eagle, but a royal hunting party now counting six, and six as exceptional as this troupe, would come up with something truly awe-inspiring if they used every advantage their numbers and teamwork skills provided.

 8: Into the web

    Banon fell, and he fell, and he kept on falling, the night sky above him and the dark jungle wrapping the world in every direction around him, every direction but one. Below him was the den of a mangrove spider, a massive spread of white silk between the trees and undergrowth large and dense enough to catch him gently, he hoped.


    He¡¯d wanted to do this for so long with a real living reed staff, ever since he began spider falling. He¡¯d done spider falls like this hundreds of times before, using broken-off tree branches held above his head in each hand as extra surface area since his fall would not be slowed quite enough by his body falling through the web alone to come out unscathed. He had sprained his ankle many times, broken his arm once, and garnered many more superfluous injuries by trying this from heights not near as high as he was this time before realizing he simply could not do it safely without something to add extra drag when falling through the web. Branches, besides being annoying to saw off before each drop, were also unreliable and much more fragile, even if they did provide that much-needed extra drag. But now, with the extra size and surface area of his exceptional living reed, it should work just as well as a large branch would and hopefully better, since it was more regularly shaped, stronger and lighter and easier to hold onto thanks to the texture.


    Less than a second before he impacted the upper layers, he activated his staff where he held it parallel to the approaching ground over his head, instantly doubling the area of drag for the webbing to latch onto.


    Banon hit the upper layers of web with a strange mixed noise of the lingering whoosh of air from falling so quickly now blending with the stretching and tearing sounds of thousands of strands of thickly interwoven webbing as he fell through them, slowing with each passing foot. He made sure to emit a loud hooting noise as he fell, since the forest floor below him would be crawling with juvenile mangrove spiders and he wanted them all scared out of the way lest he accidentally land on one and alert the brood mother via the scent emitted from its child¡¯s destroyed carapace.


    Banon braced before he hit the ground, careful neither to lock his legs nor let the knees bend too much as he landed. He slammed down, fell into a roll out of it to preserve his joints and then began pulling all the excess web off his full twenty-odd feet of gradually shortening staff as the second chute sunk back within the main body. As the adrenaline in his veins and lingering hiss in his ears faded, he listened to the sound of thousands of tiny juvenile mangrove spiders skittering on the ground for dozens of staff lengths around him in every direction, never looking up from his task while he untangled stray webbing from all over his person. Then he set to walking. Even all around him, here at ground level, there was an ambient amount of webbing, though it was easily thin enough to walk through without getting stuck. Sort of like thin mist but¡­ web.


    Even Banon knew it was important to marvel at things like that every once in a while, let the spindly fibers play between his outstretched fingertips, gaze around at the living sea of head-sized white spiders running amok in the darkness all around him¨C though he saw them relatively clearly, since his eyes were meant for the night.


    For all the time he spent feeling like he was constantly stuck, embroiled in conflict with the direst of consequences, Banon, even still, old as he was, often felt like a kid again in moments like these. He smiled, reliving the memories of his first time hearing the overwhelming background noise of a mangrove den as he approached it. To ten-year-old Banon, mangrove dens had felt like magic little worlds tucked away from everything, since from the inside all you could see was a thick sky of white thread in every direction.


    After wading through the parting sea of juvenile mangrove spiders and web-coated undergrowth, cutting his way through the web in places it briefly thickened, he came upon the brood mother. She emerged from her underground den slowly as he paused to take her in, briefly surged forward, then halted to sniff the air around her. In Banon¡¯s experience, brood mothers were incredibly intelligent when it came to dealing with Ooura and usually only became hostile if they smelled the pungent odor emitted when one of her babies was wounded or killed.


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    The brood mother¨C which doubled his height and was many times his width, watched him pass by pensively while the smaller spiders skittered in and out curiously as if trying to draw a reaction out of him. Her dimly glowing eyes, he swore, twitched from his staff and then back to his face, as if analyzing both his intentions via facial expression and judging his weaponry as well, but Banon doubted she was really that intelligent. Then again, he was never one to underestimate any creature in the jungle, which was how he had lived this long. If he had been the kind of ten-year-old who, on first venturing into a goliath mangrove spider¡¯s den, had the immediate urge to start killing its young in expectations they were the only threat, as some less well-taught boys unfortunately made the mistake of doing, he would have been claimed by the jungle just the same as so many young Ooura boys learning their limits were in their early years.


    Life could be cruel, but when you finally allowed your identity to merge with that, you became the most effective version of yourself, and Banon had much proof of the effectiveness of that approach, as hollow as it left him at times. There was nothing triumphant about becoming a man, just the grand reward of too much responsibility for one soul to handle fairly and the building up of gradually more tolerance for sucking up the blood and shit thrown upon you by fate¡¯s careless hand.


    Watching the massive whitish-grey arachnid study him with her black-tinged purple eyes and with her forward legs poking at the upper dry mesa between them periodically, it was hard not to see her as intelligent enough to be assessing the various factors adding up to the threat he might pose her. Maybe she could even be communicated with in some rudimentary way. He just would never have a way to prove or disprove it unless he deliberately made an effort to interact with her and others like her further.


    He parcelled that away as a point of research for another, less urgent time.


    If the Pyathen could take their technology to its limits, perhaps he could find some deeper corridor within nature than ever thought possible, just like the Pyathen¡¯s acid would once have been impossible. Just think, if he could harness the will of such a creature by any means, cruel or otherwise, what could it do on a battlefield with no precedent for such things, no known factor of what to do against it? Their acid might burn it, might, but the carapace of brood mothers was remarkable and could potentially hold out long enough to allow even a single well-directed goliath spider to disrupt an entire battle.


    She surged forward to within a staff''s length of him and hissed.


    Or perhaps Banon was too optimistic.


    Banon considered hissing back, matching her display of authority with one of his own, but playing games with her patience was clearly over with now.


    So, instead, and without a shred of lost dignity¨C because it was a spider as big as a tree-house¨C he ran, sprinting for the edge of the foggy white barrier around everything.


    Screeching and pounding and skittering followed behind him.


    Banon drew his long knife and gauged the distance to, and thickness of the outer web wall as he approached it. He then glanced behind him, spurred even faster after seeing her catching up with him, placed the knife between his teeth, turned the staff in his newly freed hands, planted it mid-stride and shot himself for the lightest colored part of the webbing wall, plucked his knife back into his grip mid-air and swung it out in front of him in a long, flat arc, taking the bulk of the thickest web wall out and then burst straight through the rest carried by the obscene power of his staff into the bright and vibrant bio-luminescence speckled night-time jungle, and continued to fly for five more staff lengths before landing.


    He smiled all the way, picturing the den of the massive Orux bull he would take on tonight in his mind, picturing the bull¡¯s huge silhouette, his low huffs, and most of all, picturing how his skull would look once it was turned into a headdress.


    But there was one more advantage Banon intended on seizing before heading there.


    It was forbidden to use the aid of another Ooura during the process of undergoing this stage of the Kothai trails, but Ooura were not the only hands capable of helping in this jungle.


    Before heading for his bull, he would be paying an old friend a visit first.

 9: Tema

    Tema sat crosslegged on top of the thickest branch sprouting out of the tree upon which his home was built around. Higher in its canopy, shamans and spirit women tended to the inflicted brutalities unto his son, clustered around him in his sleeping chamber.


    As they repaired his face, every few minutes Haeran¡¯s moaning caught the wind just right, or wrong enough that it made it all the way to Tema''s ears, despite him climbing down here to get away from the sounds of his son''s suffering. He was considering venturing somewhere further, and the Pyathen camp on the edge of the clearing, all shrouded in hellish blue lights from their ever-burning torches, was looking like a good place to escape, a good place to fulfill his desire to thwart Poh¡¯s lap dog, or maybe it was the other way around.


    It didn¡¯t matter.


    He wanted revenge upon both of them.


    Tema growled, unable to control himself as his fingers dug into the bark beside him until their tips began to shred and bleed. The callouses would grow stronger; it didn¡¯t matter. Nothing mattered, nothing besides the sickening twists of tradition and what was right that they had been hurtling towards for too long now.


    The worst part of it all was¡­ he simply didn¡¯t have the power, didn¡¯t have the sway to force the other elders and ¡®his¡¯ emperor to bend to his will. He was trapped in the same system as they were, unable to climb above his station and pluck what he wanted for the sake of the spines covering the deceptively tantalizing fruit of rebellion among those spindly higher branches.


    And yet, with every new day, Banon was climbing.


    Poh¡¯s worst son still had not played too close to the edge, not yet, not out in the open enough to warrant exile. Though if Tema had been emperor, he would have done so the moment Banon waged war and called himself a warrior before undergoing the sacred trials and earning his rite. But such was the unfortunate reality of his position. Even if now he did use every man who would follow him, lead an attack in the night while the Pyathen¡¯s eyes were worse than theirs, even then he could muster, what, fifty loyal enough to him to overtly disobey the others within this village? And that was optimistic, given many among their village Kothai, of all things, idolized the arrogant boy like some savior, some better, some spirit.


    Tema thought he might have felt a tooth crack as he bit down on that empty realization.


    He closed his eyes and forced himself to steady for a long time, sinking into the animal within him, the one who only existed in the world and not in the ever-tangled mind. Time passed as he felt the drafts and breezes wash over him, heard the grunts as his son struggled through the pains of the mending worms the healers introduced into his flesh, smelled the chemical stain upon his senses from their oppressor''s blue burning fires.


    His eyes gradually opened as the finally untangled thoughts began to re-present themselves to his cognizant self. No longer flashing images and surging emotions without outlet, now solidified into ideas, concise actions he could take. His gaze swung slowly to stare at the Pyathen camp at the edge of the clearing again.


    Now, there was something worth chipping your tooth on.


    ***


    Tema crouched in the darkness just on the other side of the Pyathen encampment¡¯s rear flank on the jungle''s edge. Sneaking up this close had been laughably easy, so much so he was having doubts Banon and his Konka bunch of little boys ever had the slightest trouble in ambushing the absent-minded creatures. These elves with their chain linked armor, their prettyness and their pomp, even after all these years of fighting them, they still never learned to pay attention to their surroundings properly, all with their blunted senses and forgone lust for the present.


    Pathetic. Less than it, for how much they thought themselves the opposite.


    He may not have been able to justify leading an all out assault, nor hope to survive it, but that did not mean there was no course of action, no way to destabilize without taking blame himself. He stuffed the sickening comparison to Banon¡¯s own escapades into the irrelevant corner it belonged, continuing to watch the edge of the Pyathen guard perimeter, continuing to wait.


    For all their ingenuity, for all their science they thought put them above life in the jungle, one of them would need to wander far enough away as not to pollute their comrades with smell, dig a hole and shit in it sooner or later. He only needed a little luck that it would be one among them insignificant or embarrassed enough not to take a chaperone. He knew he would not have such luck with the princess, or anyone important, but a grunt on the night watch? It was worth the wait, even for the chance.


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    Tema only needed them uneasy, reluctant to negotiate tomorrow, unwilling to acquiesce to whatever scheming demands Banon would bring to them. One unaccounted-for soldier out of a hundred and forty would not raise the alarm to flee on its own, but it would certainly sew the kind of unease that would make every further tainting acts of unity with these creatures more unlikely to go forward than the last.


    There was an unholy tapestry being sewn in the aether around them, as much as they would deny it, and Tema would see it unwoven.


    He didn¡¯t need to wait long.


    Tema watched as one of the night watch whispered something to his nearby man, then began off into the jungle with the look of a man on the way to relieve himself. The elf, though he was, disappeared into the thicket without seeing Tema hidden a mere body-length from him as the ivory-skinned, whittled-down excuse for a man made the last footfalls of his life. Tema followed him at a distance no further, having no trouble remaining silent and unseen. Ooura were built for the night.


    He loomed and swept along the landscape like a living shadow.


    ***


    Out of the ambient moonlight, he slipped into the shadow of a tree trunk while the elf scrambled to dig a tiny hole in the mat with some silly metal tool. Were they really so weak they could not even penetrate the jungle mat with their bare hands? The elf discarded the tool and stood up, looked down at it a moment as if deciding which way to hang his arse into it. Silently Tema moved in, kneeled down behind the standing elf, and when he did he was still taller. Up until now, he had been deliberately quieting his breathing by slowing it and breathing through his mouth instead of his nose up to the point he could, and had made it completely undetectable, but now he let his breathing be free, his huge mouth inches behind the Pyathen¡¯s blonde head.


    The Pyathen, pants around ankles, tried to turn and, though he didn¡¯t trip, only barely managed to face his aggressor.


    Tema shot his hand out, caught the Pyathen by the face and wrapped his fingers around the back of his head, cutting off his ability to breathe or scream or see anything besides Ooura flesh. Metal sang as the elf drew his silvery sword. Tema swatted the blade out of the little man''s hand and sent it spinning away into the night.


    Slowly, Tema forced him first to his knees, then onto his back on the mat. It was pitifully easy, he just wasn¡¯t so eager to finish things just yet.


    He leared his face close to the side of the elf¡¯s head, making sure to move a finger so it could hear him. ¡°You have trod where you should have not.¡± Tema cut off with a grunt and leaned away, squeezing and relaxing the tension of his grip immediately to see if he could feel the skull underneath the flesh flex.


    The little elf fumbled for something at his belt, then drew a pitiful knife, even for his size, and stabbed it into the massive hand covering his face. Tema had taken worse wounds picking spear berries, though by the third tiny gouge the man¡¯s rapid strikes made into his hand, he grew annoyed enough to catch the hand that held it and, rather than worrying about the blade itself this time, simply turned the wrist, felt bones and tendons dislodging and snapping, and then finally managed to tear it off, leaving a stump dangling with misshapen flesh.


    There was no scream, no sound at all while Tema¡¯s palm stayed wrapped over his face completely. Eventually, the frantic flailing began to fade as he used up the last of the air in his lungs, unable to retrieve any more.


    The moment he stilled, Tema let go, hoping him just unconscious and wanting to extend this game. He leaned in close, putting his face right over the blank sleeping expression of the elf. The pale nose twitched, the lips parted to let in a subtle stream of air, and a moment later, his eyes were opening again. And the first thing the elf was aware of was Tema¡¯s rage and wrath, his face literally shaking with it as he loomed closer, spittle dangling, imagining the many faces of his enemies plastered over the features of the pale, meek thing gaping its shock back up at him.


    Before the opening mouth could form its impending scream, Tema jammed two fingers down the back of the throat until he had the base of the wriggling worm of a tongue firmly held.


    Then he pulled.


    It required pathetically little force to tear it out, and yet he made sure to be gentle, to make sure it tore slowly enough for him to feel it, and for that feeling to have time to make its way to his eyes for Tema to see. Tema showed the wide-eyed, pointy-eared, white imp his teeth before snapping the last muscle fibers and connective tissue with a final tug, then promptly shoved the torn-out tongue back down the elf¡¯s throat whole, stopping the incoherent moan as it formed, sending the ¡®man¡¯ into a series of immediate convulsions, all unsuccessful to clear the obstruction. Without the tongue, he probably couldn¡¯t have made enough noise to alert his companions anyway, but Tema valued the catharsis just as much.


    The struggling elf desperately clawed at his attacker''s face. Tema bit off the only stray finger that managed to slip past his lip, then cupped the little head of the little elf in both his hands, pulled it inside his mouth, and bit down.


    There was a solitary disappointing moment before the skull gave, once in which Tema reluctantly entertained the idea he was getting too old for these things, and then the skull simply popped, and Tema dropped the finished corpse where it belonged, into the dung pit carved into the mat. He licked brain and blood-spattered lips, blinked without care as the cranial awful seeped inside the rims of his eyelids, and he smiled all the way through it.


    Age, it seemed, had not yet made it through the gates of night. For the night had still too much reason to fear his retribution.

 10: Yubuou

    Banon emerged from the thickly tangled jungle, everything around him shrouded in darkness besides the small, moonlit clearing in front of him. Within that open space was a modest scattering of cobbled-together mud huts, each about two-thirds his own height of almost twelve feet. Every hut was speckled all over with glowing purple flower petals.


    In between and around the huts mingled dozens of Yubuou, the fourth and final creature that could be called a ¡®people¡¯ within the known world. Though most considered them lower, but Banon had long found it to be not true.


    They were just different.


    The Yubuou were not quite fully people in the traditional sense, yet not entirely animal in the way of a monkey, for instance. Though they did look closer to a distant cousin of the many species of monkey in the jungle than they looked like Ooura, or elf and human for that matter. Their black flesh that was covered in a complex network of white vein lines was only exposed around the few places absent of fur¨C their hands and feet and the wide, rounded, and cheery-looking faces they carried with them always. The rest was covered in flowing blonde fur that was somehow thick and wispy looking at the same time.


    Banon had observed many times how the Yubuou communicated with one another, and the fact that they communicated at all was why he took them so seriously as a people in their own right. Sometimes it was with a complex series of gesturing, with specific hand signs and movements corresponding to a network of implications, approximating the same meaning words held. In a kind of tandem coexistence to their language of signs, they also communicated with sounds that were never more than what could only be described as a raw, vocal interpretation meant to convey a specific set of feelings. Because of this, Banon had come to conclude that they could never lie to one another. It was just too hard to fake it when expressing themselves so simply, yet so full of emotion.


    Words, Banon reflected, may have been the death of authenticity.


    Despite the Yubuou often living within Ooura-controlled jungles and depleting the wild fruit supply wherever they wandered, the Ooura didn¡¯t have bad blood with the strange half-monkey people, no, not at all. Actually, they viewed them as somewhat sacred, believed to be inhabited by pre-born Ooura spirits who were too pure to be allowed to languish amid the turmoils of the sapient.


    Banon did find that mythos was quite true to reality, for once. The Yubuou never showed any aggression towards anything whatsoever at all. He hadn¡¯t even witnessed them using violence out of pure defensive necessity. They ate only plants and fruits, and had an implacable aura that seemed to ward off danger. More often than not, they could be found wandering and napping around the jungle quite lackadaisically, unworried despite the presence of monstrous predators nearby.


    The chosen people to be spared from the chaos of consumption and competition constantly taking place within the rest of the jungle¡¯s food chain all around them.


    Banon had learned some of their language. The gesturing part, anyway. The verbal emoting, he found simply incapable of mimicking to any degree of affirming response from them. It had become so frustrating after dozens of failures, Banon was sure there was something more to it than the verbality alone. There was one particular Yubuou Banon found particularly agreeable to his attempts to communicate, though, even to the degree of friendship.


    And that very Yubuou was just leading several others over to one of the mud huts nearest to where Banon watched from the darkness.


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    Ugtang¨C Banon called him¨C beckoned and grunted to his fellow half-apes, and they all obeyed, following him to cluster around the hut. They then began producing glowing purple-petaled flowers from seemingly nowhere and transplanting them onto the muddy substrate of the outer walls, leaving them planted all over the surface of the small mud hut.


    They were a rare flower in the jungle, those purple ones, and even assuming the Yubuou had collected them from the wilds, they were still in possession of seemingly impossible amounts. Adding to that enigma, Banon had never actually seen them picking any in all his time spent observing them, nor storing them on their person. He either saw Yubuou with empty hands, or hands completely full of flowers. Frequently a Yubuou would disappear for only minutes before returning with another handful of them, without possibly having had the time nor picked across enough land to have done so. Every one of the dozen or so huts visible to him were speckled with them to varying degrees, with Ugtang¡¯s standing out as by far the most densely covered, probably due to his role as their apparent leader.


    The Yubuou were far and above the closest thing to proof of the mysticism of nature. Although clearly grounded to the physical world, subject to tripping over in the mud and tangling in their aetheric fur, there was always an elevating feeling that filled one''s soul just by being around them. Or, just as likely, Banon¡¯s mind told him so because the contrived mythos became its own self-fulfilling prophecy.


    Still, he did quite enjoy them.


    Banon stepped gently into the moonlight, doing his best impression of the high and rapid notes the Yubuou used in their feeling-speak when greeting one another. The small group startled for a moment, then paused, looking more curious of his presence. Ugtang recognized him first, and immediately ran over to greet him.


    Banon smiled, held his arms out wide and let Ugtang jump onto him. He chuckled as Ugtang swang from his arms and torso as if he were a tree. All the while the small group of other Yubuou Ugtang had been with were chittering and hooting and making frantic gestures to communicate mostly simple amusement. The child-sized Yubuou ended his dazzling display of athleticism and coordination by swinging around the base of Banon¡¯s arm in two consecutive loops, only to end it by letting go at the peak of the last loop, launching himself flipping in the air.


    He landed in easily on his feet in front of Banon again, and without missing a beat, went straight into to making a series of hand signs. ¡°You come back here. See me. Why?¡± he asked. Ugtang then made a questioning gesture towards his lips to indicate asking Banon if he was here to continue their attempts to talk to one another verbally.


    ¡°No,¡± Banon replied in Yubuou sign language.


    Banon paused for a moment, still feeling the nagging worry about this idea, but the upside was too potentially useful to not try it. He made the signal for ¡°Orux,¡± which looked like two curled-up horns almost touching one another.


    Ugtang began to panic momentarily. Even Yubuou feared the Orux. ¡°Here?¡± he signed, between warning hoots building in volume.


    ¡°No!¡± Banon signed quickly back.


    The hoots cut off. Ugtang made an O shape with his lips and then nodded in relief.


    Banon made a placating gesture, then continued signing. ¡°Orux. Not here. Far away. I am here. You. You help me Orux?¡± Some of his intended sentiments went missing in the simplicities of their sign language, mainly for their lack of a sign word for ¡®kill,¡¯ but Banon hoped Ugtang would understand enough of the intent behind his meaning.


    Ugtang smiled, moonlight glinting in his eyes, then gestured for Banon to lead the way.


    Banon raised an eyebrow. He really hadn¡¯t expected it to be that easy.

 11: Donai

    Lithilyn was shaken harshly out of her daze, though she wasn''t really sleeping, just closing her eyes and focussing on the endless tapping of the rain on the soft mesa ground. The strong hands gripping her shoulders as she came back into herself were attached to a blurry face in the dark in front of her. It was Gylig, she realized quickly, her friend and long-time confidont when it came to the awful¡¯s of politics. Likewise, he often complained to her about the many peculiarities of commanding as a military man while also dealing with the scruples of aristocrats with no knowledge of how it even felt to stand on the mesa, let alone the intricacies of what it took to keep people alive in the jungle.


    He was also the only man who all at once held the same sentiment she held for reform, had the right expertise to lead the guarding force of this deceitful mission, and had enough political pull to not be strung up and tortured for disobedience the moment they returned to the Donai spire city without a hearing¡­ should they succeed and be able to return at all in the first place.


    She was pulled sitting by him, and found shrugging off the disorientation harder than expected. Maybe it was in the dense air always hanging in the jungle, maybe it was the ever-present sound of shifting bodies around them of those standing guard and keeping a perimeter, or maybe it was just the darkness that was disorienting her. The real answer she didn¡¯t want to realize, was that it was probably fear slurring her thoughts and warping her sharpness of mind. But letting in any admittance of that fact might just be the last nudge that crumpled her.


    ¡°What is it?¡± she whispered at the shape of his angular face, chin so prominent it curled even slightly upwards.


    ¡°We have one man missing,¡± he whispered harshly, face lit only by the flickering of the blue flames from black torches carried by the star-men that surrounded her at all times.


    ¡°You mean taken or killed?¡± Her voice came out half-chewed, still trying to fully reawaken her reasoning skills.


    He twitched before meeting her eyes with grave ones. ¡°We can¡¯t be sure of anything. If it was a swamp lion, we might not have heard it happen if it ended quickly. But that¡¯s an awful coincidence, considering where we are.¡±


    She nodded to his intent, just as sure as him it could have been one of the Ooura responsible. Even one of the overzealous children from earlier would have had the size and overwhelming strength to pull one of theirs off into the night. An Ooura child roughly equalling a Pyathen in size would still be much stronger, simply denser in their physiques. But gone without notice? Well, that was the part that made her by far the most uneasy. ¡°Did anyone witness anything?¡±


    ¡°One. The man who the missing last spoke to.¡±


    ¡°And?¡±


    ¡°The missing man left the camp to relieve himself, and then he just didn¡¯t come back.¡±


    She ran a finger through the tag ends of her richly curled hair. ¡°Is this really something worth waking me up? It¡¯s not that something like this isn¡¯t worth my caring, but isn''t this a problem you should have a better solution to than I do? I need rest if I¡¯m to have any chance of speaking to them tomorrow.¡±


    He closed his eyes and winced, only barely discernable in the darkness. ¡°You would have been right. But we found a body.¡±


    She was silent, realizing what he meant. An animal would have been a lot more likely to drag the corpse off into the night than to leave it anywhere it could be found.


    He went on when he realized she was waiting for clarification from him. ¡°The corpse was left for us to find on purpose, I believe. It is difficult to speak it, what was done to him.¡±


    She was suddenly thrice awake as a moment ago. ¡°Then don¡¯t. Don¡¯t speak of it.¡± She stood, suddenly intent on scanning their ranks, studying the oval-shaped perimeter formed by about half of their total number, while the rest slept their shift.


    ¡°Should we call it off? We can still reconsider.¡± He was responding to her apparent alarm, but what he mistook for fear was really just her state of thinking things through amid the stressful circumstances.


    ¡°No,¡± she said, suddenly stilling, stuck staring at one of the blue flames burning beside her. ¡°If we leave without making terms here, my mother''s plans will go through. I will be married and our name joined to a human one for the first time in the first time in the kept histories. Which means my mother, in return for handing over half our power and me along with it, will get enough manpower to accomplish her plan, a complete crusade to kill every water system in the Ooura¡¯s territory.¡± She turned her attention back to Gylig and abruptly leaned in close, whispering now as not to be overheard. ¡°You know as well as I that we must try, even if it costs all of our lives. Queen Fyri is blinded to the fact that her solution is the source of our dwindling food resources to begin with, her ears infected with the worms wriggling in her council. If we let her get her way, there will be an era of starvation and famine. One that innovation cannot catch up with.¡±


    He looked unsure, she thought, despite having come all this way with her. ¡°I have followed you here because I believe what you do, but even if we can reach a peace agreement with these monsters, how can we subvert the marriage going through? I can¡¯t pretend that as we get closer to climbing up into that tree that I¡¯m not beginning to rethink things.¡±


    She shook her head, honestly at a loss. ¡°One thing at a time. If we can convince the Ooura, perhaps maybe we can even convince my mother that peace is the way instead of selling everything meaningful and burning anything that gets in her way.¡±


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    He shrugged. ¡°That may be the plan, but it all resides on whether we¡¯re not all torn to pieces the moment they have us cornered and on unfamiliar ground.¡± He made a half-hearted gesture at the hulking dark shape that was the massive Mew tree holding the Ooura¡¯s so-called chamber of rites. ¡°I honestly think we¡¯ll have an easier time here than with her, once the queen knows what you have done.¡±


    And he wasn¡¯t lying. Asking her mother to see sense would be arguably a harder task, especially given she had already come to an agreement with the Enka. Though that was her fault entirely for not consulting Lithylin whatsoever. Which lead to their predicament now.


    Negotiating with the Ooura on her own was the last resort.


    Princess Lythilyn refused to accept the marriage to the human prince, but not out of petulance, nor hatred like her mother''s constant comments suggested. She would just rather see the palace she had grown up in topple and fall before she would sell off partial control of it, and their dynasty by proxy, not to mention Lythilyn herself, like some trinket. It was just politics, exactly like her mother had taught her. She genuinely believed this was the only way.


    They certainly weren¡¯t here, in the dead of night, inside the beating heart of their enemy out of compassion for that very enemy, despite their purpose here also being to the Ooura¡¯s favor, whether she could make them understand that or not. How compassionate could you be for a race of monsters that had millennia of history terrorizing her people? Forcing generations to lock themselves in their spires and maintain constant self-imposed lockdowns within their own white walls for the safety it brought. A miserable life it was, to see the jungle so clearly from afar yet to so rarely experience it for herself.


    Much less as she was now, barefooted and hardly more than naked because¡­ well, tradition. So much tradition that even the original histories on the origin of the practice had rotted and decayed, and apparently gone uncopied.


    No, her endeavors here could only be stomached when thought of as a worthy sacrifice. Even if she failed, even if her and her entire guard was murdered, it would be worth the chance to stop her mother from going forward with the campaign. And in honesty, she would die with at least the knowledge that her death was one more hindrance in those plans. Every year, there were fewer grazing animals hunted, less wild meat and forage to be found. It was eating at the base foundations of their society. Her mother and the more deeply entrenched political proponents of eradicating water systems simply hadn''t been willing to see the truth of what was happening yet, since food shortages were only a problem for their lower class so far, quite a few of whom being the very hunters who were coming back unsuccessful more and more often. Something had to break, and soon. On top of all that, there was the constant cloud hanging over their hunting parties as of the past few years, thanks to the new phenomenon of ambushes conducted upon them without warning, presumably by Ooura, though they never left any trace or leads to confirm it.


    Regardless, she was sure it was them. She even had a hunch that the one who initiated contact with her yesterday had something to do with it. He certainly gave off the feeling of feigning cooperation while working in the opposite behind the scenes, unlike the louder one that tried to interrupt the first contact meeting, who, like most of them, was much less subdued about his feelings towards her people. She supposed it hadn¡¯t gotten that one very far besides beaten half to death by the more measured one she negotiated initial terms with.


    Savages. All of them were savages.


    And yet she needed their help, and them hers, for what little that counted in her conscience.


    ¡°I wish I could say I don''t know what you mean¡­¡± she trailed off, staring up at the unnatural monolith. Of course, besides the chambers hung among its branches, it was natural, just not quite within reason of what the mind could understand to be so. Even though she knew it had a top, and had likely seen it during the journey here, it felt endless, like its shadow wouldn¡¯t end even at the horizon. There was an ambiance to it as well. A warm touch on your soul just for being in its presence.


    Lythilyn muttered a quick prayer to her moon-mother and moon-father, foraging the threads of belief out from the tangle of her soul again. And again, she asked for silence, peace, for something to end instead of begin.


    She believed just as anyone, but it was an entirely different thing to be in the presence of one of the ancient messengers, perhaps even the Emissary herself. Just like the Enka with their stone ¡®statues¡¯, however, she doubted the Ooura had any idea the significance of what stood in their forests.


    She took one more moment to consider before turning to him again. ¡°Wake all the guards. They can take shifts sleeping after tomorrow''s negotiation.¡±


    ¡°Are you sure?¡± he said.


    ¡°Yes, I want our entire number to be seen standing. But not aggressing. They will not show more than their readiness to the Ooura.¡±


    ¡°Yes, princess.¡±


    ¡°And Gylig?¡±


    ¡°Yes?¡±


    ¡°Two men follow the one every time one needs to relieve himself. Crossbows armed. If we have a single new development, I want to be woken again. For now, though, I do need to rest if I''m to have any hope of negotiating a peace with a language barrier in the way, without even speaking about everything else¡­¡±


    He nodded sternly. ¡°And we will watch over you while you shall. Sleep among the stars tonight my lady. The jungle is too dirty a place for a queen.¡±


    ¡°Queen one day, maybe. And even then, just of one spire.¡±


    ¡°It could be worse.¡± And he motioned at the huge tree the circle of elders and chamber of rites were held upon at the center of the clearing. ¡°It will be worse tomorrow, but we will get through it. After that, it''s only the palace and time.¡±


    She gave him an affirming nod and then motioned for him to leave. She returned to her bed, knowing her implied agreement to that prospect was a lie. Her eyes shut just after Gylig passed by the ever-present torch bearers to begin waking anyone sleeping and rallying them into good posture.


    The palace and time, she repeated in her mind, staring into the blackness inside her own eyelids. More time under the scrutiny and foul of her mother. More time shut inside white walls, watching all the green living in every direction around her.


    The raindrops had gotten faster, fatter too, slapping instead of spritzing, making sleep an even less likely prospect.


    She ushered the nightmares in. Maybe they would make her feel better.

 12: Barnacles

    As Banon waded through tightly interwoven foliage, entire flocks of summer-spotted brown beaks that had been perched in the upper reaches of said foliage took flight to avoid the disturbance of his passing. In his wake, Ugtang crawl-walked along the ground, using the way Banon carved with a humble but reluctant attitude.


    Yubuou got quite uncomfortable with any more than about five seconds spent not swinging from something, usually a branch but¡­ occasionally other things. They were worse even than Banon had been as a child while he was exploring the jungle for the first time. Only the Yubuou never grew up. Doomed, or blessed, with the permanence of a childlike excitement for the world. They were also immune to the sharp edges of the world as far as Banon could tell, so life never took away their innocence from them either.


    And actually, Banon still didn¡¯t know much more about Yubuou than that, even from the passed-down knowledge of the older generation. This had much to do with the superstitious fear that to trifle with Yubuou was to invite the world of spirits to take root in your mind, resulting in an early transfer to the after, where your spirit would then be guided into re-entering the end-well within Kimitrius.


    And from there, the cycle would continue, as it always had, and always would.


    Of course, Banon had completely ignored that sentiment, regularly seeking the Yubuou and Ugtang specifically out. So far, his spirit felt just fine. As far as he was concerned, it was just one more antiquated belief that only served to limit the enjoyment of life.


    After another few minutes of bushwacking, Banon finally found what he was looking for. A small area of disturbed ground with a visible scar running in a circle that implied a chunk of mat had been cut out and replaced there, which it had. Most notably, there was a section of rope visibly poking up through the scarred edge of the circle. Letting out an exhausted sigh, Banon sunk down onto his haunches. He paused before he grabbed the rope, suddenly finding it very comfortable to be seated on the ground. In fact, why shouldn¡¯t he just lean over and¨C


    Banon sprang upright, his attention coming back into focus. He had almost just fallen asleep then.


    All this time, all his preparation, and he had almost thrown it all away in one momentary lapse. To be fair, he had a right to be exhausted. He hadn¡¯t slept in¡­ longer than he had realized until just a second ago. And it was possible Ugtang would have woken him anyway, but still¡­ such a stupid thing like that nearly costing him everything was inexcusable. His time was already short, and even an hour nap could mean the difference between success and failure.


    After a rapid series of self-inflicted slaps to the face to wake himself up and a deep but very quickly taken breath, Banon felt somewhat himself again. He then sunk into a wide squat this time, instead of sitting down completely. Banon pulled away the cutout section of mat, revealing lake water only a few feet beneath since this was a fairly thin example of the floating weed mats that coated much of the lakes and rivers in the jungle. Convenience was only one reason he had chosen this spot to stash the cargo on the other end of that rope though. This tiny sub-surface lake was also isolated from other, much larger nearby water systems, and, as such, had no purely aquatic megafauna to speak of. Of course, there was always the chance a transient of both mediums like the titan boa had gotten to it. They could digest just about anything given enough time, even the immensely durable creatures he had bound onto the other end of the rope.


    The rope snapped tight and his feet dug into the green mat of floating mesa ground as the buoyancy of the mat fought against the weight of what was on the other end. He began to pull it up, arm over arm, as Ugtang watched with immense curiosity.


    After less than a minute, dozens of jungle barnacles came up through the hole in the mat, all hanging from the rope by no binding of his make, just purely by their unbelievably sticky snare mouths which Banon had forcibly stuck to the rope throughout his preparation days before the rite began. They didn¡¯t look as much like mouths as a weird fern-shaped, white fleshy protrusion. The huge barnacles¨C each larger than Banon¡¯s head¨C would look indiscernibly different from a remarkably uniform series of boulders if it wasn¡¯t for the thin slit where their snare mouth happened to protrude out from. He continued until the whole line of them was out of the water, all strewn on the jungle mat around him, Ugtang hooting in awe beside him all the while.


    Banon grunted with the effort as he dropped the end of the rope. He was glad to see his Yubuou friend impressed. It had taken weeks of preparation before the summer festival and his days of rites began to forage this many of the giant things in the lakes nearby this particular one.


    And, among his other reasons, it was this lake he had chosen as his stashing location for the fact it was located an evenly spaced distance away from each of his three prospective Orux dens he had scouted out as his best options. Of course, the fact that this lake was somewhat isolated also helped, but jungle barnacles were absurdly durable, and as such, most of even the largest fauna ignored them, kraken¡¯s being one of the few purely aquatic creatures that were exceptions to that rule. A jungle kraken¡¯s beak could crush just about anything, even living reeds, given enough time.


    Instead of separating the barnacles from the rope and crafting a sled to move them the conventional way, he simply opted to pull the whole thing as it was. It made for an awkward task, but he didn''t have far to go, and his time was too precious to waste on perfectionism. The first time Banon glanced back over his shoulder to check on the cargo he was dragging, he was greeted with the sight of Ugtang balancing from barnacle to barnacle, arms held wide for balance. Even in motion, constantly bumping around as Banon dragged them over uneven ground, Ugtang was hardly struggling to stay upright as he bounded between the boulder-shaped barnacles.


    Banon smirked as he turned forward again and then gave a swift tug on the rope to throw his friend off balance. An annoyed hoot responded to him, then rapid footsteps coming closer, and then Banon felt Ugtang land on his shoulders. Before he could muster a counter maneuver, the ape-man clung himself firmly in place and slapped his palms over Banon¡¯s eyes, blinding him, then shouted triumphantly.


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    After considering throwing him off, Banon sighed and instead just resumed trudging forward. Ugtang would get tired of it eventually, and it''s not like Banon would lose his course by walking blind for a minute or two.


    Despite his exceptional eyesight, as far into night hours as it was right now, his ears painted a far clearer picture of what dangers were around him. Not to mention the fact he had a creature riding on his shoulders that practically guaranteed the angrier spirits of the night would turn a blind eye.


    Ugtang swung his legs, heels tapping a rhythm into Banon¡¯s collarbones as the Yubuou hummed a tune that carried a distinct feeling of satisfaction in it.


    ***


    As Banon and Ugtang traveled through the nighttime jungle, he had plenty more time than he would have liked to think, to dwell, to doubt.


    He still had this night and tomorrow free to him if he disregarded sleep, and he would. Though that was of little comfort. Most of the other boys attempting their rite to become Kothai would have already downed an Orux and brought the meat back to their home village by now, and from there, they could take the time to rest in preparation for the next stage, the one that would take place inside the chamber of rites held in the branches of their Mew tree.


    The taking of the night wasp, Banon mused inwardly, was going to be much worse on him, given his lack of sleep recently. He already felt only half himself. Adding a potent vision-inducing hallucinogenic venom into the mix was¡­ not going to be a fun experience.


    Banon huffed the bad thoughts out through his lungs, forcing himself to focus on all the advantages he did have.


    Without all his planning and preparations¨C that he was pretty sure technically didn¡¯t count as cheating¨C he would never be able to attempt taking down a bull nearly so old as the one whose den he was currently dragging his cargo towards.


    The kind of single, well-placed final blow to one the temples that was usually only attempted when you had a group of several hunters and could direct the Orux¡¯s attention at your whims should have been a ludicrous plan to attempt solo, much less so when the Orux in question had all the sharpness of a half-century survived in the rabid jungle. The expectation for boys like him undergoing their rite on their eighteenth year was to just beat the thing into submission with staff strikes from a safeish distance until it was so disoriented and exhausted that you could slip a knife under its throat without it having the presence of mind to gore you for deigning to get so close like would normally happen.


    And even that was no sure task with a young bull. Banon was more than certain that several of the other boys who had attempted their Orux kill during these seven days would never return home again. Even with their legs broken and their horns broken, Orux would still fight until their dying moments for the sake of spiting their attackers, if nothing else. And that wasn¡¯t even beginning to talk about the difficulty in approaching the jungle behemoths in the first place.


    Orux had an uncanny ability to spot you. From the moment they did, and they always did spot you before you spotted them, they would simply stare you down until the moment you were out of their sight. You never saw the back of an Orux¡¯s head unless they wanted you too, instead it was always that dark silhouette of their triangular wedge-shaped faces as they watched you, and about that sprouted similarly triangular-shaped horns that spiraled like they had been softened and then twisted up to end up that way. They were the jungle''s eyes, the most alert and aware creatures who drew breath besides perhaps the Ooura themselves. You had to be, Banon supposed, when something was always trying to eat you and you didn¡¯t have the necessary appendages to flee into the tree canopies. Titan boas, swamp tigers, and even mangrove spiders had been known to kill them. However in that case, mangroves only did it for defensive reasons since they were only able to eat large bug species and birds small enough to get caught in their webs as well.


    Banon even had an uncle that always told the story of a jungle kraken that lurked beneath the notorious lake of eels that was big enough to swipe Orux right off the mats, using its barbed tentacles like a chameleon tongue, then dragging it simply straight through the floating mat of mesa and down into the lake below, leaving nothing but a scar in the land for evidence.


    Lonka also claimed he had seen it in person, but Banon thought it was more likely Lonka, being the fisherman, felt the need to have an appropriately themed harrowing story of his own, since he had no tales of woe to brag about from taking on the challenge of the Kothai rite when he was a younger man. Banon had never been to the lake of eels, despite considering it many a time.


    He certainly wasn¡¯t scared of it¡­ that wasn¡¯t the reason at all.


    It was simply that the lake of eels tended to appeal more to fishermen and trappers who preferred aquatic fauna. Ever since Banon¡¯s first kill, when he held the fruits of his labor in his hand, saw the bright red feathers that were now his, saw the talons he knew he would make into a necklace, and saw the beak that would make a fantastic scouring tool of some kind, he knew his heart belonged above the mat and among the trees rather than below it.


    Back then, at that age he relished killing as much as the actual purpose behind it. At some point though, the roles had flipped. Now he relished ideas, coming up with new ways to use what the jungle provided to him to his utmost advantage. Banon enjoyed having such a wide ranging span of foods of which he could claim knowledge on how to prepare in a pinch. He enjoyed the freedom in having learned a wide-spanning number of places and the routes to get there. Most of all, though, he now enjoyed learning from others, seeing what was achievable when he took all the knowledge that the older generation within his own tribe had bestowed upon him and combined it with a little extrapolation and ingenuity of his own. He had even come to see what value a little trade of knowledge with one''s neighboring tribes was worth. After all, his own people didn¡¯t know everything, as much as many liked to pretend otherwise.


    Banon stopped. Had he just heard something?


    Ugtang made a quick series of sounds that sounded like amplified rain drops, a sound which carried an unmistakable undertone of fear. Not his imagination then, and although he was pretty sure the noise was not from somewhere close, he still stood completely motionless, waiting, listening, just in case.


    Somewhere distant, a snort that could only have come from lungs as thick as tree trunks shook the air.


    Banon found himself smiling, even though the sound terrified him.


    ¡°Ugtang,¡± he said, which was met with a curious hoot from behind his head. ¡°Sunrise may be closer than I thought. Whatever power your kind still holds in the eye of Kimitrius and his emissaries, this is the time to weave me your highest blessings.¡±


    Another curious hoot.


    Banon continued from there with an extra spring of urgency in his every step.

 13: To friends, both big and small

    The first sign of the Orux¡¯s den was a clearing that spread around a massive divot in the land where the mat had been torn up by repeated movements of something incredibly large and heavy. Once they got closer, however, they saw the den itself.


    It was a tunnel big enough to fit an Orux carved about five body lengths into a vertical wall of decaying mesa. Mesa mat piles like this were quite common. They were the product of floods ripping up the floating mats from surrounding areas, then depositing them en mass at natural accumulation points. In this case, there were three parallel dark silloutes of Mew trees visible in the near background that Banon suspected had formed the impassible object necessary for this particular mat mound to form over time.


    Compared to the soggy green tangle that made up the living mats floating above the waterways and lakes covering much of the jungle, the layers of degraded mat built up here were much denser, drier, and had lost most of their living color of green in favor of a mulchy brown.


    After forcing each barnacle to detach from the rope, he began to lay them out in the area directly in front of the Orux¡¯s den, carefully positioning their snare mouths to face upwards. Even out of the water as they were, the barnacles would survive for days. And even dead, their mouths retained their stickyness, which was all that was important to him. He was careful to place them roughly in a straight line along the most well-worn pathway the Orux clearly took when leaving or returning to its home.


    After finishing the first part of his trap, he left the den and the small clearing around it in favor of venturing into the thicker junglescape around it.


    ***


    Banon pushed his way through thickets and foliage. Dew drops lit faintly by the surrounding bio-luminescence fell like spats of localized rain when he brushed past the various leafy plants and tree bows they clung to. He scanned along every branch and vine, searching for the second piece he needed to complete his trap. The circular snake. The reason for his search had nothing to do with the snake itself and everything to do with the curious interaction its venom had when introduced to the boulder-like barnacle''s biology.


    The usual purpose an Ooura had for reappropriating barnacles was to place it somewhere on the surface and then to attach some kind of bait to its snare mouth. Then, all a hunter needed to do was wait. Anything smaller than a round-legged monkey wouldn¡¯t have the size or strength to escape once caught. The unfortunate victim would usually try to bite off the offending object ensnaring it, but find it extremely resistant to damage. From there, the hunter could return later and retrieve their spoils without expending the effort needed to track and hunt something the usual way.


    In more niche use cases, however, there was another option. First, one must pluck a circular snake from the jungle, and then, using the conveniently nasty tendency of those creatures, the hunter would force the snake to bite into the flesh of the barnacle¡¯s snare mouth appendage.


    From the outside, the barnacle would remain just fine¡­ in appearance. Inside, there was a noxious reaction occurring. While the venom of the circular snake affected Ooura only minimally, causing only a sharp pain, in the oysters, perhaps due to their separation of domains, it wreaked havoc on their insides.


    To understand why, one needed to have the kind of deep knowledge of such things that could only come from generations of trial and error. Thankfully, Banon came from such proud traditions and had a lineage of sharp thinkers to thank for such inexplicable discoveries as that of how the ¡®barnacle bombs¡¯, as they were commonly known, came into being.


    There were two organs that operated as chemical storage bags inside the stone-encased barnacles. Those bags stored two distinctly different chemicals that were then directed via a series of thick-walled fleshy channels into a large central channel that ran up the thickest middle part of its snare mouth where the two parts¨C each inert on their own¨C came together to form a highly reactive and acidic final mixture. This led to the fact that the barnacles ate things by dissolving them with their mouths rather than chewing them or swallowing them whole, as most of the more active jungle predators did. Without the precise limitation of how much of each chemical was added into the dissolving mixture, the reaction could become extremely dangerous. He even suspected one or both of the chemicals produced by the barnacle was part of the Pyathen¡¯s acid recipes, though those were even a notable notch above anything that could be created by simply differing the amounts in the mixture of the barnacles'' two naturally occurring chemical components.


    After the snake was forced to bite into the barnacle¡¯s flesh, the barnacle¡¯s internal organ structures would begin to dissolve. Once an hour or so had passed, the only flesh inside the barnacle that had yet to dissolve were the reinforced membranes that separated the two chemicals. By this point, though, that separation was tenuous to say the least.


    At that point, all it took was a relatively mild shaking of the barnacle''s shell and the two separate chemicals inside would break through the barrier and mix with each other, causing a reaction that would increase the internal pressure enough to momentarily result in their shell being blown apart, sending deadly shrapnel in every direction. In other words, when deliberately used in this way, they became something of an automated trap that both ensnared and, in explosive fashion, killed whatever animal was unfortunate enough to try and wriggle free of its binding.


    Most hunters preferred to use the barnacles the non-explosive way, since they could be reused and the animals caught could be dispatched in a less messy fashion. However, every young Ooura hunter¨CBanon included¨Chad a phase where they preferred to use only the explosive version. Banon¡¯s phase had lasted exactly one kill. After spending hours pulling bits of stony shell out of his catch only to find that even after he cooked it, it was still full of uncomfortable grainy bits of shell, he had sworn off ever using the explosive method again. Regardless, many hunters more squeamish about dealing with still-living prey stuck in their trap, due to the risk of said prey trying to defend itself, prefered the hands-free explosive option.


    Banon presumed it had taken a very long time for someone to figure out the barnacles they used to snare animals so regularly could be used as bombs instead. But, then again, given enough time and enough boredom, many strange things could happen. As likely as anything though, the process had been found out by mistake, not deliberate experimentation.


    Banon grunted his annoyance as he scanned yet another tree¡¯s low branches and found no circular snakes among them, just plenty of various tree frog species and a pair of black dart snakes. Many of the frogs were actively calling for mates, and not only with their wobbling, high-pitched voices. They were glow frogs, a kind that were aptly named for their throats that glowed when they expanded to make their calls. After taking a second to watch the strangely serene blips of turquoise light among the branches, Banon huffed and continued on his way, annoyance growing by the moment.


    Despite the circular snake being quite common in the jungle, when one needed to find one, they suddenly became illusive. The little yellow and red-striped snakes were notorious for being easy to spot, so much so that it almost seemed like they wanted you to spot them. Only that now¡­ on this night when he needed them the most, they had all but disappeared from the jungle.


    That was¡­ until he came upon the absolute mother load of them.


    After passing out of a thicket, suddenly a small clearing opened up. Until then, Banon had been so set on picking his next footfalls that he hadn¡¯t realized how quickly he had made it to the base of one of those three Mew trees he spotted earlier, which now stood right in front of him, central in this clearing like a monolith. Around the visible base where its trunk penetrated up from beneath the mat, there were so many of the small yellow and red snakes Banon had to slap himself a few times to make sure he was seeing straight. Even stranger, growing directly out of the Mew bark was¡­ well, it was one of the purple flowers the Yubuou favored so much.


    Without missing a beat, Ugtang hooted and then hopped straight into the midst of the swarming venomous creatures. Banon¡¯s momentary spike of alarm ended up being for nothing when the snakes began to clear out of the Yubuou¡¯s way almost instantly, repelled by his very presence by some unseen force. Ugtang, single-minded as he was, promptly picked the flower, tucked it away, and it was gone somewhere Banon knew not where before he realized it.


    Also, Banon was too busy diving after the fleeing snakes to care. He scooped several into the small woven satchel bag he had brought for this purpose. Unfortunately, more than half of the snakes managed to retreat beneath the mat before he could get them, causing Banon to shoot Ugtang an annoyed look while he nursed a finger that one of the snakes had managed to bite.


    The round-faced Yubuou¡¯s oblivious smile stretched from ear to ear.


    ***


    Banon heaved a sigh of relief and scanned the place where his dual with nature¡¯s toughest foe would take place. He had dozens of barnacles set up and ready to blow now, given only a stiff nudge. Each explosion would be more than enough to kill him if the detonation occurred against his torso, and probably much further away as well if he were to take an unlucky piece of shrapnel to the neck. Regardless, for a creature like the Orux, the explosions would cause it little harm past a brief moment of shock at the loud noise in combination with whatever shrapnel penetrated through its thick tangle of fur, which Banon bet wouldn¡¯t be much.


    That was fine. The barnacle bombs were something Banon hoped to be useful more for disorienting his opponent than actually hurting it. Really, the hope was that the perceived sudden attacks would send it spinning about in a panicked search for the non-existent secondary attacker, giving him a potential opening to make a decisive staff strike to the beast¡¯s temples. Orux¡¯s were simply nigh impenetrable when it came to any part of their body besides the small, furless, exposed area just under the horns. There, in that tiny patch of more than thrice thinner bone than the rest of its skull was the only hope a man had of tangling with the mighty Orux and coming out the better for it.


    Normally, to fill this purpose, a whole team of Ooura would work in tandem to divert the attention of the Orux, while others came in from the sides while it was distracted and struck the decisive blows.


    In this tangle, however, Banon would have no such luxuries.


    All he had was preparation and luck.


    And only luck left now, for his preparations were already exhausted.


    Ugtang hooted as he swung among the low-lying tree bows along the edges of the clearing around the Orux den. Well, luck, preparation, and Ugtang, he supposed. Though his Yubuou friend''s usefulness in the battle to come was easily the biggest unknown among those three factors.


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    Banon reluctantly plopped down into a squat in front of the den¡¯s entrance, tapping his fingers affectionately on his new staff. Waiting. He needed the rest, but recent experience had told him he couldn¡¯t let himself relax too much.


    He was banking, now, on three gambles.


    One, that the bull would even come back tonight at all. If it had found a mate recently, it wouldn¡¯t be seen here again for weeks.


    Two was that he would manage to kill it without sustaining the kind of injuries that prevented him from returning back to his village in time for the ceremony of rites.


    The third gamble was seeming less and less likely to come to pass¡­ even he could admit that. Still, he wanted to be the one who brought the highest prize to the negotiation dinner as well. And not just because of his recent plan involving the dragon eagle. In fact, even though tricking the Pyathen princess into eating it would provide him an incredibly effective way to track her to her room, the process of actually climbing the Donai spire was the real hard part, and it was that part that would take far more planning and scheming. Thankfully, he had spent much time doing just that. In reality, even if he couldn¡¯t pluck the dragon eagle from its perch, he would still find a way to push forward with his plan. It would just be one less boon in his favor.


    There was another reason he wanted to be the one to return to the negotiation dinner with the undisputable highest prize. It was Ooura tradition, one they were quite proud of, to feed their rivals the very best their jungles had to offer during war talks. This applied to would be usurper chieftains among the Ooura themselves and even the Enka and Pyathen of course as well. Though known negotiations with the two lesser races were rare even into deep time, which mostly came down to the majority of those interactions ending in blood. Which was to say, not very official, nor with anyone left alive to keep the record of who fed who what.


    It was the entire purpose of the royal hunt his father had sent out, to provide a meal of such esteemed game that anyone, Ooura, Enka, even Pyathen, would have to look upon it and marvel. It was a sort of dominance game. If you show up to talk of impending conflicts just to feed your enemy a beast that they could never hope to stalk and kill themselves, it would shake them, even if only in an indirect way.


    Banon planned to outdo anything that the royal hunt could get their hands on, despite his brothers, father, and Brahman having both the numbers and the experience over him.


    The Orux would be his first priority. Even he was not reckless enough to leave that for last. But after he had the main quarry downed, and had pulled its horned skull from its spine, then he would take to his second venture.


    A dragon eagle.


    For the dozenth time, Banon glanced up at the sky, searching for the first signs of dawn breaking, for that was when his quarry would return. Orux always did unless they found a successful mate. They were nocturnal only during their breeding season, oddly. The sky was still just as dark as it had been an hour ago, though, so Banon resumed his fight to stay awake, ruminating on just how close he had managed to cut this whole thing.


    Even with all of his advantages, all his planning, the likelihood of failure was uncomfortably high. He could have taken the simple route, could have targetted a young Orux and he could have taken more time to consider if his plan to use the dragon eagle¡¯s scent to track the princess back to her spire was really a stroke of genius¡­ rather than a product of a mild bout of insanity. But he had never been a simple man. There was also the fact that all of his preparations laid out here were borderline cheating. It was no small part of his mind that feared what might happen if someone noticed the barnacle shrapnel embedded within the Orux carcass when he brought it back to the festival. Would the pieces of shell even penetrate the fur into flesh to begin with? If it didn''t, there was nothing to worry about. But what if it did? What if Tema found out? After what Banon had done in response to his son¡¯s challenge for dominance, there was no telling what that madman might do, and that was without any additional prompting. And then there was Ugtang¡­ There wasn¡¯t an explicit rule stating ¡®no Yubuou help¡¯, but Banon would bet his best three fingers Tema would tear his head off if he ever found out about it. And that was no figure of speech.


    Banon blinked. What was that sound?


    A soft tapping, like footsteps on stone¡­


    And then, after a quick scan, he saw it.


    Ugtang was jumping from one barnacle to the other. Barnacles that were all ripe to explode given any sufficiently jarring motion.


    Banon momentarily considered trying to get the ape-man¡¯s attention verbally and using Yubuou sign language to tell him to get off, but the urgency of the situation called for more decisive means. He lept to his feet and bounded over, scooped up Ugtang unceremoniously, and dived to the ground. He cradled Ugtang under his body, using it as a barrier for the impending explosion.


    But none came.


    Tentatively, Banon uncurled himself and peeked over at the barnacle bombs. No booms, no shrapnel filling his back. Huh. Ugtang really did have the deftest of feet on him. Even still¡­ a little luck was all that had separated them from disaster.


    Banon erupted to his feet, staring daggers and the Yubuou dangling within his grasp. Ugtang¡¯s legs were swinging like he was still attempting to run, despite being held double his own height above the ground.


    Without thinking, Banon rambled incoherent anger at the ape-man, desperate for him to understand that the barnacles were not an interesting obstacle course to pass the time with. Ugtang held his arms out and raised his chin, unrepentant. Banon¡­ may have been beginning to regret bringing the Yubuou. His reasons for doing it in the first place were simple enough. He wanted some of that anti-danger aura the Yubuou provided nearby. And, while it would be ideal that Ugtang stay out of the actual combat, Banon had hoped the Yubuou¡¯s vow of never hurting anything might exclude playing a little interference. You know, just being a distraction, hooting at the right moment to draw the bull''s attention, that kind of thing. Banon knew the Yubuou was smart enough to do something like that, even without prompt.


    But now it was somewhat hard not to reconsider his use of his half-monkey friend. Because that most certainly did feel like what he was doing. And using a friend, for a worthy purpose or not, was worse than deceiving even your worst enemy. The real reason for his anger was not at the Yubuou vigorously trying to wriggle out of his grasp, but at himself.


    Banon held the monkey by the arms while he half heartedly tried to escape, though Ugtang did finally begin to sense something was going on, and that this was not some kind of game. Eventually, Ugtang scrunched up his face in unrestrained resentment and made a long hooting noise that conveyed complete and utter contempt. A smile flickered on Banon¡¯s lips while he watched the monkey-man dangle in front of him without apology. It was then, however, that Banon felt Kimitrius call out to him. It was like an itch in his soul, and all he could do was answer.


    He closed his eyes and abruptly sank his awareness into his inner mind, searching for the connection to his soul, and so to his God as well. Kimitrius?


    Bright purple light flashed, causing Banon to open his eyes and startle, though it was so bright he could not even see Ugtang dangling in front of him. And just as soon as it had appeared, the light was gone. Banon was left with the sight of Ugtang, still dangling there, but with a faint purple light glittering in the back of his eyes and a placid expression, not struggling at all any longer. The Yubuou now looked back at him with a face that showed complete and total understanding. Banon didn¡¯t have to second guess it, Yubuou had expressions that conveyed more than words could at times. It was as if Banon¡¯s own intent had been beamed directly into his mind.


    Maybe it had.


    Banon set the monkey man down, who then ran off and went about climbing around the edges of the clearing. Banon watched as Ugtang hopped from branch to branch, taking a moment in between each leap to diligently scan the nearby jungle for danger. It seemed there had been more meaning encoded in that moment than he had thought. Banon sighed, taking a moment to shake his head, gratitude for the watcher rich in his heart. Thank you, older brother.


    A warm feeling filled him.


    With serenity and new vigilance burning brightly, Banon walked back over to the entrance to the Orux¡¯s den and sat down. Not into an active squat this time. He didn¡¯t feel the need. His mind was sharp, ready, awake. As if he had slept an hour in an instant. He could rest now, and feel no risk of dozing off. Not for a while, anyway. This wasn¡¯t the first time his favor with the moon God had given him such a blessing, and he knew it would not last longer than a few hours, but during that time¡­ Banon¡¯s body would move with the same grace as the red sparrow whose flight could weave between fibers of a bowstring. And he would need it. And it still may not be enough.


    From where he sat, he gazed among the barnacle bombs with new clarity, studying their layout and finding it sufficing. He then ran his fingers along the living reed staff lying in his lap, his sense of touch keen enough to perceive the slightest imperfect bumps and ridges. He then glanced at Ugtang, shooting his newly vigilant friend a knowing smile. Lastly, he closed his eyes and pictured the purple ringed eye of Kimitrius.


    To friends, both big and small.


    ***


    By the time he opened his eyes again, the area around him was illuminated with piercing pink and purple light. The sun was rising. Though it was not the light which had suddenly broken him out of his trance. There was a rumble in the air, a sound that grew in volume until Banon could feel it in his chest, a sound so piercing that his mind began to swim and blackness closed in on the edges of his vision. Orux calls were known to do such things but¡­ this far away? He hadn¡¯t even seen it enter the clearing yet, and if it could do such damage from so far away¡­ it would likely knock him completely unconscious if he let it bellow its call within striking distance. Or perhaps it wouldn¡¯t even need to be that close.


    The call grew ever louder.


    Banon was suddenly very tired, the Orux¡¯s call shattering his serenity momentarily. All the sleep he had missed recently caught up with him all at once. He found he had teetered over onto his back. He scrambled, desperate to get up to his feet. His vision closed in and then was black.


    And then he was wide awake again, and the sound had mercifully ended.


    The Orux, it was here.


    Across the clearing from him, the monstrous black silhouette emerged from the all-consuming blackness of the thick jungle. It was trailed by hundreds of goliath dung beetles¨Cthe species of dung beetle that constantly followed Orux around and could pose almost as much of a risk to hunters as the Orux itself at times, what with their deadly sharp elongated pincers and the penchant those massive, flying insects had for defending their source of nutrition. Normally, an Orux might be trailed by five or six of them. Following this titanic bull out of the jungle, there was a veritable horde of them. He counted a dozen already, and their flock was still not done emerging from the obscuring foliage.


    Banon jumped to his feet. Despite his convictions, fear coarse through every inch of his body. The bull had already seen him, he knew, but it hardly let on as much. It only continued its slow stroll towards him, completely unthreatened by his presence.


    Banon leveled his staff at the hulking creature approaching him from the dark forest line and found himself smiling, though his heart was not in it this time. ¡°Death is the reward for a life well lived,¡± he said the words quiet as a grouse, feeling the sincerity with which he felt their meaning sink into his bones. He was ready to die. If this was the time, then so be it. What were his later goals worth if he could not first accomplish a feat worth becoming the foundations of his claim to the empire?


    The beast became more hesitant after seeing that Banon was not intending to back down or flee. It shuffled along the edge of his clearing, its glittering eyes a brilliant yellow instead of Orux¡¯s usual red, meaning it was over fifty years old.


    Banon grunted in an imitation of a rival bull.


    Without warning, it charged.

 14: Orux

    The call of the ancient Orux through the jungle had genuinely almost knocked Banon unconscious, and that had been before it was even in sight. Now that it was in the clearing with him and charging full tilt, Banon became acutely aware of just how much attention he would have to pay towards that particular risk. He was familiar enough with the Orux call and the way it muddied the minds of any nearby Ooura, but the air-shaking roar that had come from this beast was simply horrifying in its potency. Even some of the extraordinary vigilance gained during Kimitrius¡¯s blessing had been stripped from his mind, and something told Banon that if he had endured the same mind-melting call without the blessing, he wouldn¡¯t be conscious at all at this point.


    Just as he had hoped, the beast saw no threat in the Barnacles, charging straight into the trap, trailed by dozens of goliath dung beatles following the Orux¡¯s lead. Clearly, the obscenely large insects were used to perceiving when their host and food source had identified a threat, and were now just as bent on attacking Banon as it was. As the Orux charged through the laid-out barnacle bombs, many of them were caught instantly by their sticky snare mouths and stuck onto its underbelly fur¨Cwhich draped so low it dragged along the ground. Less than a second before its horns were going to ram through him, Banon flipped his staff over so the shooting end was planted into the mat.


    Careful to position his staff and his body angled as close to perfectly straight up and down as he could get it, he braced with all his strength and activated the living reed¡¯s secondary chute. Banon¡¯s body shot straight up into the air like a stone thrown by a giant, and for a shockingly long time, he was flying upwards. Finally, as his upward ascent began to slow, the first explosions sounded from below him. As he reached the peak, and began to fall back down, several explosions had already gone off in rapid succession.


    The beast was already bucking and kicking wildly as he fell towards it, explosions still continuing but less frequently now. Banon landed with bent knees, balancing on top of its huge, rounded back, his bare feet having no trouble with gripping onto its sticky overcoat. Orux intentionally rolled in Mew sap for the solidifying properties it gave, turning the outer layers of fur on their back and sides into an impenetrable natural armor, though they avoided getting the sap on their undersides, probably to keep the mobility of their legs intact. The large rounded top of its back and the hard and sticky surface the sap created were fantastically grippy and easy to stand on for an Ooura like him, who had honed his balance among the tree canopies his entire life. Even as the beast desperately thrashed beneath him, balancing atop its back came easy to him. What was less easy to deal with was the swarm of sharp-pincered giant beetles flying at him from every angle. Banon threw his body side to side to counter the Orux¡¯s flailing and kicking, holding his staff over his head and using it as a lesser balancing aid as well while dung beetles buzzed and gnashed from all directions. Thankfully, they weren''t the most coordinated, so many of them ended up bumping and smashing into one another instead of Banon.


    The ones he did see coming, he easily batted away with his free hand or even smashed into chitin bits with his staff. Still, a few managed to get to him from his blind spots, and he felt their elongated pinchers slice into his back. Thankfully, even the ones that managed to pierce him with their pincers tended not to stick on for long, instead bouncing off, sent spinning out of control due to how much Banon himself was being thrown about from moment to moment.


    Explosions continued to go off below, but none of the shrapnel came even close to hitting Banon since it was all concentrated on the underbelly of the Orux. He continued to keep his only focus on staying upright and warding off beetles for now, waiting for his moment. No small part of him was deeply curious what Ugtang thought of all of this, presumably watching it from somewhere nearby, thankfully not trying to intervene himself since this stage of the fight would have been by far the most dangerous to the Yubuou, given all the shrapnel flying everywhere. Finally, after the explosions ended, the beast paused just a little longer between thrashes than before. Banon used the steady moment to dive straight for its head, tossing his staff away so he had both hands free to grab on with.


    He caught one horn in each hand, and before it could react, he pulled himself down and hooked the base of each horn in the crooks behind his knees. As soon as it realized what was happening, though, it began trying to throw him off even more urgently. But it wasn¡¯t enough. Banon¡¯s legs were cinched around the base of its horns. He had it.


    Although he had expected this fight to eventually come down to whether or not he could land a staff strike to its temples, he had planned to try this maneuver from the beginning. It was worth the try, silly as it had sounded even to himself when he had run through the plan in his head. And yet, it had worked. Not intending to waste his advantageous position, Banon reached down to his waistline for his largest obsidian knife and found it¡­ gone. He desperately pawed for it but never did his fingers graise its handle. It must have shaken out of the sheath at some point.


    Growling his self-disdain, Banon reached to his other side and thankfully found his much smaller skinning knife still present. He drew it, all while being tossed around in a dizzying frenzy that he hoped was as taxing on the Orux as it was for him. All at once, he tensed his core muscles and wrenched forward. As his chest slammed into the bridge of its nose, his arms wrapped around the underside of its neck. With his empty left hand, he grabbed a tuft of fur around the underside of its neck and held strong. Wrapped around the top of the Orux¡¯s wedge-shaped head like some giant parasite, he began to plunge the small knife in his right hand again and again into its neck.


    It went on like this for minutes, the Orux never slowing down in its attempts to throw him off, even for a moment.


    Eventually, Banon was nearing his limit of this, and finally realized something was wrong. Still hugging himself tightly onto the massive head of the Orux, he briefly withdrew the knife and held it in view of his face. There was no blood on it. None at all. This entire venture had been fruitless¡­ all because he had dropped his only knife long enough to penetrate the thick fure under its throat. Well, it wasn''t such a suprise. He hadn''t even been sure his long knife could have reached through fifty years worth of fur growth, even in a relatively shorter furred area as the neck. At the very least, during this time-wasting exercise, he hadn¡¯t incurred many more dung-beetle-related injuries since it seemed that while he was plastered so closely to the Orux¡¯s body, they couldn''t distinguish friend from foe. He considered ramming the knife into one of its temples, but he knew the obsidian would shatter. Only a living reed had the durability and blunt force to break through an Orux skull¡¯s weak spots, and his staff he had tossed away already¨Cnot that he could have wielded that huge thing accurately enough to make for a properly braced chute strike from his current position even if he still had it with him.


    Back up plan number one it was then.


    Banon¡¯s entire body had been tightly wrapped around the Orux¡¯s head up until this point for the sake of minimizing the risk of being thrown off, but now he needed some separation. He pulled back just enough to be able to see what he was aiming for, cocked back his arm and plunged the knife towards one of the Orux¡¯s huge yellow eyes. Time seemed to slow down as Banon watched the glimmering black blade draw towards the eye¨Cwhich was easily larger than his closed fist.


    And then, inexplicably, its cross-shaped black pupil snapped towards the approaching blade. It was a moment too fast to be sure of it, but Banon swore he saw the moment the Orux spotted the incoming danger. It was the only explanation for what it decided to do next. Abruptly, the most recent wild toss of its head stopped dead, and the Orux¡¯s whole body was suddenly as motionless as a lake on a windless day. The instant loss of momentum¨Cwhich Banon had been compensating for during his attempted strike¨Ccaused him to miss completely. The knife plunged harmlessly into its thickly tangled fur beside the eye. In the instant that followed, the Orux¡¯s eyes snapped shut. And¡­


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    And its mouth was opening. And a dull droning sound like an avalanche of churning and grinding bones was gradually building from the back of its throat. The call of the Orux would take a few seconds to build up to the level where it would incapacitate Banon¡­ but he could hardly form a counter maneuver while in the position he was.


    Banon decided to abandon this line of attack entirely. He jumped off the Orux¡¯s huge head and rolled away. Before he¡¯d even returned to his feet, his hands were clasped tightly over his ears. Even so, as the hulking maw rose into the air and the horrible, mind-grating call escaped its lips, Banon was brought down to one knee, his vision blurring, his muscles suddenly weak.


    The call ceased, and Banon was still conscious, but everything was muddied. He sagged forward, staring at the ground. A moment later, something smashed into his head¨Cprobably a beetle, by the smell. Banon was sent sprawling onto his side. When he sprang up to his feet again, something was wrong¡­ there was too much weight hanging on one of his arms. He held it up only to find a barnacle bomb dangled from his forearm by the snare mouth¨Ca barnacle bomb that he had most certainly fell on roughly, more than roughly enough to shake up its internal chemicals, activating it.


    The explosion was inevitable now. He only had seconds before he would lose the arm, maybe more. Reacting instantly, Banon severed the snare mouth with his obsidian knife, caught the barnacle by its stoney shell before it hit the ground and lobbed it with both hands towards the Orux. It exploded about two feet in front of the beast''s face, stopping it in its tracks and preventing it from the charge it had just been making on him, clearly having intended to take advantage of Banon¡¯s mild incapacitation in the wake of its call. He doubted the bomb would have killed it even if it went off flush to the front of its skull, but even still, the detonation rocked and disoriented it. Good, now they were even.


    Banon used the moment of freedom to move back to where he had thrown his staff, weaving between the swarm of brown bugs and even killing several along the way with well-placed stab wounds. He scooped up his staff and, once again, was on level ground against the Orux again.


    For the next several minutes, Ooura and Orux danced towards the inevitable death of one them, the Orux trying to gore him with its horns and Banon deliberately baiting it into the remaining barnacle bombs strewn around the field. The explosions and the disorientation they caused the Orux gave him several openings, but his staff strikes never quite found the mark. His secondary chute slammed into its skull again and again, but not quite hitting the exact weak spot just under the horns, each time the Orux managing to clock the incoming threat with its perfect vision and flinching just enough to avoid death. Soon, however, his prepaired distractions were exhausted, all the bombs having been used up.


    It was only then that Banon thought to scan around the forest''s edge for Ugtang for the first time since the fight had begun. He spotted him almost immediately, standing on a branch, one arm propped against a tree trunk and the other holding a stick triumphantly over his head.


    Ugtang seemed to have found a staff of his own.


    Well, Banon had hoped not to have to involve Ugtang directly, but things were getting dire. Under the now unyielding attention of the Orux, Banon had ceased to be able to get around it enough to make any more real attempts at its temples. The dung beetles had all perished by now, smashed by his staff. At least that was done with. Their presence had put him firmly on the back foot. Every time he had managed to successfully slip away from the Orux¡¯s attempts to gore him, there had been a beetle eager to bite into his flesh and hold on, giving him a real problem if he didn¡¯t tear the bug away before it managed to grip a firm hold on him. At last, that problem was dealt with, but at the same time so to had the Orux weathered the storm of his barnacle bombs. If perhaps he had come up with a better plan to deal with the beetles first somehow¡­ No. Idle thinking and reckoning with hindsight realizations was not what he needed now.


    Now was the time to call in yet another backup plan he had hoped wouldn¡¯t be necessary.


    ¡°Ugtang!¡± Banon shouted. ¡°Now!¡±


    Despite not understanding what ¡®now¡¯ meant, Ugtang certainly understood the name Banon had given to him, and had called him every since their first meeting. Yubuou didn''t have names, or ones that Banon could understand or parse out from their normal conversation, anyway, but the name ¡®Ugtang¡¯ always had fit. And Ugtang certainly agreed, hooting once loudly to let Banon know he had heard.


    The Orux¡¯s head twitched, its eyes scanning for the originator of the foreign noise. Banon started an approach, but the beast immediately swung its attention back to him, a beetle carcass laying on the ground crunching under one of its hooves as it stepped forward to match him.


    Another hoot, this time from a different direction. The Orux again reacted, unable to keep from glancing towards the cause. Banon stepped in again, but before he committed fully, the beast reoriented its attention onto him. He swore, and he knew he would never be able to prove it¨Cand even more certainly never forget it¨Cthat the Orux was glaring at him in contempt for attempting such a dishonorable tactic as resorting to petty distractions.


    Another hoot, even louder and closer this time. But the Orux was wise to them, not biting at their bait, eyes locked on and staring holes through Banon, its breath misting in front of its face. It was then something completely incomprehensible happened. The corner of the Orux¡¯s lips slowly curled upwards.


    It was smiling at him.


    Or some twisted, rage-laced version of a smile, anyway. Banon resolved to tell Lonka about the fact that Orux could in fact smile, if he lived long enough to tell anybody anything at all, that was. It was only after its head began to tilt up and its mouth began to slowly open wider that Banon realized what the beast was so happy about.


    It was ready to call again.


    Instead of covering his ears again, risking putting his life in the hands of fate, Banon dashed forward. Before the call could strip away his sharpness of mind completely, he aimed his staff for its open mouth and activated the secondary chute, instantly shattering its front teeth and leaving it with half a staff lengths worth of chute plunged down its throat.


    The call turned into a garbled wail, but it did not stop, continuing to build in volume and sounding all the more horrible for the pain its creator was experiencing. Banon¡¯s grip loosened on his staff, his vision dimmed, and he felt his consciousness threatening to leave him. But he held on, gritting his teeth against the encroaching fatigue. A surge of energy pulsed through him as he began to realize that he was going to beat it out. The force of the concussive call was obviously being dimmed by the fact Banon¡¯s staff was blocking much of its throat.


    Just as the smile was growing on Banon¡¯s face, his small victory was immediately turned on its head when he felt the staff wrenched out of his hands, and then, before he could react, the length of living reed he had come to love so much in the short time he had acquainted himself with it came back swinging towards him with all the strength of the Orux¡¯s whose thrashing head carried it.


    Banon only felt an instant of sharp pain emanating from the side of his head, and then nothing.


    Nothing at all.

 15: No worthy sacrifice

    Banon was screaming before his eyes even opened, there was a pain in his gut as if a boulder had been dropped on him there, and he was pretty sure his head either had exploded already, or, if not, was certainly full of so much pressure it was only a matter of time.


    There was a vague memory of a fight, the fight of his life, in fact. The Orux had pushed him to, and past his limits, and when he finally turned the odds in his favor, it had all gone horribly wrong. One instant of indecision. A quarter second of hesitation when he should have ducked.


    His eyes shot open. His body, finally awake enough to respond to his pleas, began to curl up in a ball in an attempt to protect whatever injury that was causing the pain in his midsection. Above him, he was vaguely aware of the Orux¡¯s head thrashing and its front legs kicking and bucking close behind. At first, he thought it was over, that he was being stomped into pulp and his mind just hadn¡¯t caught up with the full extent of the damage in his body yet, until he noticed a sight truly for the sorest of eyes. Ugtang.


    The Yubuou was the source of the Orux¡¯s distemperment, not him. Ugtang¡¯s blonde-furred form was being thrashed and swung about in circle after circle, back and forth, up and down, over and over again, and yet the ape-man refused to let go of its horns. The Orux¡¯s panicked stomping and thrashing appeared it might be angling back towards Banon once or twice, but Ugtang actually seemed to be deliberately steering the danger away from Banon.


    Banon coughed something hoarse, felt hot liquid immediately filling up his mouth, coughed again and tried to ignore how close he was to passing right back out again and how horrible the throb was in his head. Only after the blood that¡¯d been clogging up his throat was gone, he had the presence of mind to look down at the source of pain emanating from his stomach. His eyes widened when he saw how much deep red there was plastered across him. It seemed he hadn¡¯t been so lucky as to miss being trampled entirely. There was a small consolation in the fact that the huge gash stomped into him was only a relatively grazing blow on his one side, instead of the center of the torso, but there was still a chunk of flesh the size of his forearm gone nonetheless, and he was pretty sure some of his ribs were cracked or broken.


    Banon¡¯s hearing came back into focus all at once, and he was suddenly aware of Ugtang¡¯s angry howling. Well, angry, and unmistakably fearful. Banon growled and spit the remaining blood out of his mouth as he rolled over onto one knee, and rose up on shaky legs, gritting his teeth, holding his torn-up side. The moment he straightened his torso fully, pain like a shot of lightning erupted from his midsection, immediately sending him back to his knee again. Another cough of bile and blood, a dry heave, and finally, he threw up everything in his guts, his nose stinging horribly from the acidity, his every breath afterwards feeling like he was inhaling hot smoke straight from the fire.


    Banon barely managed to raise his head, even worse was the process of refocusing the blur out of his eyes. Thankfully, when his vision came back, the ape-man was still holding on, both literally and figuratively. Banon was sure he could have let go anytime he pleased, but that would leave Banon as the next target for attack. All that could be done in his state was watch the relentless attempts from the Orux to catch Ugtang at the wrong point of his swing on the points of one of its horns. He hadn¡¯t managed to get gored yet, but it was only a matter of time. Ugtang didn¡¯t have the same luxury as Banon did when the Orux had paused its thrashing long enough for Banon to fully cinch himself around the base of its horns. Ugtang was holding onto the very ends of its horns, fighting for dear life and never able to get a closer grip. It seemed his kind¡¯s immunity to danger was not so absolute as Banon imagined, because his lack of being pierced through by its horns so far was certainly not for any lack of the Orux trying.


    As much as he hated to admit it, maybe it was enough to let Ugtang take the weight off him for a while. He winced harder at that thought than he had for the pain. It was against everything he believed about himself to let someone take the risk for him, to not be the protector himself. And yet¡­ he was too weak. Blood-slick fingers raised in front of his face, his blood, maybe even more¨Che couldn¡¯t be sure yet if his stomach had been punctured and was leaking, but if it was, this wasn¡¯t going to be a wound he could simply push through, no matter how much he ignored the pain. All along his back and sides, he felt the sting of his numerous shallower wounds caused by the beetles. Every time he shifted his position even slightly, his entire body became a conduit of agony. His sweat-slick hair draped over his eyes like a tangled veil. Everything was wrong. It wasn¡¯t supposed to go this way. Ugtang wasn¡¯t supposed to sacrifice himself. He wasn¡¯t supposed to lose.


    The exhaustion was too much, his mind too dim. Shaky fingers probed the head wound where the Orux had smashed him in the head with his own staff, and he found his flesh swollen and bloodied there as well.


    There was too much wrong.


    He had sustained too much damage.


    He was going to die here.


    And the only creature in the world he counted as a true friend besides his single-minded older brother was too stubborn not to go down along with him.


    A scream broke him out of his self-absorption like a strike of thunder. His face twitched up only to see the worst possible outcome had come and gone, and he had been too busy letting his own weakness swallow him to stop it. Ugtang, the purest heart in all the jungle, was impaled on the tip of the Orux¡¯s horn, wailing and flailing hopelessly. Breath misted in front of Banon¡¯s face as his lungs emptied, not able to believe his eyes.


    Instantly, everything changed.


    Banon snatched up his staff from the mat next to him, where the Orux had likely coughed it up while he was busy being unconscious, leaped straight into a sprint, and roared his battle cry into the night, causing the Orux to pause its further attempts to shake Ugtang further down the length of its twisting, triangular horn. There was nothing logical about what he was doing, no plan, no worry for the consequence of his actions. There was only one thought: to sacrifice a friend, is not worth any sacrifice at all. It was so clear, almost as if a voice had spoken it in his mind. He knew not where it came from, only that it was true.


    His last footfall tore deep into the mat, giving him grip to push himself into a last moment, extra burst of speed. He flew through the air towards them, and brought up his staff, aimed for another chute strike.


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    Before Banon reached striking range, the bull lowered its head and then swung it in a wide arc, causing Ugtang to slide free of the horn, tossed straight into the space between Banon¡¯s staff and the Orux¡¯s head. But Banon had already activated the staff, unable to react in time.


    Ugtang, however, was quicker.


    To Banon, it was a blur. Ugtang, while wounded and spinning through the air, somehow managed to slap Banon¡¯s staff aside, out of the way of himself, and lining it up perfectly, aimed for the side of the Orux¡¯s head, which was exposed thanks to the followthrough of the motion it had taken to throw Ugtang in the first place.


    Banon felt the shock through his entire body as the secondary chute shattered the bone just under its horn, continued through, and broke its way out the other side as well. His palms skinned themselves in the friction created as his desperately tight grip, the rigid strength of the Orux¡¯s bone, and the explosive force of the secondary chute¡¯s force all struggled against one another in the same instant. There couldn¡¯t have been a more perfect strike, a straight shot through both temples, leaving its head skewered like a chunk of meat on a spitroast.


    The Ourux was motionless for a only second before it collapsed.


    Banon let his staff slide out of his hand along with the Orux as it crumpled away from him, instead, dashing towards Ugtang¡¯s motionless body on the ground. His heart began to sink while, as he approached closer, he saw the blood stains on his blonde fur. Ugtang was positioned on his side, facing away from Banon, completely still. He slid onto his knees, then paused over his friend, his brother, unable to turn him over for fear of the wound he would see.


    Better sense won out. He needed to see because he needed to know what he was working with. If it was a less-than-grave wound, Banon could try something. He was as well-versed as any Ooura in utilizing the flora and fauna of the jungle for healing.


    Banon gently pulled Ugtangs shoulder, causing him to slump onto his back, revealing¡­ revealing a worse wound than Banon could treat, that much was immediately obvious. A large chunk of Ugtangs chest and up across his shoulder had been pierced by the horn and torn away in the thrashing, leaving dark purple blood leaking all over his front side. His wound was far worse even than what Banon had taken throughout the entire fight.


    ¡°No!¡± Banon pleaded, clutching Ugtang¡¯s hand inside his own. ¡°Kimitrius!¡± he shouted into the air. He waited for a blessing, a flash of light, an answer, something, but none came. Banon¡¯s shoulders slumped, his hand slipped away from Ugtangs. His eyes closed, unable to continue watching what had become of his friend, what his own ambition had sewn. Tears fell for a time, it could have been seconds, or minutes, hours, and Banon wouldn¡¯t have been able to tell. An indefinite time later, he was wretched out of his weeping by the slightest touch on his knee.


    His eyes opened, and he found that Ugtang¡¯s were open again also, though he looked like he was likely to fade away at any given moment. There was something held in Ugtangs hands now that hadn¡¯t been there before. Two things, actually.


    The first was Banon¡¯s long combat knife passed down from his uncle, which he had lost during his initial attack maneuver on the Orux. How Ugtang had come to possess it during the fight, he did not know. The second, in his other hand, was a single purple flower. Without thinking, he accepted the knife from Ugtang, and the Yubuou¡¯s eyes lit up with joy the moment his gift was received. Banon reached out to accept the flower as well, but to his surprise, Ugtang pulled it away, and then, of all things, Ugtang popped the flower, stem and all, into his mouth and swallowed it without chewing. Ugtang¡¯s smile was peaceful as his eyes drifted shut again, looking like he was napping instead of dying. Banon¡¯s confusion only lasted until again, he was certain that Ugtang had gone completely limp.


    Banon abruptly stood, stumbling backwards on weak legs, guilt consuming him utterly. His stupor was cut short, however. Slowly at first, but eventually loud enough he was forced to acknowledge it, there was a mighty scraping sound building in volume behind him. Turning, he found himself facing the impossible. The Orux, his staff still firmly lodged through its head, was standing up. Its movements were uncontrolled and weak, and one of its eyes was wide open while the other was closed entirely, but somehow¡­ it was still alive.


    Banon looked down at the knife in his hand and glanced back once to Ugtang, still motionless with a blissful expression. He could hear his own teeth grating inside his skull as he stared the beast in its one eye, feel his hand beginning to cramp around the hilt of his weapon, and found it impossible to let it go, himself as likely to see sense as Ugtang was to come back from the dead. Banon pushed the lingering bile out of the gap between his bottom lip and his teeth with his tongue, spat it out, and charged forward.


    The Orux wobbled on its legs, the only properly functioning part of its body seeming to be its mouth, because it was opening again, and a hoarse and gutteral call was building in volume from the back of its throat. Banon pushed his broken and battered body faster, ignoring the pain. Straining his last two strides to the limit, he dipped low and slid along the dew-slick mat on one knee, pressing his hands over his ears until the last moment to avoid the concussive effects.


    He plunged the long obsidian blade straight up through the roof of its mouth, hot blood instantly flowing down his arm. The Orux¡¯s call did not stop, but Banon could tell the creature was dying nonetheless. This was not the rejuvenated call of an oncoming second wind, it was a death rattle fit for a champion of the jungle, a beast closer to a century old than not.


    Blackness closed in on the edges of Banon¡¯s vision, weakness of mind and body forcing him down to his knees. He fell along with the Orux, tangled together in their mutual spiral towards the end, the hunter and the hunted¨Cwho were both each of those things in this moment.


    Sprawled down on the mat with the cold, damp mesa pressed against his cheek, the last thing Banon¡¯s fleeting vision saw was a blonde furred figure standing over where Ugtang¡¯s body had been, one arm cradling a huge clustering of glowing purple flowers while his other hand shoveled them by the handful into his ape-like mouth, his smile somehow not compromised by the act of eating in the slightest.


    Banon¡¯s eyes fluttered closed, and he felt a deep sleep coming on. Exhaustion, all his physical wounds, and repeated concussive berating from the roaring Orux finally taking their tolls upon him all at once, and the last vestiges of Kimitrius¡¯s blessing faded as well, its purpose having been fulfilled. As Banon¡¯s mind faded, he was only vaguely aware of the grave mistake he had made in overestimating his own abilities so thoroughly. Even injured, concussed, and in the midst of falling into unconsciousness, his mind managed to think one last thought, and that thought was the image of the chamber of rites, all his fellow eighteen year old men wearing their newly acquired Orux skulls and¡­ and¡­


    An empty seat where Banon should have been.


    And then purple light was everywhere, and Banon felt his soul wretched from his body and torn through space into somewhere deeply familiar, and yet impossibly alien.

 16: Under the watch of many

    Banon stood, or floated, rather¨Csince he was not in his body, and rather something approximating a specter or a ghost¨Con the edge of a cliff that stretched as far away into the distance in either direction as he could see. The smooth, white material of its make was covered in an endless series of markings that held a curious resemblance to the ones the Pyathen princess had painted on her body the last time he saw her. Over the edge, it dropped down into seeming nothingness, which also stretched far away in front of him, though another white cliffside was visible a very long way further on the other side of this void¨Cwhich perhaps made it more of a trench, just one so massive in scale it was almost incomprehensible. Behind him, the same symbol-covered stone-appearing material stretched forever away from him, though eventually a dull grey fog obscured him from seeing further that way.


    When he turned his attention upwards instead, he saw something almost equally as curious. Placed in the middle of a star-filled sky was a splotchy green, brown and blue circle. Or perhaps a ball, though whatever it was, it was far too distant to tell.


    Turning his attention back to his immediate surroundings, he began to notice that down below in the colossal trench he had been placed next to, there was a dull purple glow growing in brightness with every passing second, until eventually it was unmistakable in its color.


    Kimitrius?


    Something began to happen all around him, multiple other presences making themselves known by a series of sparks dancing in the air at first, but soon showed themselves as a series of flickering purple beams all around his disembodied awareness. After the lights went out, six vaguely Ooura-shaped figures stood around him on the smooth, white ground. And they were standing, their phantom forms being much more defined than Banon¡¯s. Through some sense that was as natural to him as taste or smell¨Cone that he couldn¡¯t explain but somehow knew was only available to him in this spiritual state of being¨Che knew these fellow phantoms were his ancestors.


    Each of their transparent purple figures reached out their hands to Banon¡¯s soul in synchronization, and then everything was consumed into a purple light so bright nothing could be seen other than its blinding color. And then, instantly, he was in the jungle again, but this time still as a wraith made of nothing material. Banon¡¯s awareness floated through tangled vines and over mat covered lakes and open rivers, a disembodied viewer, not able to interact, only watch. Abruptly, his awareness stopped, and his attention honed in on something he found impossible down among the lower canopies.


    It was¡­ well, it was himself that he saw down there, fully formed in his usual flesh and blood body. But older, wiser, different in some fundamental way. He couldn¡¯t place exactly what it meant, but there was a feeling exuding off this older version of himself, one that told him the Banon who he looked upon now was not only more in the sense of experience and age, but his soul was more too. Something had been added to it. The older Banon was directing thousands of indistinct figures, all climbing up a Mew tree towards a series of pod-shaped buildings hanging in the highest branches that were of such scale they put the chamber of rites to shame.


    He wanted to believe what he was seeing was a dream, but there was no mistaking it. Everything here was too clear, too crisp. There was only one explanation he could give that felt true, as silly as it was to think about.


    These were memories of the future.


    Again, his focus shifted. High in the sky above it all, he saw Kimitrius¡¯s eye. Something was happening to it, though, changing its shape. The purple ring that had always resembled an iris around a milky white pupil was now filling in, turning into a solid colored dot instead, and glowing, glowing¡­ glowing brighter and brighter until it was overpowering even the sun.


    His vision flickered, and he was somewhere new. Still the jungle, but on the border of something¡­ impossible. A lake without end that stretched past the horizon. He saw a beam of light shooting down towards the shores from Kimitrius¡¯s eye, only that it was no normal kind of light. Wherever the beam touched, it burrowed into the earth and scorched the surrounding jungle. Banon watched as the beam swept across the land, carving a trench of impossible scale. He saw the lake without end becoming the source that would fill that trench, turning it into a raging river. He saw water flooding the jungle. He saw the mats rise triple the height of the highest seasonal floods. And they were not done rising yet.


    His presence was then above the Enka, who Banon watched scrambling desperately to save their lower-lying cities of stone, and failing. He watched as thousands were taken in the torrent that turned the entire jungle into a confluence of currents and chaos. Heard their human screams. Saw the once great power toppled in moments, leaving only a fraction of their number alive to retreat into the high mountains.


    And lastly, somehow, despite having no mouth with which to taste in this disembodied state, his phantom dove down into the murky currents and managed to taste the water that ravaged and swept away entire swaths of the jungle, leaving only the soil-rooted mew trees still in place.


    And that water tasted of salt.


    Abruptly, Banon was torn out of the vision and found himself standing, or floating, again surrounded by those same six purple souls who had guided him into the vision. Once again they were back to the white stone cliff on the edge of that massive trench. As he studied these familiar souls, he found a truth seeping into his mind. All this time, he had thought it was Kimitrius who watched over him personally. But it was not so. These glowing purple beings gathered around him, he could now tell, were his closest ancestors'' spirits, men and women who had carried the torch of his bloodline into deep time. And it was they, not God himself, who had chosen him.


    All this time¡­ he had been so sure he was the chosen champion, the only blessed enough to be the focus of the moon God¡¯s eyes. Now, he saw that he had been under the watch of many instead. Each time in his life he had felt that feeling like someone was there, nudging up against his senses but never fully detectable, it had been one of them, and each time he had seen the purple flash and something impossible had happened, it had all been because of them. Kimitrius may have provided the power, but his people had chosen him.


    As he realized this, it must have manifested in his soul somehow, because each of the six ancestor spirits buzzed and fizzled into fractal shapes and impossible colors that conveyed clearer to him than any words ever could have that he was correct, and that they had chosen him for a purpose, a purpose they were eager to show him now. He felt the fringes of his soul being tugged at and prodded as they eagerly awaited his decision.


    More unsure than before, but still needing to know what meant, he agreed.


    Without hesitating, the spirits grabbed hold of him and pulled him over the edge of the cliff with them. They then turned downwards and began flying him deeper and deeper towards the sea of purple lights glowing in the depths of the trench.


    They accelerated faster and faster until the white walls of the cliff were long left behind them, and all that there was were dull purple lights scattered in the infinite darkness all around them. It was then, finally, that Banon began to pick up on something. The purple lights¡­ they weren¡¯t some homogenous glow like it had seemed looking down from the cliff¡¯s edge, but rather thousands and thousands of other souls, just like he and his guides were. There was something different about them, though, something wrong. There was no other way he could describe what he saw, what he felt, than to say that they were in a state of decay, of soul-rot. Some of them even appeared to be completely inert husks, barely even visible at all. Others twitched and writhed, their shapes taking sickly angles and their buzzing exuding a profound sense of pain.


    Then, the group shepherding him finally came to a stop once they reached the center of the sea of souls. Or so Banon imagined it was. He could see no edges to it in any direction anymore, only dark purple souls swimming weakly around in an infinite void.


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    His guides came together as one, and a deafening blast of soul energy emanated from them, smashing his soul senses into some kind of hyper-alertness. And it seemed the effect had extended to the other souls around them as well. Banon could tell that all of their awarenesses¨Cthousands of them, maybe infinite¨Chad turned to observe him and his ancestors. Even though there were no perceivable eyes looking at anything, Banon could feel it for certain. From the uncountable souls focussing on him, he began to sense at first a trickle, then an overwhelming flood of intermingled feelings. Fear, hope, anger, but most profoundly, doubt in what the future held for them.


    Without asking permission, his six guides shoved their fractal tendrils into his soul and started pulling, trying to tear him wide open, or so it felt like. Banon resisted them, and immediately felt a sense of surprise and frustration from them because of it. He didn¡¯t care that he could tell they were his nearest of kin in his lineage, he refused to be compelled to spill the guts of his¡­ well, his everything, out for all of these souls to observe.


    Eventually, they seemed to realize they could not make him budge.


    It was then one of the phantom ancestors took charge over the others, one that had projected strength and intelligence right from the beginning, despite his actual soul body appearing no different from the other five. With a series of sharp instructions sent through soul-bursts, this leader commanded the other five to stop prodding him. More soul speak between the six of them. And then, it seemed, they had come to an agreement.


    As one, they turned their attention outwards, their tendrils somehow extending to every other soul regardless of distance, all at once. Their colossal web of soul tendrils ensnared everyone, and Banon felt through the vibrations between them that they were requesting all of them to open themselves as a sign of good grace. There was a palpable hesitation at first, but then, faster and faster as time went on, more and more of the souls opened up their connections. Those who were more resistant were forced open by the six ancestors'' superior might, regardless of Banon¡¯s own objections or theirs.


    In the end, Banon was left with an uncountable amount of witnesses, all open to him. The clear leader of the six approached Banon more carefully this time, instead deciding to open his own soul first. There was no hiding what was underneath. It was raw thought Banon was observing. Through this raw stream of consciousness, he assured Banon that it was no trick, no ploy.


    All of Banon¡¯s inhibitions bled away in the face of this. There was no mistaking the genuine nature of his request. Whether it was really in Banon¡¯s best interest or not remained to be seen, but his ancestor seemed completely certain Banon would succeed where others had failed. That was what he felt most strongly.


    Banon focussed internally and now that he was, realized just how tangled up his soul had become while fending away the perceived intruders. After massaging the defensive back into a relaxed state, he found the rest of the process came incredibly naturally to him.


    It wasn''t hard to open his soul, nor to project his own will upon them all. His deepest truths exploded outward, vibrating along the wire-like tendrils connecting him to the other souls. He had spent practically every moment of his life dedicated towards one goal, saving the dwindling empire of his father, saving all of his people and becoming the last Ooura emperor. And once his heart was open, all of it, everything he had ever come to love and cherish was laid bare. There was no hiding his pious, his ambition, the fire burning in his soul that sought to burn the enemies of Ooura into ash and see their empires blown away in the wind as if they were never there at all.


    All at once, millions of phantom souls buzzed and fizzled, blending into one another and into him as well, their soul-bodies ceasing to be sensible and instead turning into an infinite series of fractal shapes that interlocked with the same shapes he could feel sprouting from his own soul. The feeling was indescribable and impossible to know exactly what it meant. He felt a profound sense of acceptance from them, yes, but laced with the weight of a mountain, the weight of all their hopes and wishes, the weight of responsibility for the continued survival of all.


    The leader of the six moved in again. Instantly, a series of ideas was communicated to him. There was so much there, but it boiled down to a simple enough concept.


    Kimitrius was dying, losing the battle against Demnus for control for too long, long enough that the detrimental effects were becoming permanent. The second part, the one that terrified Banon, sending his soul-shapes into chaos and causing the other spirits to flee away from him, was that it was his responsibility to prevent their God from his slow degradation. For inside the end well of Kimitrius, one''s soul was only as strong his was.


    It was Banon¡¯s responsibility to save them all.


    Banon¡¯s soul writhed and twisted away from them, desperate to get away from the weight of everything that had been thrust upon him.


    The ancestors took mercy on his panic, all of them reaching their hands out in unison and tore him back through space, and now he found himself floating over his own body in the jungle again. Not the older version, but him, now. His body¡¯s chest rose and fell just enough to tell he was still alive, though the dried blood covering the side of his stomach was more than a little concerning. Banon should have been relieved to find he wasn¡¯t dead, but it was hard to be. Not only because of everything he had just been shown, but also because the shock he felt gazing upon the dozens of figures clustered around his body was overpowering.


    Yubuou.


    Before he could form thoughts about that, his ancestor spirits winked out of existence and he was left alone. Alone¡­ except for a blue spirit that was slowly gliding through the lower canopy towards him. This spirit was completely alien in its appearance to the purple ones he had been among just before.


    This one was not a fractal of interlocking of shapes. It was fibrous, like a single thread woven back on itself a thousand thousand times over, and it swam through the air too slowly, as if it was submerged in transparent liquid.


    It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.


    Just before their spirits touched, both stopped, examining one another, both of their forms twitching in curiosity. The blue spirit glanced down at his body lying on the forest floor below, and immediately, her form began to speed up, exuding a sense that she was filled with confusion, perhaps worry, or perhaps nothing he was interpreting was true to how she really felt at all.


    Banon reached out to her.


    Her blue tendrils snapped into place, and suddenly the strings were clustered into many distinct dots, almost giving the appearance of stars.


    ¡°Wake up,¡± a feminine voice whispered, though the sound was deafening and came from all directions at once.


    Banon¡¯s first experience of being inside flesh again was to gasp and open his eyes, and the second was to realize just how strange it felt to blink. Every minutia that was once taken for granted was brought to the fore, in fact. Blinking was to slide taught flesh over fleshy spheres that caused him vision, and that vision was only in one direction rather than omnidirectional. Breathing was¨Cbesides obscenely painful¨Cto force open the bone-encased chamber that protected his lungs, creating negative pressure that resulted in a cool feeling in his throat as air rushed through it. And more, and more, and more. Everything was more and new, hard to get used to, like he was partly experiencing what it was to become an infant exploring the world with his senses again.


    Once his more broad-level perceptions came back, he realized he was on his back and surrounded by Yubuou. Ugtang¡¯s entire tribe was here, standing over him and staring down at Banon curiously. He blinked rapidly until he finally figured out he needed to narrow his eyes to prevent the bright light from hurting them. The bright light¡­ of day. It appeared he had been out for longer than he would have liked. His gaze flicked from face to face. Why were the Yubuou so placid? So docile? Just staring at him rather than mulling about, all ancy, picking at themselves or swinging from branches.


    Once he finally adjusted to the light, he noticed it¡­


    Every single one of their eyes had a dull purple glint within them.


    And Ugtang¡­


    Ugtang was there. Very much there, and fully healed. Even his fur was blonde and unblemished, and his smile was gold. Once, Banon would have thought he might react differently to such an impossible sight as Ugtang, alive and well, after the state he had last seen him in. Now? It was hard to even bother questioning it after what he had seen in his vision. So instead, he just skipped to the good part.


    Banon sat up and wrapped Ugtang in an all-encompassing hug.


    ***


    Standing off to the side of the commotion while Ugtang¡¯s entire tribe bustled around the corpse of the Orux, a future emperor and his Yubuou brother stood facing one another, sharing one last smile before Banon departed. Banon kneeled, reaching out to Ugtang, and the Yubuou responded in kind. Ugtang¡¯s much smaller hand clasped inside his, Banon looked deep into his friend''s smiling eyes. ¡°I leave this to you, little brother. Another task is calling my name.¡±


    Far away, as if his own soul was momentarily projected there, Banon swore he could hear talons curling into bark, smell its pungent aroma, and lastly and most vividly pictured in his mind''s eye, he saw the first rays of sun reflecting blindingly bright against golden feathers.


    Not for the first time today, Banon smiled in the face of an impossible task, and then he left Ugtang to his own devices, trusting him to lead his tribe.


    And trusting Kimitrius to watch over them all.

 17: Lake of Eels

    The royal hunting troupe was led deeper and deeper into the jungle by emperor Poh. As the hours dragged on, Lonka¡¯s three brothers and Brahman seemed to only gain in enthusiasm. All Lonka¨Cwho reluctantly kept up at the back of the pack¨Ccould think about was how terrified he was to be going to The Lake of Eels again. On his first and only previous visit, he had been a child, and now he felt as if he were one all over again, fear prickling along his nape, anticipation welling in his gut, and a slight spasm in one of his eyes that was growing stronger and more annoying with each time it repeated again.


    The sky was still as thick as pitch and twice as dark. But even the dim, ambient light provided by scattered bio-luminescent flora was enough for Ooura like them to see just fine. Unfortunately for Lonka, his sense of time seemed to blend together the closer and closer they got, and suddenly, though it had only felt minutes since Banon had departed them, The Lake of Eels came into view, and the sky above it was beginning to show the first colors of sunrise. Its shores were marked distinctly by the clustering of taller Mew trees lining them, giving the vast lake a distinct silhouette even from a distance. There were Mews sprouting further out from the shore as well, but since the lake bottom was so deep, even the colossal Mew, when rooted to those depths, ended up with their above mat portions being no taller than the other tree species whose roots clung directly into the mats floating on the water¡¯s surface. Further out even than that, there were no trees at all, no mat either. Just open, deep, foreboding water.


    From there, it felt only a blink of an eye until Lonka, Tyube, Dartome, Tamil, elder Brahman and emperor Poh were already trotting out onto the main lake, their feet squelching with each step over the saturated mat, un-fathomable depths of water below them. As embarrassing as it was to say¨Cbeing that Lonka¡¯s entire identity revolved around fishing¨Che was terrified of deep water. The way he saw it, the aeropaima and mid-sized krakens that roamed their home waters were more than scary enough as it was. His missing finger twitched with phantom pain ing response to the thought. Here, walking on a floating mat of weeds above more water than any one lake had business possessing, Lonka couldn¡¯t help but imagine the weedy ground suddenly giving way into the mouth of some megolithic fish that decided to swallow them all whole.


    Considering what Lonka knew actually did lurk under there, his fears weren¡¯t entirely far off.


    ¡°Well,¡± Poh called over his shoulder to the rest of the troupe trailing him. ¡°I believe this is a virgin visit for all here but Lonka, myself, and elder Brahman, eh?¡±


    Tyube, Lonka¡¯s fellow Banon-supporting brother, shot Lonka a curious look. ¡°So,¡± Tyube began, ¡°why does he look like he''s about to shit himself while father struts like a red peacock? You both have been here before, like he says, no?¡±


    Lonka fidgeted nervously, unable to look his youngest brother in the eyes.


    ¡°To be honest, I have always been curious about that too,¡± Tamil added, looking back towards Lonka briefly as well. ¡°You never tell us what actually happened. Father won''t either, which is odd for him.¡±


    Dartome was the only son of Poh who appeared completely unmoved, marching straight forward just like his father, a wide, snail-eating grin on his lips. ¡°You all never figured it out? Poh is a Kothai. Lonka is not. They came here together and encountered exactly what you should expect in the deep jungle; monsters. Only Poh did as Kothai do, and killed, and Lonka did as Lonka does, and pissed himself.¡±


    Tyube and Tamil glanced at each other, sharing a look of uneasiness, apparently not so convinced that Lonka¡¯s discomfort was unfounded. A small part of Lonka was warmed that Tamil wasn¡¯t immediately dismissive of him for not being Kothai, given Tamil and Dartome had both completed their rite. Most of his mind, however, was overly preoccupied with terror.


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    Tyube nudged elder Brahman to get his attention¨Ctaking after Banon in his disregard for authority, it seemed. ¡°So, are you going to tell us then?¡±


    Brahman didn¡¯t acknowledge the question at all. However, the fact that his eyes were constantly scanning and his posture projected poise and vigilance seemed to only make Tyube and Tamil all the more uneasy. Their walk was surprisingly uneventful as they went further and further out from the shore. The foliage was sparse, the fauna even moreso¨Cwhich wasn¡¯t surprising in the least, given the things Lonka knew lurked beneath the mat. This place, Lonka genuinely believed, might be a small pocket of hell that spilled over into the world.


    The unexpectedly boring stroll eventually came to a halt when Poh raised a hand. Lonka¡¯s stomach dropped when he saw Poh drop to a crouch and begin to half-crawl along the ground, poking and probing at the mat with his hands and feet both. After enough testing, Poh seemed satisfied with the level of give in the mat here, and a small smile graced his lips. Lonka shuddered and began frantically looking around for nearby trees. Thankfully, there were a couple of mat-growers closeby enough.


    ¡°What? What is it? What in the world has gotten into the two of you?¡± Tamil asked.


    Poh stood up slowly and turned to address his royal hunting troupe, gaining all of their attention immediately without needing to signal or say anything. ¡°Tell me, have any of you noticed how thin the mat has gotten as we continued further from the shore?


    Tamil and Tyube looked around their feet. Tamil even tested its give like Poh had been with a few short jabs with his foot.


    Lonka¡¯s fear was rising with every passing moment.


    ¡°This,¡± Poh began, arms raised out wide, ¡°my sons, is a unique quality to the lake of eels alone. For some reason, the mat out this far is never all that thick, yet quite uniform and strong, making it so I can do¡­ this.¡±


    He then began to jump up and down. Or, Lonka supposed, it would be more accurate to call it bouncing, since his feet weren''t leaving the mat. In fact, what he was really doing was kicking down into the mat over and over again, then, in between each push downwards, bending his legs to ride the rebounding force caused by the buoyancy of the mat. Since the mat was so thin, the slimy green ground acted more as a membrane than something solid, and moved almost as if it was just an extension of the liquid beneath it, rippling into larger and larger waves of green as Poh continued.


    In under a minute, Poh had become the central point of a several-foot-high wave of mat rippling in all directions outwards from him. This was possible because the ground itself was only a thin layer of floating entangled weeds. Certainly strong enough to walk on, and stay intact despite the stress caused by the rippling, but not so solid that it couldn¡¯t be moved with a little deliberate coxing. It helped in no small measure that Ooura had such exceptional leg strength. Poh, at some points, had his entire body disappearing below the level of the waves¨Cfrom where Lonka stood, anyway.


    Lonka¡¯s stomach twisted in anticipation of what was coming next.


    ¡°Boys,¡± Poh said, ¡°the Dryad¡¯s favor for any man to pluck ten eels, and her ever-lasting servitude for the first man to shave even a finger''s worth of meat from the Orux eater.¡±


    ¡°Orux eater?¡± Tamil asked incredulously while they all rode Poh¡¯s ever-increasing waves.


    Lonka almost fainted on the spot just hearing the mention of its name again.


    A dull sound began to emanate from beneath them, muffled by the mat in between the shrieking creatures and the Ooura they were trying to get through to.


    ¡°What is that noise?¡± Tyube asked, drawing his knife.


    ¡°Dartome was right,¡± Lonka said, drawing everyone''s attention even though his words were quiet, his voice shuddering and his left eyelid twitching uncontrollably. ¡°Monsters.¡±


    All at once, dozens of black shapes burst through the mat, their shrieks vastly louder now that the creatures responsible were above the mat with them.


    The royal hunting troupe scrambled into action as chaos erupted around them.

 18: Orux eater

    Though the black creatures bursting up through the mat all around them were technically leaches, they were so much larger than normal leeches up to the point of absurdity, and this lake alone claimed home to this gigantic strain of the species. As soon as they were on top of the mat, however, the second terrifying difference between them and normal leeches became obvious. They could move above ground. Their inky black bodies began to change the moment they were on top of the mat, taking on a longer and thinner form better suited for movement out of water. Once they finished their metamorphosis into a much more eel, or snake-like state, they immediately began slithering towards the Ooura standing closest to them.


    Only one crisp moment later, Poh used the upswing of his most recent bounce to make a great leap away from his starting point at the center of the waves, sending himself flying dozens of feet away, and it was not more than three breaths until they all learned why. A purple tentacle the size of a tree burst through the mat in the precise location Poh had just been, and it immediately started flailing desperately for the source of such a significant disturbance as Poh had caused.


    ¡°Mother of all mud pillow,¡± Lonka muttered, watching as the bright yellow glowing lures dangling from all over the kraken tentacle''s flesh left afterimages in his darkness-adjusted eyes.


    Brahman caught two leeches just before they managed to attach onto his legs in one swipe with his free hand, then cleaved off both of their spiny, sucker-mouthed heads in one clean cut, tossing them to the side by a tree he was probably planning on using as a marker for where he would retrieve his prizes later. Besides Poh, the elder was the only one who spared no pause for the sight of the obscenely massive tentacle. Though, to his three brothers'' credit, they quickly broke through their collective shock in order to focus on the more immediate threats posed by the leeches all around them.


    Lonka sighed, looking around, trying to figure out some way to get out of this without being branded entirely a coward. The leeches were things of nightmare. He honestly liked his chances better with the kraken¡¯s tentacle than them. So, while the others tangled with the eels, Lonka instead found himself climbing up into the low-lying and, unfortunately, sparse tree canopy.


    ¡°He runs again!¡± Poh called. ¡°The greatest fisherman among us and you would think he would be attracted to the greatest lake in the known world like a bee to a flower!¡±


    Lonka made a farting noise with his lips while he clambered above them all, making his way closer to where the single colossal tentacle sticking up through the mat was still desperately trying to catch hold of the threat to its domain. It had already caught some of the leeches by random happenstance, which were now stuck to its barbed sucker cups, and beginning to weigh it down, noticeably dimming the ferocity with which it moved.


    Eventually, by the time Lonka was standing on the branch of a tree positioned right over top of it, the tentacle had caught enough things, both living and not, that it was too weighed down to move much at all. Less conveniently, it only took a moment for the tentacle to slither back beneath the surface and even less time for the next fresh tentacle to appear, again thrashing with all the ferocity the first one had, searching for the cause of the disturbance. In fact, if Lonka wasn¡¯t mistaken, its reach was wider now. No doubt¡­ he thought with dread, The Orux Eater is coming closer to the surface.


    Thankfully for most of the others, they had already been chased out of the tentacle''s attack radius by the pursuing eels. Poh, on the other hand, was tempting fate like he always did. He stood only barely far enough away that the tentacle hadn¡¯t managed to snag him¡­ yet. And it was only a matter of time before he would be in danger since the tentacle was gradually lengthening. Poh tossed three dead eels aside, grinning at the thrashing tentacle like a giddy child. Lonka just sulked above, watching his father''s antics with a dissatisfied look on his face.


    How Poh had managed to live this long, Lonka honestly had no idea.


    Then again, his many scars told a different story. He had already lived a dozen lives, one for each of his sons. It was a known thing. The more sons you had, the stronger your own life force became, and so the more unlikely death was to find its mark falling on you. Lonka wasn¡¯t overly superstitious, but it was hard to deny the proof standing within a lick of death below him, completely unphased.


    Untill, all at once, he was very much phased.


    Poh, stupidly, so, so stupidly, had tried to make a swipe at the tentacle during one of its flails in his direction, and though his knife had hit home, so too had one of the barbed suckers managed to pierce and latch onto his arm. For the first time in his life, Lonka saw fear on the man''s face, though it was quite short-lived before his face was out of view as he was sent stumbling, taken along by the momentum of the huge fleshy arm. The moment the tentacle felt the heavy resistance against it, it must have known it had hit something worth prioritizing because it ceased trying to flail about randomly and instead started to focus on pulling Poh. Lonka could only watch as his father was pulled skidding across the mat towards the hole it had sprung out of.


    Shit! Shit. Shit. Lonka bounded from branch to branch, following above Poh. A brief glance told him none of the others had noticed yet, all too preoccupied with their own battles. Poh had already drawn another knife with the hand he still had control over and was doing everything he could to cut himself free, but the tentacle was too thick, and he was being taken towards the water too quickly. He wouldn¡¯t free himself in time. Lonka pulled out his largest knife, the one he hardly ever used but for cleaving fish heads off. Shitshitshitshit.


    Lonka bit down on his fears and leaped from the safety of his branch.


    He landed in a scramble, tangled up with his father and the tentacle awkwardly, not at all how he had hoped for¨Che wasn¡¯t half as dextrous as the average Kothai, after all. Fancy maneuvers and heroic acts like this were more Banon¡¯s speed. At the very least, he didn¡¯t feel any barbs in him, but he certainly wasn¡¯t ideally positioned to make use of his knife just yet. He flailed around uselessly until, by pure chance, their path took them dragged over a small hole in the mat one of the eels had used to burst through. Lonka reacted as soon as he felt his elbow catch in it, stabbing his fist straight down through it and hooking his knife sideways for a more substantial anchor point. In his other hand, he held onto his father by the ankle.


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    The tension of all that weight snapping tight on him felt like it was going to rip his shoulders from their sockets, and he knew the knife was being pulled out of its wedged spot. Until it slowed, and to his surprise, it seemed he had halted things, at least for a moment. Lonka seized that moment to do the only thing he could think of.


    ¡°Help!¡± he screamed.


    Tyube started sprinting for them without even taking the time to dispatch the eel that was still clinging onto his thigh. Tamil¡¯s war cry could be heard but Lonka couldn¡¯t see where he was, and Dartome? Dartome was already upon them, hacking at the base of the tentacle where it went into the mat.


    ¡°Not there, you half mind!¡± Brahman growled as he came to a sliding stop beside them. ¡°Here!¡± he bellowed, and began hacking at the much thinner section of tentacle just below where Poh¡¯s wrist was bound.


    Lonka felt his anchor point in the mat beginning to tear out. ¡°It¡¯s pulling!¡± he yelled unnecessarily.


    ¡°It¡¯s pulling,¡± Dartome mocked, acting with not half the urgency the situation called for as he strode over to help cut at the spot Brahman was directing them.


    All three of his brothers and elder Brahman worked at once, slicing and cutting. Lonka gritted his teeth, vowing to never leave his fishing shack again. In fact, he would build a bed inside it, just so he never had to look Poh or anyone present here in the eyes after today.


    And then his anchor gave way, and he was being pulled along with Poh again.


    ¡°Father!¡± Tamil shouted. It was not for the reasons Lonka had first thought, though. Tamil himself had been caught by one of the barbs now too.


    Tyube tried to pursue but slipped. Dartome had been knocked on his back at some point, and Brahman was trying to pull back against the entire weight of the kraken with on his own, having not much of any effect without any point of purchase to anchor himself.


    SHIT.


    Lonka abruptly let go of his father, but he had not given up yet. Now freed from his useless pursuit as a dead weight working against a monster as big as a village, he lept forward and came to a hault on the edge of the hole Poh was mere feet away from being pulled into. From there, he waited until he saw the section they had been attempting to hack through together. The wound was far from clean, due to how frantic they had been, but he could see there was only perhaps three arm¡¯s thickness of flesh remaining connected in the deepest recesses of it.


    Just as the wounded section was about to slide over the mat¡¯s edge and into the hole, Lonka raised his knife over his head, held in both hands, and swung down with all of the might of fisherman who wanted nothing more than to be anywhere besides in a situation like this one. The last vestiges of flesh severed and Poh came to a stop, still connected to the now lifeless tip of the tentacle¨Cwhich was still no less than several feet in length.


    After that, an underwater scream erupted that literally sent ripples through the mat on its own.


    Poh blinked up at Lonka.


    ¡°We need to go!¡± He held out a hand to his father.


    Poh took it, and with the help of the others who had just arrived, they collectively helped Poh, still attached to hundreds of pounds of tentacle, away from the hole. It wasn¡¯t long before Poh got his legs under him and was ready to run, the tentacle chunk slung over his shoulders like it was nothing, and a grin on his face that was far too relaxed given the circumstances.


    Behind them, Lonka was pretty sure he was hearing the sounds of something truly massive sliding up onto the surface, but he didn¡¯t dare look back.


    The rest of them barely had the time to retrieve the corpses of the leeches they had left while Lonka just kept his focus on dissuading Poh from turning to face the massive creature, because it was certainly something he wouldn''t put past his father. To his surprise, though, Poh went along happily with the retreat. Too happily¡­ in fact.


    Lonka was beginning to suspect something was up with him, something even more than simply being content with taking home a single tentacle of The Orux Eater as his prize.


    Poh made an obnoxiously satisfied noise as the troupe caught up with them again, and they were now all fleeing the scene together at a mild sprint, which was thankfully more than enough to outpace the leeches and the gaudy creature that had no business being out of water at its size.


    ¡°Goddess of the trees,¡± Poh said.


    ¡°Don¡¯t say it,¡± Lonka warned. ¡°I hate that the two of you think it''s funny. The Dryad certainly wouldn''t.¡±


    Poh smiled widely at his son and delivered the second line of their dumb inside joke anyways. ¡±I shit myself.¡± Then he made a contemplative gesture with the hand that wasn¡¯t still attached to a suction cup. ¡°Somebody pick through it and see if you find a green gemstone. I still haven¡¯t passed the one embedded in Dorse¡¯s forehead, even after all these years.¡±


    Tamil shook his head, Dartome grunted as if he was serious, and Tyube stared straight forward as they ran, a petrified expression on his face, and only a single leach slung over his shoulder.


    Lonka closed his eyes and massaged either side of the bridge of his nose, unable to fathom how such an idiot had become their emperor. He froze in place, but it was already too late when he realized what he was doing. Fingers still pressed to his nose, he opened his eyes and glanced between everyone there, who had all stopped just ahead of him to stare back at Lonka. Poh started laughing first, and eventually, they all were, and then they were all howling except Brahman, all while Poh held his own nose bridge, mocking Lonka. The finger-to-nose bridge was the tic every man in their bloodline seemed to have without fail, the stress impulse that united all of them, even the most outlying personalities like Dartome, who Lonka was pretty sure shared more lineage with slow-moving slimy creatures than Poh. The night was looking to be a long one indeed.


    Actually, it appeared the first colors of sunrise had already begun to fill the sky while they were all preoccupied with the chaos.


    The day of rites had begun in earnest, then, though the ceremony itself would take place at the apex of tonight, so they still had much time to return¨Cdays were the longest when the summer festival took place.


    Funny. As the sunrise broke above them, it was three notes more beautiful than it had ever been. Lonka supposed it would be when one knew just how close they were to missing it, and missing everything else for that matter. Lonka abruptly found his mind wandering to what else he might have missed if their tangle with the kraken had ended for the worse.


    ¡°Hmm,¡± Lonka mused out loud. ¡°I wonder what Banon is doing right now.¡±


    ¡°Killing things,¡± Dartome guessed.

 19: All gather round

    The royal hunting troupe emerged from the treeline into their home village only to find it just as they left it, except for the fact there were about double as many Ooura here as when they left, and more still emerging from the treeline to make their pilgrimages to the heart of the empire for the festival. Good. Lonka had been somewhat worried they might return to find Tema staging an uprising, or all the Pyathen dead, or all the Ooura dead and the Pyathen gone. Really anything involving death, or Tema¨Csince the two often went hand in hand¨Cwas good to avoid.


    Thankfully, things appeared as they always were in the lead up to the final night¡¯s apex during the summer festival.


    Hundreds of Ooura were now gathered under the ancient Mew that held the circle of elders. The real festivities had not begun yet, but would soon. After dusk, when the would-be Kothai were enduring their second trial inside the chamber of rites, all of their family and friends would dance and feast on the new influx of Orux meat that had been brought back as a product of their first trial''s completion. Nonetheless, even this early, with the sun still shining, the Ooura here were milling about like bees. Families dragged their newly Orux skull-adorned sons around for bragging rights, friends shared their congratulations and their jealousies, shamans walked around carrying burning incense that stung the nose and muddied the mind, and bonfires were being built scattered all throughout the shuffling bodies.


    Lonka had once been desperate to avoid the summer festival and the reminder it held of what he wasn¡¯t, but that sharp blade of envy that had once scraped up against his ego eventually had worn dull, along with most things. These days, he didn¡¯t avoid it anymore. In fact, he didn¡¯t mind being a part of it, as an observer, anyway. He might not be meant for the life of a Kothai, but there was a certain satisfaction in watching others be paraded around by their families and friends, lending the little ones their new Orux skull headdresses to play with, putting ideas in their young minds about being Kothai one day themselves. Lonka relished watching it, even. After all, Lonka was no idiot. For lackadaisicals like him to be allowed to lead their pleasantly uneventful existences, there had to be also the fighters, and the master craftspeople like his mother, and the sharp-minded leaders, and all the other overly stress-filled life paths that people inexplicably chose for themselves.


    This was more than just a festival, more than just the naming of the new generation of warriors. These days of rites brought Ooura from villages across the jungle together. It was a bastion of unity amid the usual other isms and squabbling over who owned which piece of mat or other.


    The Pyathen, on the other hand, were a palpable contrast to the jovial Ooura. Something had clearly gotten them riled up since the last time he saw them. Not riled enough to become violent, but there was tension so thick he could smell it wafting from the direction of their camp.


    They were still set up on the edge of the clearing, far away from the bulk of the Ooura, but they seemed to have every one of their number standing guard now, positioned in a rigidly defined circle around their princess and her eunuch torch bearers. Lonka shook his head, sighing through pursed lips. The elves looked to the man like they hadn¡¯t slept at all. Some were even visibly wobbling on their feet. Terrible plan, that. If they were really going to be joining the Ooura in the chamber of rites, they would be expected to climb up to it themselves. Not a well-suited task for their kind as it was, let alone sleep-deprived.


    Lonka chuckled to himself, causing Tyube to shoot him a glance with a raised brow. Elves, he thought. One would think with all their smarts, they¡¯d figure out a way not to have to sleep so much. It was the reason the fiddly little pointy ears never stayed out in the jungle long, because they would simply be picked off in the night due to their need to rest so often. Then again, Lonka pondered, maybe their smarts came from how much they rested themselves¡­ Hmm. Well, Lonka decided, I¡¯d still rather be me than something with less meat than my right leg and a bit more brains. The way he saw it, the brains he did have already tied him up in too many knots. Any more intelligence would probably be more of a burden than a virtue.


    As the troupe made their way closer to the central Mew tree that dwarfed all around it, more and more of the gathered Ooura began to notice them. Most prominently, eyes lingered on the huge chunk of tentacle Poh carried over his shoulder, but even the corpses of black eels all of them but Lonka carried were the subject of some awe, since everyone knew they only came from one place, and that place, for good reason, had quite the renown of terror to go along with it. It wasn¡¯t lost on Lonka that when their gazes found him and his lack of carrying any meat himself, they turned accusatory. Well, things never did change, did they?


    The attention drawn to their group was palpable, enough so that it forced Lonka to look at the mat in front of each footstep he made just so he didn¡¯t have to acknowledge anyone. While ground staring, he took a moment to inwardly thank the Dryad for his life, and pleaded with her to never send him back to that den of monsters ever again. There was no answer, but Lonka pretended she had soothed his worries, guaranteeing him that the rest of his days would be spent dozing in fishing huts, only woken by the excitement of tug on his line, chewing the soothing dew grass gathered by the shamans. That was life, not¡­ whatever the past day and night had been. His knees felt on fire, his feet sore as stone, and he suspected he hadn¡¯t traveled so much distance as he had today and last night in the past year of his life combined.


    Lonka was almost more shocked that he had kept up with the pace the rest of the troupe set than he was that it was him, of all people, who had managed to deal the final blow that freed Poh and allowed them to take home a piece of the infamous Orux Eater. Plenty had claimed to have done it before. Some even claimed to have killed it. None of the proof had ever stacked up to what Lonka knew the real Orux Eater¡¯s size was. It was all just ambitious egos trying to pass off a regular sized jungle kraken as something extraordinary.


    It wouldn¡¯t surprise him much if this was the first time someone had ever tangled with the beast and come out the better for it. Even still, he was fairly certain that it wouldn¡¯t matter. No one would believe that it was him, the lazy fisherman, who had made the final blow, severing even that relatively small piece of its arm that Poh now carried. Which hardly mattered, anyway. Without the efforts of all involved, he never would have saved Poh on his own. The thought that recognition would likely be shared rather than thrust upon his name comforted him almost more than Poh not being dead. Lonka wanted nothing to do with fame nor recognition. That was Banon¡¯s territory.


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    He just wanted to relax.


    The hunters gradually passed through and eventually made their way into the bulk of the gathered Ooura around the base of the tree. Kothai all around nodded their acknowledgements to Poh, who was smiling uncharacteristically brightly. Abruptly, once enough eyes were on them to make Lonka feel profoundly nervous, Poh stopped and hefted the massive tentacle off his shoulders. It landed with deafening plop in front of the troupe, stopping them all in their tracks. ¡°All gather round!¡± Poh bellowed to the Ooura all around them.


    Lonka shared a curious glance with Tyube and Tamil. Dartome seemed more fixated on a certain creature currently crawling up the bark of a nearby tree to notice his worry. All the nearby Ooura trickled in until the four brothers, their father, and elder Brahman were at the center of attention.


    ¡°It is my honor,¡± Poh began, with a vague gesture Lonka hoped wasn¡¯t towards him, ¡°to call this boy my son. Once he was known for being lazy and unremarkable, and well known for that he was.¡±


    Chuckles from the surrounded faces that twisted Lonka¡¯s guts in loops.


    Poh waited until there was utter silence again before he continued. ¡°In these past hours, my life was almost taken from me. I stand before you now only because of his bravery in the face of impossible odds. It was him, not me, who severed the monstrous arm of the Orux Eater you see before you now.¡± Some of the children were already prodding at the kraken arm, and one had already nicked his hand on a suction cup¡¯s barb. ¡°So it is now,¡± Poh continued, ¡°that I have an announcement for you I have long awaited to make.¡±


    Lonka felt a strong arm around his shoulder. Huh?


    ¡°As my sons have come of age, one by one, all of them but one has taken the rite, earning the title of Kothai. Lonka here has always fancied himself more for the arts than for the hunt. Now that changes.¡± Poh glanced at Lonka to see his reaction.


    Lonka finally looked up, blinking at Poh, blank faced. No¡­


    ¡°Give a warm welcome to your new defender. If he can prevent an empire from toppling, surely he has already learned what it means to be Kothai!¡±


    There was silence first, but after Tamil voiced his hooting approval, a rouse of cheers and applause slowly built in volume behind him, though there was a noticeably skeptical tone.


    Lonka¡¯s entire world shrunk to a point.


    The emperor could do that, it was his right to pronounce non-Kothai men as Kothai without undergoing the trials. This, however, was only reserved for exceptional circumstances. Based on the few times he had seen it happen, Lonka had always assumed it was something reserved only for those who failed their rite, yet still yearned to be named warriors after. Those who had wanted it even from the beginning but had failed for one reason or another. Usually, such a person was given something of a special task to complete in exchange, one oftentimes more dangerous even than completing the rite would have been. The last time someone asked Poh for such an exception, the task given to that poor soul had been to bring back the head of a mangrove spider that had decided to nest a little too close to where the young ones played.


    But this?


    Lonka now realized this whole entire thing might have been more contrived than he had thought at first. In fact, this might have been only the end of a long road of attempts Poh had made to do this before now. It was so obvious now that Lonka thought back¡­


    Poh had bothered him for years about being his only non-Kothai son, and always tried to invite him along on various dangerous adventures. He couldn¡¯t legally drag Lonka to a real battle, since those were reserved for Kothai, but all the years of pestering Lonka to join on hunts in the deep jungle now came into a new focus. He¡¯d usually been able to come up with excuses not to go, but the urgency of the Pyathens arrival and the lack of his other brothers being available for the royal hunt had pushed him to accept his father¡¯s offer this time. Poh had been deliberately trying to trick Lonka into performing some heroic feat this whole time, all these years, all so he could finally pronounce himself the emperor with a seamless record of warrior sons.


    Except¡­ Kothai wasn¡¯t just a title.


    Now¡­ he would be subject to be called upon in wartime just like any other Kothai¡­


    Shit. SHIT. SHITSHITSHITSHIT¨C


    He tried to shake his head in defiance, but it was already too late. Lonka wobbled on his feet as everyone gathered around and began slapping him on the back, or wrapping him up in brief hugs for those friendly with him.


    And just like that, his life as a lowly fisherman was over, and his new life of expectations and responsibilities had begun.


    Something rubbery slapped down on his head. Lonka turned to see Tamil grinning at him, his arms held behind his back and a badly hidden look of mischievousness on his features. It only took a second to realize what Tamil put on his head, and when he did he could not help but grab the bridge of his nose and close his eyes. Lonka sighed heavily. If he couldn¡¯t get that kraken suction cup off without cutting away some of his own hair, Tamil was going to wake up with a fish hook through each earlobes in the morning.


    ¡°Good headdress,¡± Dartome said simply, then pressed his own forehead to Lonka, looking him straight in the eye and forcing him to hold his breath lest he gag. ¡°Fits you.¡±


    Lonka nodded weakly.


    ¡°Well,¡± Tyube whined from somewhere close by, ¡°no pressure on me then.¡±


    Tamil laughed and slapped Tyube hard on the nape of the neck by the sound of it, causing their youngest brother to yelp out in surprise.


    Lonka pressed his eyes shut as tightly as he could and willed himself to wake up.


    He was more than a little distraught to find out this wasn¡¯t a dream.


    But that still wasn¡¯t entirely true. Awake or not, this was truly his worst nightmare.


    Kothai¡­

 20: Flat on his face

    Lonka sat on the bare mat, his back leaning against the inside wall of his favorite fishing hut, fiddling with his new fishing rod with the energy of an ocelot toying with prey it knew couldn¡¯t run fast enough to escape nor put up enough of a fight to be a challenge. In other words, he was bored and resentful, all his usual fervor for his lifelong hobby an afterthought in the face of his new title and the life that would come along with it.


    He stared out the wide open doorway that he hadn¡¯t the heart to close, watching nothing in particular. Shadow was creeping its way across the village clearing, and the festivities were starting to begin. Fires burning, Orux meat being sliced into smaller pieces fit for cooking, even a few dancers preempting the massive throng that would fill the center around the Mew tree that held the circle of elders soon. There might have been less than a thousand Ooura gathered here in total, a fragment of the scale these festivals had once been. Now it was practically a wasteland, a hollow imitation of something that was once been so overwhelmingly great. All because of the very same creatures that set up camp on the edge of their sacred place now. He spat down the mat hole into the exposed water, brushing away the memory, and the bitterness at the way he was tricked into his new life of responsibility. Actually, he only tried to brush away the second one.


    And it did not work.


    There were still several hours until Banon would lose his chance at his rite for being so arrogant¡­


    Or that was what Lonka would have thought, anyway, if he was talking about anyone else. Honestly, Lonka half expected the brute was doing it intentionally. If he showed up at the very last moment, it would only build his name even further in the collective unconscious. Lonka made a farting noise. It wouldn¡¯t even cause him much pause if he saw Banon dragging a live Orux back to the festival area just so he could fight it in front of the whole crowd.


    Lonka¡¯s eyes glazed over, continuing to watch nothing in particular¡­


    Until some time later a very particular silhouette and recognizable tone of bright orange caught his eye as it emerged from the jungle.


    Lonka blinked, wondering if he was dreaming. That was Banon, yes, but trailed by¡­ trailed by dozens of other much smaller forms. As all of them emerged into the fire-light of the many scattered bonfires, Lonka realized what they actually were.


    They were Yubuou.


    Dozens of Yubuou pulling make-shift sleds, or if not that, carrying meat packs on their backs like they were as intelligent and refined in group think as Ooura were.


    Lonka burst out laughing.


    Why couldn¡¯t it have just been the live Orux?


    As shock and awe sounded out from all directions and practically all the Ooura in the entire clearing began rushing towards the inexplicable sight, Lonka smiled like a child. His worries had been unfounded. Of course Banon would do this, find a way to one up even the fisherman who became Kothai and saved his emperor in the same day.


    Lonka gazed up at the sky and actually found himself seeing what was in front of his eyes for the first time since Poh had pronounced him with that wretched title. Orange and pink light glazed the tops of sparse clouds, a glowing painting above the dim jungle, blanketed in shadow. With a mischievous twist of his lips, Lonka finally picked up his fishing rod and found the motivation to drop his line down the hole. From the look of Banon during the brief glimpse Lonka got of him before the crowds surrounded him, in his state he wouldn¡¯t be ready to see anybody but the healers for some time. They would have plenty of time to share stories later.


    But for now, a dangled lure under the mat was where his focus belonged.


    Lonka pulled the hut¡¯s door shut and slipped a pouch of dew grass into his bottom lip. And so the world is not completely over.


    ***


    Lithilyn was tired. So, so tired. And she had slept. Badly, and interrupted by the strangest of dreams, but she had slept. Her men, on the other hand, had remained vigilant throughout the night and into the day on her own word. Some of them hadn¡¯t seen sleep in more than two days. She almost felt bad about that.


    Almost.


    There hadn¡¯t been any more mysterious losses, so her decision had been right. Her priorities in coming here were likely seen as questionable even by those that agreed to follow her here, and blatantly insane by her mother¡¯s supporters, but there was one priority she would not compromise on. She would not risk the lives of these men¨CGylig¡¯s most loyal¨Cfor nothing, even if it meant pushing them until they hated her.


    She looked up at the tree that dwarfed even the Donai spire. It held fare few buildings among its branches, though they were appropriately massive in proportion to the tree itself, if somewhat dubious in their structure. It was hard to keep the anxiety from eating away at her resolve. She was going to go up there. Climb into one of those chambers and witness the Ooura go about their ceremonies, all so she could have just a chance at negotiating with them. Every step she took, the last seemed to have been propelled by notions that seemed more faulty before her next foot even fell.


    Peace.


    Was a fanciful notion. But an agreement?


    At this point, it was necessity, whether her mother and queen was blind to that reality or not. It was a real fact of their lives now that the jungle nearby to their spire city no longer produced remotely the same yield of edible fauna, and their farms and agriculture could only supplement so much. Her people were starving, and it was all their own fault for poisoning too much of the overall water supply. Even if they had maintained a strict border, inside which they never used their soil and water killer, the more shrewd minds among them were beginning to untangle the facts, even if they were forced to do so in the shadows thus far. The simple truth of it was that the jungle was  more like a single organism than a series of calculable assets. Even if their own corner of things still appeared an oasis, they had kicked out the legs from the support structure that propped things up.


    Birds, beasts, reptiles. They all migrated in some way, whether over distances large or small. But with more and more land outside of their borders left barren, the creatures the Pyathen relied on for hunting were rarer and rarer by the passing years, paradoxically forcing her own people to venture their hunting parties into the deeper, more dangerous¨Cand tainted¨Cjungle.


    She was forced into acting by the ignorance of those above her. Of that much, her conviction hadn¡¯t faltered even slightly since sneaking away from the palace in the dead of night.


    But her methods?


    Those were what she grew more and more unsure of.


    She closed her eyes, pressed them shut, but it only made the fear prickling in the back of her skull more apparent.


    Until she was broken out of her brief reprieve by distant shouting.


    She scanned far away at first, but then noticed the eyes of most of the Ooura were facing a spot more nearby to her camp. When she followed their stares, she saw him. The same Ooura she had first spoken with, she could tell, since none of them had hair quite so bright of an orange tone. He was covered in dried blood from what seemed like dozens of separate wounds, the worst of which in his mid section. There was some kind of massive bird slung over his shoulder that draped down until its beak almost reached the ground. A dragon eagle. It had to be, with those golden feathers, and one almost as large in height as the Ooura carrying it. If the state of him wasn¡¯t already bad enough, he almost immediately fell flat on his face, instantly unconscious by the look of it.


    She thought all the Ooura rushing towards him were just so shocked due to what he was carrying and his apparent injuries since he was clearly a well known person in their society, until she saw what emerged from the jungle behind him.


    Yibu.


    Towing sleds stacked high with meat¡­


    As she watched the Yibu disappear back into the jungle almost as quickly as they appeared, leaving the sleds filled with Orux meat next to the unconscious body, she almost questioned her eyesight. From there, all the young Ooura boys practically fell over themselves, eager in seeing if they could each pull a single sled themselves. With quite the varying levels of struggle, the boys began towing sections of meat off to the scattered cookfires that now burned all over the clearing. The adult Ooura, on the other hand, lingered, appearing much more concerned about his state than who got the eat which cut first.


    The crowd of Ooura there also seemed to be just as shocked by the presence of the Yibu as she was, shooting frequent gape-mouthed glances after the creatures as they disappeared back into the jungle, which oddly made her feel a bit less out of sorts with herself. Yibu were not the kind that interfered with¡­ well, anything like this. They weren¡¯t anything but wanderers, and hardly ever seen outside of the deeper sections of the jungle that her people rarely visited. And yet, they were here. Helping the son of the Ooura emperor.


    She watched as a group of Ooura women approached who stood out from the rest by their extravagant garb, led by a man that wore too many furs for how hot it was out and carrying a smouldering bundle of some kind of incense in one hand. The women following him must have been special in some way, because their fibrous clothes were interwoven with tassels of dyed fur and hundred of dangling trinkets made from carved bone that made a tinkling sound as they brushed against each other while they walked. The man who led them had a face shrouded in the shadow of a hood that was quite literally just the head of some kind of huge jungle cat that had all the flesh and bone carved out of it, while the women¡¯s faces were all exposed and painted with symbols¨Cor perhaps they were tattoos.


    Without acknowledging the gathered onlookers, the strange women hefted the unconscious one up onto their shoulders and carried him off, dragon eagle and all, trailing the shadowy faced man back towards the center. The smoke trail from his incense burning covered the bone-adorned women as they walked, adding even further to the otherworldly feel of what she was seeing. Not a single one of the gathered crowd even tried to speak to them as they carried the man away. They looked afraid to even look at the strange women and the man covered in furs.


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    Lithilyn would consider herself poised. She had been groomed to rule tens of thousands for her entire life. But watching these women draped in fur and bone carrying an Ooura man perhaps doubling her in height like he was almost weightless, she found her sense returning to her.


    The jungle was not so vibrant and inviting from the inside.


    ***


    Banon was being carried. He hardly remembered why, or how he got here, besides vague memories of trudging through the jungle alongside Ugtang¡¯s tribe. Before that, there were flashes of gold, and a pain in his hand, and before that an Orux and a mighty battle and¡­ and more that was even harder to acknowledge. But had he really done all of that? A half centurian Orux¡­ A dragon eagle¡­


    And he had returned to tell the tale.


    Had he?


    He tried to open his eyes, but found no strength for it. Tried to speak, but it came out barely a mumble. Was he dead again? Inside the eye of Kimitrius, bathed in the well of souls?


    His mind faded, and when he woke up again, he was no longer being jostled by the bodies carrying him. He was laid flat on his back, on something fairly solid. There were fingers running over him, fingers lathering all his cuts, nicks, and deeper wounds, with a wet paste. The substance burned where it touched the raw exposed flesh underneath, but a strangely cold kind of burn, one that he felt was healing him. Something told him he knew where he was, but his mind was still too slow to make the logical leap.


    Frantic to find out what was happening to him, he tried to open his eyes, but found he could see only darkness. He tried to move, hoping to remove whatever covered his eyes, but found himself restrained. He finally managed to get a hold of one of the knots binding him, but stopped the moment he heard a voice.


    ¡°Wait.¡± A woman¡¯s voice that he recognized.


    Banon immediately relaxed. No one was supposed to witness the spirit women working their magic besides shamans and of course their own kind.


    Shortly, a voice thankfully relieved him of the suspense.


    ¡°Our work is done. Open his eyes.¡±


    Banon¡¯s eye covered was pulled off, letting the brightness in and the face above him. Dosha, one of the eldest of the spirit women, draped in her colored furs and bone ornaments. He tried to blink through the brightness, but if anything, his eyes only hurt more and more. The room wasn¡¯t even well lit, and yet he found everything around him hard to look at. It was then he realized he had probably been given a large helping of one of their medicines and it was likely the culprit of his sensitivities to light.


    Besides the three spirit women who had healed him and the shaman overseeing from a dim corner of the room, Banon also noticed Iala. She was the daughter of Icosa, a spirit woman, and likely here to witness their work as a kind of training before she herself was allowed to participate in the heavy duties the life of a spirit woman held.


    Banon tried not to linger too long on her while the women undid his bindings and the shaman said a closing prayer. During the upcoming second stage of the rite, he was fairly certain Iala was one of the three Poh would pick to accompany him during the trial. As much as he had qualms with the way the second stage of the rite was interwoven with the expectation to select a wife, he wasn¡¯t stupid. The daughter of a spirit woman and soon to become one herself held the most prestige besides that of the reclusive order Banon¡¯s mother came from. Both orders were much like Kothai, all consuming. Once walking that path, there was no leaving it.


    Something was itching in the back of his mind, a presence¡­ or perhaps many. Banon winced, feeling a wave of nausea pass over him. He raised up a hand to cover his mouth but the hand stopped dead halfway there.


    Had he just seen what he thought he had?


    Banon waved his hand out in front of him.


    His arm, his hand, he was leaving a faint afterimage. Like a second phantom body trailed the movements of his own, lagging behind by a fraction of a second, but mimicking him perfectly. So perfectly that when he made his arm stay still, the afterimage merged with it completely, and only his own body was there. Banon frowned deeply before shaking his head. Perhaps an after effect of the spirit womens healing? Something told him not, something that felt distinctly familiar to him, but he could not spare the thought for it at this moment.


    It was slow to find his bearings again as he rose from the bed they had placed him on. He collected up the corpse of the dragon eagle under one arm¨Cthey had thankfully not separated it from him, as was tradition. He found himself glancing one more time, curious what Iala thought of all this. To his surprise, she looked as invested in what she was seeing as Banon was in his own path. There was something he could respect in another one, even younger than him if he remembered correctly, who was already so certain of their path. Healer, warrior, fisherman¨CBanon smirked¨Cwhatever the profession, Banon understood the sacrifice of dedication, and he saw it in this young girl''s eyes now. She wanted this, to heal people. It was plain on her face.


    And yet, as he found his balance and walked towards the entrance to this chamber, he had no more glances to share. There was too much to do, too many problems to solve to worry about that part of his future just yet.


    ¡°Wait!¡± one of the spirit women called from behind him, Iala¡¯s mother from the sound of her voice. ¡°You must stay with us until the venom has worn off.¡±


    Banon turned his head just enough to be heard, but did not look back. ¡°I thank you for everything.¡±


    With a small smile, he stepped off the ledge and dropped twice his own height to the next branch, fell into a crouch with the impact and then let himself bounce backwards out of the crouch, caught the branch in his free hand as he fell and swung to the next, and again, and again, until he was down on the mat, looking back up at the chamber of healing built into one of the smaller trees in the clearing. Banon thought he noticed the faint silhouette of a face peering out from the shadows behind the doorway, but he turned and went about his way regardless, taking a brief moment to run his fingers along the newly placed salves on his many wounds. No cracking or peeling. Good. If they couldn¡¯t stay plastered onto him while he moved, they would be no use at all.


    Just before Banon was about to go over to the fishing shack he was betting he would find Lonka in, the Donai princess caught his eye. She was staring at him. All of the sudden, the realization caught up with him that she had most certainly witnessed his entrance, and the companions he had brought back with him. For all their lacking in some areas, the Yubuou did have the mightiest of talents for remaining unnoticed. And yet, he had exposed them to her notice. To Pyathen notice.


    She quickly made herself busy with another task, talking to some Pyathen man Banon expected was the defensive commander of their group. Banon only hoped the revelation of Yubuou helping him did not result in some kind of new campaign of theirs.


    He suddenly found himself gritting his teeth at the possibility of it. If he had just exposed the Yubuou to outside pressures they could not content with, he would never forgive himself. The Yubuou at least had the protection of being a race that stayed mostly in the deepest jungle, but still. An emperor needed to be far more careful, and thoughtful than that as well.


    While he untangled how much he really must be pushing himself for him not to have thought of that yet, he forced himself to focus on other things, taking in the world around him. It appeared, he had in fact woken from his healing after the ceremony had already begun, clearly visible by the hundreds of Ooura dancing in a circle around the Mew trunk in the center of his village, but thankfully the second stage of his rite was starting officially at midnight. So he had plenty of hours. Two, anyway, from his judging of the darkness of the sky. Two hours. The difference between success, or the beginnings of it, and utter failure. He had gambled, and he had won. But not by much. He flat out would have failed if not for Ugtang and his people.


    Two hours to consider so many things, and so much luck.


    Banon found he did not have the energy to make it all the way to the fishing shack he knew Lonka enjoyed most. Instead, he found a nearby one and slumped down inside of it. Despite the warnings part of his mind was screaming, he couldn¡¯t help allowing himself to relax a little. If he didn¡¯t deserve it by now, he never would¡­


    Somehow, it was only hitting him now, just how much of a mental tole this had taken on him. Days without sleep and more pressure than all the years of his life combined. How had he not noticed this weight on his mind until right now?


    Good, another monster to slay, or befriend, in any case.


    Banon fondly thought of Ugtang, swinging through the jungle with his village, ambivalent to the turmoils of Banon''s own life and the plight of the Ooura in general. There was a shocking amount of comfort in that, thinking of Ugtang completely oblivious to anything but the health of his tribe. No war. No trials and no rites. No mess. Just wandering the jungle, building mud huts and picking flowers.


    Banon sagged into himself, leaning back and straining the integrity of the fishing shack, a profound weight settling into his mind that could only be released by sleep.


    Two hours¡­


    His eyelids were so heavy, his mind so ready to just give in.


    Banon, who had slain the mighty Orux, the dragon eagle, could not help but give into the comfort of sleep.


    The relief of finally letting go was like standing under a waterfall of pure warmth.


    Perhaps he should have listened to the spirit women¡­


    As he drifted away, there was a distinct feeling that something resentful was watching him.


    ***


    Thankfully less than two hours later he awoke. Banon knew it was less than two hours because Lonka, though yelling in his face over and over again, wasn¡¯t near as frantic sounding as he would have been if Banon had missed the second stage of his rite.


    ¡°Wake up! Wake up you unbelievable idiot! Are those eyes opening yet? They better be! If I hadn¡¯t found you, you would have missed it!¡± Lonka trailed off talking, favoring a guttural snort of annoyance instead. ¡°You idiot!¡±


    Banon rocked up and sprung to his feet, hit his head on the roof of the shack, wobbled and caught himself on the wall. ¡°You have woken me in time, though?¡±


    Lonka made an inane expression. ¡°In time? Yes, but you still shouldn''t have been asleep! And without telling me where you were at that!¡±


    ¡°So I have not missed it?¡± Banon asked again, for some reason suddenly terrified he had partially dreamed what Lonka had said at first.


    ¡°You haven¡¯t, you big hunk of wood.¡± Lonka knocked on Banon¡¯s head twice, imitating a hollow noise by clicking his tongue. ¡°You¡¯re actually awake for the best part! The Pyathen are ascending the ladder father had built for them.¡±


    After slinging his eagle over his shoulder, he and Lonka made their way around the fishing shack and off towards all the commotion at the center of their village where the Pyathen were currently clustered around the central Mew that held the chamber of rites. One at a time, their men trickled up the ladder, covered by crossbowmen on the ground set up in a wide circular formation, obviously expecting the Ooura to possibly be planning some kind of ambush. Banon blinked his bleary eyes clear as they approached the elves, who were terribly pathetic climbers, even after taking off their armor.


    For a once in generations event, it was a disappointing sight so far. Or so he thought, until his eyes finally cleared enough to see it.


    The princess herself was just about to get on the ladder.

 21: Generational event

    Banon and Lonka walked in stride together towards the center of their village clearing, where the tree that held the circle of elders was. All around the clearing, bonfires burned and Ooura had begun to dance in celebration. It was the last night of the summer festival, and the dancing would only grow more frantic, even feral, as the night wore on.


    Before they made it even half way, one of the same boys who had watched Banon test his staff when he first brought it back came running up to them carrying a mass of bone that must have weighed as much as him. He heaved the Orux skull headdress up, and only barely managed to balance it on his head with the help of both his hands steadying it. Banon chuckled and plucked the skull by the nostril holes, raised it and placed it atop his head.


    ¡°We took it to Tuliana and got the straps made for it!¡± the boy said giddily.


    Banon cinched the woven straps around the back of his head and under his chin. ¡°Thankyou,¡± he said.


    ¡°Can you tell me how you killed it?¡± the boy asked. ¡°No one else has one that big. Did yours have some kind of deformity?¡±


    Banon crouched down so they were eye level. ¡°Plenty of time for stories later.¡±


    ¡°Promise?¡±


    ¡°Promise.¡±


    The boy went on his way, skipping and occasionally grunting as he made a mock lunge as if attacking imaginary monsters with an imaginary living reed of his own.


    As Banon and Lonka continued towards the Pyathen, who were trickling up the ladder into the chamber of rites like roaches, he and Lonka drew gazes from all over the clearing. Even those celebrating most vigorously paused their dancing to watch them.


    He didn¡¯t blame them, entirely. A dragon eagle was normally considered a once in a life time pursuit for a man, and usually reserved for the eve of a Kothai¡¯s retirement¨Cto prove that even in his more peaceful years, he would still be ready to defend his tribe at a moments notice. It wouldn¡¯t surprise him if none of the Pyathen here had ever seen one up close. Even if they had, it probably would have been in the sense of a comrade falling prey to one. Adult Ooura were too large to be hunted by them, but Pyathan and Enka? Well, Banon knew of many such stories, and no doubt would know many more if he was Pyathen or Enka himself.


    As they passed by a particularly bright burning bonfire surrounded by dancing Ooura humming discordant rhythms, the gem-bright, green and golden feathers of the huge bird he carried over his shoulder reflected a vibrant spray of colors across the mat around them. With a sigh, Banon adjusted his new Orux skull headdress with his free hand. It was big to the point of being somewhat cumbersome, even though it was not nearly so big as it had been when covered in flesh and fur. Even still, he felt a bit ridiculous.


    Lonka side eyed him, which Banon tried to ignore.


    Unfortunately, it didn¡¯t seem to work. ¡°That bird is almost as tall as you,¡± Lonka observed, and he wasn¡¯t lying. Even slung over his shoulder as it was, the corpse dangled low enough that its beak occasionally caught on the mat. Thankfully, it weighed a lot less than it looked. Most of the bulk was due to thickly layered feathers, and the bones inside were hollow. ¡°And that headdress is more of a headhut. You could fit a family and their three pet peacocks in there¨C¡±


    ¡°Alright alright,¡± Banon interrupted, then threw an arm around his older¨Cbut smaller¨Cbrother. ¡°So, are jokes all you have for me? No words of congratulation? No pride for your brother?¡± Banon tried to sound serious, but he never quite had the same ability as Lonka did for goading while keeping a flat voice and a straight face.


    Lonka made an exaggerated noise of consideration. ¡°Is there a reason to congratulate the sun for rising.¡±


    Banon let him go and gave him a playful shove.


    After Lonka caught his stumble, he took an uncharacteristically long time to shoot a retort back. ¡°I am proud of you,¡± Lonka said, remarkably without a caveat or a joke tied on at the end.


    ¡°Sincerity?¡± Banon asked, genuinely a bit taken aback.


    Lonka rolled his eyes. ¡°Even a blind owl hoots at the moon.¡±


    Just then, another young boy from their village ran up to them. To his surprise, however, the boy was focused on Lonka.


    ¡°Kothai!¡± The boy said, pointing a boney finger at the fisherman. ¡°Kothai! You saved the emperor, now you get to be a Kothai! What does that feel like?¡±


    ¡°Uh.¡± Lonka glanced around, face growing frantic.


    ¡°Hold on, what is this now? Kothai?¡± Banon asked.


    Lonka scrunched up his face, avoiding Banon¡¯s glare desperately. ¡°Can I explain after the festival is over?¡±


    Banon opened his mouth to demand and explanation now, but a flurry of shouting from the direction of the Pyathen drew his attention instead. Banon reluctantly left Lonka standing where he was, instead jogging over to the source of the disturbance.


    There was a certain group of ceremonially painted individuals who seemed to be the source of the shouting. At the very least, the conflict wasn¡¯t between Ooura and Pyathen. Though Banon could not understand the exact words that made up the aggravated exchange, it seemed pretty clear that the Pyathen commanding the bulk of the force was at odds with the eunuch torch bearers that surrounded the princess. There was a lot of pointing at the ladder and gesturing at their blue torches.


    As soon as the guards noticed Banon approaching, the infighting faded out. Instead, tensions, and dozens of loaded crossbows, were now directed at him. Banon slowed down from his jog immediately and raised his free hand to placate them. Not much changed. In fact, some of the guards started shouting incomprehensible things at him, though there wasn¡¯t much need to translate their meaning.


    ¡°Aysuri!¡± Banon heard the princess order, but it seemed not to have made it to the ears of the men shouting. He then saw her take the arm of the man he¡¯d noticed before and, a moment later he relayed the same order, only much louder, loud enough for his men to hear it even over their own shouting. Silence descended.


    Quickly, Banon noticed the Donai princess¡¯s appearance had changed dramatically. She no longer wore the green dress, but instead a thicker one that looked stuck straight onto her skin, made from panels of leather colored with an interlocking pattern of dull blues broken up by smaller patterns of bright turquoise. And that was nothing to speak of her skin, which was now covered head to toe in the utter opposite of when he first saw her, being entirely white. Not natural white either. Even a pale skin tone would have natural deviations. No, she was most certainly painted with something again. This time the same ivory color of sun-bleached bone.


    ¡°What do you want?¡± the princess called, using Banon¡¯s own language, her words now much more audible without all the other polluting sound.


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    ¡°You seem to be having trouble figuring out how to climb. I thought I might demonstrate.¡±


    Though it was likely none of the Pyathen heard it, Banon¨Cas and Ooura¨Chad hearing crisp enough to make out her sharp, perhaps annoyed intake of breath. ¡°We know how to climb just fine. The source of this trouble is of a more¡­¡± she seemed to be searching for a word, ¡°... higher minded.¡±


    Banon smiled, looking right at her overtop the heads of her guard. ¡°I might be able to help with that as well.¡± Banon took a half step forward, but stopped when he noticed a particularly wide set of eyes attached to the elven man nearest him. The crossbow was quite literally shaking like a leaf in his hands. ¡°May I approach?¡± Banon asked. He didn¡¯t really need to in order to continue communicating, but he was curious what boundaries were set and which ones he could push. Regardless of her answer, putting them in an uneasy state was already guaranteed. And an enemy who was afraid was an enemy easier bargained with.


    The princess said something in her own language to the man next to her and then he barked a few curt orders in their language. To Banon¡¯s surprise, the three Pyathen standing most directly in his path stepped aside. It was not lost on him, however, that all crossbows remained pointed at him.


    ¡°Do not approach me directly. If you want to help, it is them that need it.¡± She gestured towards the painted eunuchs who had been previously in a yelling match with her and the man who relayed her orders.


    Banon slowly strode closer to the odd men, fully shaven, even their eyebrows, completely naked but cut smooth, and painted entirely black with charcoal. He had a guess about what it was that troubled them from what he had seen while approaching, but he thought it better to ask regardless. ¡°What do they need?¡±


    ¡°They refuse to part with their torches, but cannot climb without using both hands either.¡±


    Banon almost asked why, but there were plenty of his own traditions of similar confusing purpose that he had never voiced opposition to. From the look of her face, she was waiting for just such a confrontational response. Instead, he frowned thoughtfully for a moment¨Cthough it was all for show, he already had an idea.


    Banon pointed at the torch one of the eunuchs carried, then pointed to his own mouth, opened it, and slotted the finger between his teeth. The painted man blinked, then, slowly but surely, turned the torch horizontal and brought it up to his mouth and bit down on it. Banon responded with a smile and an encouraging gesture towards the ladder. The man nodded, eyes still unsure, but he did as he was told.


    ¡°Obvious enough,¡± the Donai princess said. ¡°Yet I doubt they would have taken the indignity if it came from me, as strange as that sounds.¡±


    Banon grunted. ¡°A little intimidation goes a long way.¡±


    Gradually, each of the torch bearers followed suit, and just like that there were six burning blue lights ascending up the ladder.


    While he watched them climb, he found himself curious about something. The crossbows and swords could be fastened easily to their bodies during the climb, since they all already had leather slings and sheaths for that, but the acid launchers were still their greatest asset.  ¡°Tell me,¡± Banon began, nodding sideways at her, ¡°how do you plan to get your acid launchers up there?¡±


    ¡°We don¡¯t.¡±


    ¡°Are you not afraid of leaving yourselves weakened?¡±


    ¡°What choice do we have?¡±


    Banon chuckled, then shot her a more accusatory look. ¡°A very good question.¡±


    The same question that had been stuck in Banon¡¯s head since she initially agreed to Poh¡¯s offer.


    Why agree to treaty in such a compromising location?


    He searched her features thoroughly, and those of the man who dolled out her orders, looking for signs of something, anything that would make this make sense.


    Why were they so desperate to talk now, after all this time?


    ***


    Lihtilyn tried to keep her mind working for her, rather than against her, as she climbed the ladder. It was emperor Poh¡¯s opinion that since the first Pyathen and Ooura summit in decades came on the day of their summer rite, it only made sense for the Pyathen there to take part in something no Pyathen had ever seen before¨Cthe rite of Kotahi. It was her opinion, that life amounted, in its entirety, to a series of circumstances that all coelessed to prove to you just how pointless and chaotic your life really was. She knew this could be a trap. She was not stupid. She also knew that her staying back home in the palace meant being the lynch pin that facilitated selling off the Donai dynasty to the Enka. Part of it, anyway, but what matter was it? Human¡¯s would use the inch given to take a mile. That was their way.


    She would not be a pawn. It was not that she was set on marrying for love. She¡¯d been raised with the understanding that her name and heirship to the Donai dynasty would be used as a bargaining chip to gain more.


    The problem was, her mother¨Cthe queen¨Chad only grown more unstable over time, and now it was bad enough that she would rather sell off their power than admit it was her fault in the first place that they had overextended their use of the soil killer so far. A unity with the Enka might mean access to some of the humans supply lines, some of their agricultural production, yes. But there were better options. All was not lost yet.


    Or so she had to tell herself, to make pulling herself up to the next wrung worth it.


    Above her, her torch bearers¡¯ flames were beacons in the night. Seeing just how high that furthest blue light was above her made her sick. This was not a climb, it was a journey. An undertaking she was not physically prepared for.


    And yet, she pulled herself up to the next rung.


    Some panicked shouting below her suddenly gave her pause. She looked down, only to see that same Ooura¨CPoh¡¯s son¨Cclimbing up the raw bark of the tree towards her. Before she could hardly think about reacting, he was already hanging from the bark alongside where she dangled on the ladder. ¡°Don¡¯t shoot at him!¡± she shouted back down at her people, who were only yelling even more frantically now. It had all happened so fast. It seemed impossible someone could climb that quick, which was probably why her men had hesitated. But now it was too late. She might get caught in the crossfire. With a pit forming in her gut, she realised that, if he wanted to, the orange haired Ooura could dispatch her, and it would be too late even if they did fire on him by then. Draped over his shoulder, and, it seemed, actually attached to him by a talon still dug into his hand, was the corpse of a dragon eagle. He seemed to climb just fine with only one free hand. And then there was that horned skull tied to his head.


    Well, maybe she hadn¡¯t woken up from the nightmares yet after all.


    He hadn¡¯t made a hostile move yet. Regardless, the Pyathen acid launcher and crossbowmen below were still screaming for him to get away from her. Even if it was in the wrong language for him to understand, there was no way he was oblivious to the nearness he was to death with all those bolts pointed at his back. And yet, he was smiling at her like a child. A child whose leg weighed perhaps double what she did.


    She really would be relieved once this was all over.


    When he spoke, he spoke just as easily as he had when they were on the mat before. ¡°I don¡¯t think they like me.¡±


    She was reluctant to engage in an extensive conversation in a tongue that wasn¡¯t native to her while dangling from a ladder a hundred feet from the ground, but she supposed, she had to say something now. ¡°Your clansmen would rather see us cooked on those fires than even look at us while we climb. Yet you seem to relish in this, don¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°This is a once in generations event. Is it not worth a little embarrassment?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s more than embarrassing.¡±


    ¡°Then why agree to it? Why come here in the first place with such a small number?¡± When she didn''t respond for several seconds he smiled even wider. ¡°I knew you were desperate. I just don¡¯t understand¡­¡± he paused with his mouth still open, as if he had more to say but thought better of it.


    He then proceeded to continue on climbing, moving as fast vertically¨Cwith only the texture of the bark for purchase and one of his two hands to use¨Cas she could likely run on flat ground. She let out a breath she only just realized she had been holding, and kept climbing, doing her best to ignore the startling surge of motion as the huge Ooura climbed above her, trailing a scent like he had only just emerged from bathing in frog guts within the hour.


    Horrid.


    The shouts below her died off as Gylig¡¯s voice could be heard making stern examples of those who were panicking the most. After he was done with that, he called up to her. ¡°Lithilyn!¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m fine Gylig!¡± she called back down.


    ¡°Im fine,¡± she whispered, her face pressed against the creaking rope ladder.


    I¡¯m fine.

 22: Rite

    Ever since Banon had woken up from his vision, he felt as if his awareness of the living things around him was more keen. There wasn¡¯t a better way than that to describe it. He just felt¡­ more connected. Now that the effects of whatever the shaman and spirit women had used on him had time to wear off, he was even more sure of it.


    Something had changed.


    Every living thing around him had a kind of extra light coming from it. Or¡­ light was wrong. But so was scent, hearing, touch. It wasn¡¯t a sensory experience he was used to, but it was there. And as far as he could tell, it was not going away any time soon.


    If anything, it was only getting stronger.


    Here, in the sprawling chamber of rites, packed with Ooura and Pyathen alike, his new sense of life was practically screaming at him.


    The Pyathen were all tucked into one end of the massive, tube-shaped chamber, their princess positioned prominently at a large table spread that had been setup specifically for her and only her. Her guards and torch bearers were formed up in a half circle behind her, not actively beading their crossbows on anyone, but holding them close at the ready. At the other end of the chamber, emperor Poh was sat highest on a throne made from Ooura bones, while his elders were lined up beneath him. Yet another level down from the elders, a dozen Kothai and two dozen spirit women were sat in front of huge drums accompanied by stone slabs on either side, waiting for the signal to begin. Taking up the majority of the space in the middle section of the chamber, the eighteen year old boys who had downed and brought back Orux were seated cross legged all over the floor, each of them attended by three unmarried girls from their respective tribes.


    Banon was sat central among them, and just as he suspected, one of the two girls picked to aid him in this ceremony was Iala, a few years Banon¡¯s junior and daughter of Icola¨Cwho was one of the oldest spirit women, and who had saved more lives during wartime than perhaps anyone alive. The other was Goija, a woman a few years older than him, chosen likely for her striking size and the fact her father was a renowned Kothai, known best for being Poh¡¯s most vicious battlefield leader¨Cbesides Tema¨Cduring the quashing of Dorse of Ain¡¯s rebellion. The third, he honestly did not recognize, though she was also the one who he noticed reacting to his presence most intensely. Unlike the other two, she glanced frequently and poorly hid it, and shifted uncomfortably every other moment. She looked closest to his own age, and had surprisingly short hair for a woman.


    As had happened several times during the wait for the ceremony to commence, Banon found himself glancing up to Tema. The man may as well have had his own personal storm cloud hanging over him. He was hunching where he sat alongside the other elders at the head of the chamber, twitchy, eyes frequently sending glares towards the Pyathen. His lips were curled back, showing a sliver of yellowing teeth.


    ¡°Why hasn¡¯t the ceremony started yet?¡± Iala asked from beside him. Her voice was surprisingly full for her age, lacking the usual girlish peaks.


    ¡°Do not speak,¡± Goija whispered impatiently, eyes slightly too wide, shoulder¡¯s tighter than wound cord, exuding diligence. ¡°This is the most important moment of your life. I would think the daughter of a healer and a shaman would understand the importance of proper adherence to ceremony,¡± she said with an awe-filled tone, as if she was revelling in the act of waiting alone.


    Banon frowned, feeling that something more than mere propriety was off. After gazing around the room, he realized there was a space where three women were sitting, but lacking a man there to attend. ¡°Never attribute intention to what can be explained by unexpected turns of fate,¡± he said.


    ¡°What is that supposed to mean?¡± Goija asked.


    Banon nodded towards the gap. ¡°Haeran is missing. They are probably waiting for him.¡±


    ¡°They would hold up the entire ceremony for one?¡± the one who Banon did not know asked.


    ¡°He is son of an elder,¡± Banon replied. ¡°And¡­ his circumstances are somewhat special.¡±


    Goija hissed unhappily. ¡°Special circumstances?¡± Apparently her convictions about propriety did not go so far as she had implied.


    ¡°I heard it was quite the contest,¡± Iala said, though there was an oddly morose tone to her voice Banon did not understand, until he realized that she had certainly been there to see the spirit women attending Haeran¡¯s injuries. From the state Banon remembered leaving the other boy''s face, he doubted any part of that healing process had been pleasant, and certainly Haeran would not be done healing entirely for weeks, if not months.


    ¡°I saw it. It wasn¡¯t much of a fair contest,¡± Goija replied.


    ¡°Fighting is not about fair contests,¡± Banon replied,. ¡°Ask your father. He has seen the difference better than any between battlefields before the Pyathen had their weapons of science, and after. If he still clings to notions of fairness and honor on battlefields that no longer have any, he is part of the problem, not the solution.¡±


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    Silence.


    Perhaps Banon could have applied more tact than that¡­


    He pressed his eyes shut briefly and then opened them back up, resisting the urge to massage the bridge of his nose. These last few days really had taken quite the toll on him. He was beyond exhausted. ¡°I apologize,¡± he said quietly. ¡°This is no time for such discussions.¡±


    ¡°You need make none. I have stated my opinion. You have stated yours.¡± Goija¡¯s voice remained even and her back straight. Perhaps she was due more credit than Banon gave her.


    Iala tilted her head in acknowledgement of the surprisingly amicable end to the argument, though the third girl was stewing uncomfortably where she sat, fidgeting almost worse than Lonka.


    The sound of heavy footsteps at the front of the chamber broke him out of his reflections. There, walking alongside the rows of drums and the Ooura waiting to play them, was Haeran. When he reached the center of the chamber, he stopped, nodded to his father and then quietly resumed walking over to his attendants. Before he sat down, Banon got a good look at his face. It was so thoroughly covered in salves only one eye was visible, and Haeran appeared he was forced to breathe solely from his mouth. Just as he went down to sit, his one visible eye met Banon¡¯s, and it was filled with predictable hatred.


    Even without being able to see most of his face, Banon could tell Haeran was still deeply subdued by the spirit women¡¯s healing substances. His shoulders were too relaxed, his head subtly swaying, and the three women with him had expressions that reflected worry for his state. They must have given him something stronger than they gave Banon if it was still affecting Haeran so overtly. Then again, perhaps some of that could be explained by simple pain.


    A flicker of sympathy crossed Banon¡¯s mind before he quashed it. Haeran had been the aggressor, and the one who sought to turn the opportunity of a lifetime, a meeting of peoples, into a petty dominance game. Still, Banon blamed Tema more than Haeran himself. The elder was doubtlessly the one who had orchestrated the plot, even if it had been his son who carried it out.


    Without further waiting, the sound of war filled the air.


    The male Kothai beat the huge, hide drums in perfect synchronicity with one another with long batons they held in each hand, creating a sound like the booming of a single, colossal, beating heart. The women beside them raised and lowered clusters of bamboo pieces onto the stone slabs, creating a wash of tinkling that resembled the rush of blood pushed through the veins.


    In the not so distant past, before the Pyathens new reign of dominance, Ooura had been bold enough to announce their presence in every battle this way. They would line up in a shield wall. Then, they would march, holding their Mew bark great shields toward the enemy, taking each lunging step in time with each beat of the drum. Slowly, but surely, they would surround and suffocate their enemy, and then finish them off with staff strikes from the gaps.


    It was the song of centuries. A song that had all but been snuffed out. Now, it was only a trick for the festivals. The sight of an Ooura shield wall marching on Pyathen and winning was only a memory, despite the delusional urge of some to hold onto a tradition that no longer worked. Banon glanced at Tema, gritting his teeth as he remembered the bargain he had struck with the elders only the evening before. If he could not successfully trick the princess into eating the flesh of the dragon eagle, and more, bargain from her what he needed to ascend the spire, Tema and Haeran would be permitted to lead a force that would attempt to stop the Pyathen from returning home, and they would do it the old way, the way that would only result in more unnecessary death.


    He steadied himself, forcing his breathing to come more evenly. Someday, there would be a time to bring back the shield wall on the open field of battle, but not yet, not until the Ooura had an answer to the acid, a new tactic or weapon that would level the playing field, or even flip the advantage entirely. A shield wall had its place, but not without a new series of supporting weapons to counter the Pyathens¡¯, ones Banon intended to be responsible for ushering in. The threat of their acid weapons had simply proved too potent a threat for too long to continue as they always had. Any among them that could not see that yet, after losing so many brothers in battle to it, were doomed to die for the sake of nothing but a false idea that there was a right and wrong way to wage battle.


    If there was one thing Banon had to credit his enemies for¨Csomething starkly overlooked by his elders¨Cit was the rabid pursuit to the inth degree of something. It was singular achievements that had changed their entire reality in regards to the effectiveness of battle.


    The Pyathen had found success by exploring so thoroughly their method of ¡°science¡± until they had discovered its peak in the form of their acid recipes. Banon had the exact same plan, only he would explore the limits of other avenues, ones even the Pyathen could not hope to tame.


    Ones only available to those who cast their ambition deep into the reaches of the jungle where even Ooura feared to visit.


    But first, what he and his people needed was room to breathe, room to focus on inventing new ways to succeed instead of barely holding onto survival. And so, with the weight of mountains on his shoulders and the eyes of many on him, Banon resolved that this princess would not leave until she had agreed to his terms. For if he could capture her from her spire without throwing more Ooura lives away, he could hold a bargaining chip that would buy him exactly the time and space he needed to enact the next stage of his plans.


    The drum beat came to an end, though the bamboo tinkling continued on, barely loud enough to be heard, filling the chamber with an ambience of anticipation. Next, shamans entered the chamber trailing smoke from burning incense and carrying wicker cages that buzzed loudly thanks to the huge, flying insects trapped inside. The night wasps, glowing a vibrant yellow, were each the size of a closed fist, though somewhat more elongated. Their long, black stingers frequently poked through the wicker, searching desperately for flesh to puncture.


    ¡°And so,¡± Poh called from his throne at the head of the chamber, ¡°the second stage of the rite begins!¡±

 23: Night wasp

    As the shamans wove their way through the seated young men and their attendants, the smoke from the incense they carried began to fill the chamber with a slight haze. One by one, the shamans bayed each group to take a single night wasp and place it into the clay cups filled with water provided to them, rendering the wasp flightless, uselessly flapping their wings while they floated awkwardly in the water.


    Before Banon¡¯s group was chosen, he noticed a common theme among other groups. Each of the three young women in each group had their own clay cup, because they would each take turns feeding the man water during the trial to come. However, there was but one nightwasp given to each. This was resulting in some¡­ mildly amusing disputes over who from each group would be the one to take it.


    As one of the shaman¡¯s approached Banon¡¯s group, he noticed there was one cup already held high. Iala.


    ¡°My mother is a healer. I am a healer. This part should be done by me.¡± She side eyed the other two as if expecting retort, but neither made one. Goija¡¯s eyes were forward, face impassive. The one who Banon still did not know the name of seemed far too timid to make any kind of objection, so it went to Iala then.


    The shaman stopped in front of them, opened a small door in the wicker cage, and reached inside as if the rabid insects were of no worry to him. He plucked one, holding it between the two body segments to prevent it from being able to bend far enough to sting him.


    ¡°Stop,¡± Banon said, just before the man could drop the wasp into Iala¡¯s cup. ¡°I want that one.¡± Banon pointed towards the wasp of his interest, one whose attempts to sting the cage had resulted in the black stinger being pushed so far through the whicker that it could no longer retract it back through and it had now become stuck.


    The shaman narrowed his eyes, but did as he was told, returning the first wasp and coming back out with the one Banon had asked. He deposited into the water, careful not to let go until he was certain the wings were waterlogged enough that it would not simply fly away. The insect was larger than some bird species. Its head, legs, and wings were black as the night, while its largest body segment glowed with such a rich yellow it could be mistaken for a piece of the sun that had fallen and somehow grown a body around itself. Even after it was clear there was no escape and that it was stuck, the wasp writhed with its pincers gnashing and its probing stings occasionally scratching the edge of the clay cup.


    After the shamans finished handing out a wasp to each group, they returned to the front of the room and lined up, shoulder to shoulder with one another, facing those who would imminently take the night wasps into their bodies. The shaman standing in the center took a step forward from the rest, his face shrouded almost entirely by the headpiece of his swamp lion pelt cloak. ¡°The next generation of protectors sit among us in this chamber now,¡± he said with a voice like smoke and stone. He then looked up to emperor Poh, who nodded.


    The shaman turned back his attention to the young men. ¡°Your first trial proved your might and prowess as warriors. In the next stage, you will be forced to fight monsters of a more internal nature, testing your will and sense of self instead rather than your braun and wit. Quick thinking on a battlefield is one thing, but a Kothai is more than a fighter. They are not a piece, separated from land and from their brothers. They are a part of it. All of it. This stage of the rite will separate those who fight for their own gain from those who fight for all Ooura.¡±


    While the shaman paused, gazing out over his subjects, something within Banon wavered. Was he really fighting for the good of all? At every step, he told himself he was, even when he had been taken to the well of souls. Though¡­ at a crucial moment back then he had shown weakness. Once confronted with the full weight of the expectation all of the souls within the well had for him, he had faltered, so much so he had been forced out of the vision. Would this trial finally give him the answer? Could one ever truly know the difference unless they were separated completely from themselves? Was that even possible? Not just to be separate from their senses, but even from their own minds, their own self. The night wasp ritual was notorious for breaking down the weak minded, but could it really split the difference between such closely aligned features? His own glory would certainly benefit many others.


    The shaman took in a long breath from the air that was now thick with smoke which stung the eyes and made weary the mind. ¡°You each have a cup filled with water, and a live nightwasp. Upon the signal to begin, your women will feed it to you, and you will swallow it whole without damaging the wasp. If you do this correctly, the wasp will continue to survive inside you, floating in a bath of water and bile in your gut. The glow should remain visible through the flesh of your stomach. From there, those behind me will begin playing a rhythm. Upon the last beat of every chorus, each of your women will take a turn feeding to you a sip of water. Only a sip. You will not gorge yourselves in hope to drown the night wasp quickly. We will know if you try to cheat, or fail to keep it alive, because the light will go out once it is dead inside you. During these next several hours, you will receive many stings inside your body, filling you with the venom that brings sight beyond what your eyes are capable. You will see many things. Do not hide from what the venom will try to show you. It will only result in more strife. Do not move from your seat. Do not fail to drink along with the beat. Do not fall asleep. Stay awake so your mind may remain able to direct itself through the visions you will experience. There is only one way that you will certainly fail this rite: If the glow within your stomach disappears before the first light of tomorrow hits this chamber, you will fail, and will not be named Kothai.¡±


    There was a short pause while the chamber itself held its breath.


    ¡°All torches in this chamber will be snuffed out so that we may see the glow through the flesh and be sure whether or not you have drowned the wasp and failed,¡± the shaman said.


    All torches inside the chamber were accordingly snuffed out. All¡­ except for the Pyathens at the back of the chamber, if the blue glow still emanating from behind him was anything to go off of.


    A short, terse suspense while the shaman glared towards the offending light sources. ¡°All lights in this chamber will be put out. Now.¡±


    A short argument ensued, starting with the princess issuing out a hurried order in her own language. There was a delay until the torch bearers understood what was being asked of them since the princess was apparently the only one of them who spoke Ooura and had to translate for them. After that, their hissing voices got louder and louder as the princess argued back and forth with them. Eventually, a compromise seemed to be made. The six torch bearers, rather than snuff out their flames, were escorted out of the main chamber by an equal number of ordinary Pyathen soldiers to keep their guard.


    That done, the chamber was left in relative darkness, only a few slivers of orange light leaking in through the woven walls from the many bonfires down below where families feasted upon their sons quarry.


    ¡°On the emperor''s word,¡± the shaman said, ¡°you will each swallow the night wasp.¡±


    ¡°Actually,¡± Poh began, voice soft spoken but carrying clearly even still, ¡°I would ask that our guest gives the declaration that allows us to begin. They are here. Why not participate? She does speak our language, after all.¡±


    Banon glanced back over his shoulder, curious. The princess glanced around the chamber, uncertainty in her eyes, but eventually she stood. ¡°You may begin.¡±


    All at once, the chamber filled with strained gurgling as each man swallowed his wasp whole, desperately fighting back the urge to spit or vomit them back out. Loud groans sounded as stingers pricked tender flesh on the way down. Iala didn¡¯t rush it like some around clearly had. She held the cup in only her left hand and placed her right hand on the back of his head, guiding the two together. Banon accepted the cup. Water streamed into his mouth along with a prickly mass of insectoid legs and chitinous body segments. He exhaled through his nose as pincers clasped tight around the base of his tongue. He tried to swallow but the wasp held on desperately, as if it understood this was the last moment before its fate was sealed. Banon groaned as he felt the stinger worming in the back of his throat, piercing anything it could and instantly filling his neck with a burning sensation. His eyes teared up, and it took everything he had to resist spitting it out. Clenching his teeth through the pain, he pressed his tongue into the roof of his mouth forcefully enough that it caused the wasp to lose grip and slip back down his throat.


    Banon swallowed it and hurriedly wiped the tears from his eyes.


    ¡°Are you alright?¡± Iala asked, though before he could respond, something else drew his attention.


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    The man next to him, coughing and sputtering, his wasp floundering on the floor of the chamber. One of the man''s three attendants grabbed the wasp on instinct, but shrieked and retracted her hand when it stung her. Banon leaned over, darted his hand out, caught and crushed it before it could become any more of a problem.


    The lead shaman was already approaching the failure.


    ¡°Wait! No!¡± he pleaded, still clutching his throat and gasping for air. ¡°Give me another! I can¨C¡±


    The shaman beared his teeth and hissed at the young man, cutting off his words and bathing his face in fear. ¡°You will dishonor us no more with excuses, or your presence. Leave.¡±


    Reluctantly, the man did as he was told.


    Banon, though he was mostly focussed on the horrible pain in his neck, managed to notice the sounds of one other somewhere behind him who had coughed up his wasp, immediately sealing his fate. Besides that, it seemed the rest had successfully begun the second stage of their rite. Banon was impressed by that, considering how close he had felt to failing in those first few decisive moments where the wasp fought with everything it had to stay in his mouth rather than be swallowed.


    Before Banon could linger too long on his pride in his fellow men and his abrupt uncertainty in himself, his eyes were drawn to the dimly lit silhouette of a man heaving. Haeran. Haeran¡¯s body lurched as it tried to expel the wasp. He could be heard heaving, though by sheer force of will it seemed he kept his body from finishing the motion and throwing up. Until Banon heard it. The bubbly sound of guts being brought up from the stomach. However, keen eared as he was, he noticed there was no wet plop indicating the vomit had breached his lips and hit the floor.


    Haeran swallowed with a grunt like a wounded Orux. From the front of the chamber, Tema rumbled his approval in the back of his throat. Even in the darkness, Banon could make out Haeran¡¯s head turning, and his eyes by their slight glint, looking right at him.


    Banon smiled, trying desperately not to look as weak as he felt with his mouth and throat closing up. Leaves of the mother tree. This will never be over, will it?


    Inside Banon¡¯s gut, a dull burning sensation was growing rapidly in intensity. The stings could not be felt quite as keenly as when it had still been lodged in his mouth, but they were there nonetheless, and worse, they were not stopping. Peirce after peirce, and hotter and hotter the fire burned with each additional one.


    After the two failures were escorted out of the chamber, the lead shaman again stepped in front of the drummers. Behind his dark silhouette, the quiet ambience they had been playing died off completely. The shaman began to raise his hands, outstretched to the sides.


    The chamber was silent, until slowly a new rhythm began to build, starting low and loose, but growing more erratic and warlike overtime. At the peak of the chaotic drum notes combined with the unnerving scraping caused by the women drummers dragging their bamboo clusters across stone slabs, all of the sudden every man on the hide drums slammed down their batons as one.


    Goija took the initiative, holding her cup up to Banon¡¯s lips first. She was not half as gentle as Iala, and perhaps gave him too much water, but got the job done nonetheless. Next was Iala, who gave much less than Goija had, perhaps to compensate, and then he sipped from the cup held by the one who he did not know, whose hands quivered so much she ended up spilling more than made it into his lips.


    Banon tried to empathise with her, but he could not ignore how poorly she was handling this. The whole point of merging this ceremony with the courting of a wife for Kothai was to have assurance that they could support their husband under such pressures as he was enduring now. Because if she could not remain composed while he hallucinated and fought back against his own inner demons, she would never be able to cope with the strain a man being sent to a real battle put on a family.


    Banon tried not to panic but every breath was more difficult than the last.


    The visions to come were the important part, yes. But with how much pain he felt now, he was beginning to understand this stage of the rite was also yet another layer of reassurance that those given the name of Kothai were able to transcend their minds beyond bodily pain. Kothai were expected to be the kind of men that when losing a limb in the midst of battle, would sooner use it as a bludgeon to complete the revenge killing of whoever took it than panic and flee.


    As the ceremony wore on and he began to get used to the pain, however, Banon was forced to confront the other purpose of this. Choosing a wife. Most of the women not chosen by Kotahi here today would go on to marry outside of the warrior class. As for the Kothai, despite this part of the rite being designed around taking a wife, it was also not uncommon for warriors to claim wives even in addition to their first one later in life. If Banon had any say, he would rather avoid starting a family this early in his life.


    Someday he would have done his people proudly, brought back their name to the same prominence as both Pyathen and Enka. Then, and only then did he feel he would be worthy and ready to reward himself with a wife.


    It was taking real restraint, however, to convince himself this plan was the right course of action in the moment. He had little interest in Goija, despite what mighty children he knew the two of them would produce. The other two, on the other hand, were showing him things he had not known he could have. All his life he had felt his status and lineage put people on edge. Yet now, the one whose name he regretfully still did not know was feeding him water from her hands instead of the cup and laughing when he spilled it out of the corners of his swollen mouth. Iala smiled every time he met her eyes, and had a kind of calm, self-assuredness in her demeanor Banon felt he could get used to.


    His father would no doubt want him to take one. He could tell that easy enough by the probing glances the emperor was shooting his way. As much as Poh had chosen to indulge Banon¡¯s warlike tendencies, and his new ideas for warfare performed unlike that of their ancestors, he was still trying to reign Banon in at every turn. He just preferred to do it subtly. Banon¡¯s mood began to sour somewhat at the thought that the laughing one of his might have been encouraged by either Poh or her own family to play into it. What if her family had been promised something behind the curtain? Goija, at least, he could be sure that was not true for. She was cold and calculating, and obviously not interested in pretending otherwise. Iala already had status, though being married to a son of the emperor would elevate her even further.


    Banon found himself staring down at one of his crossed legs instead, and not for the first time, he found himself questioning whether it would have been better to be born not the son of an emperor.


    Banon was never sure he was seeing people for who they really were. How much of Iala¡¯s admiring eyes was for his name and not him? How much of the other¡¯s giggles were performance instead of genuine?


    It was then that a hand placed itself upon the knee which he had been staring down at. Her tiny palm partly cupped just a portion of his boney kneecap.


    She gestured for him to look up, and when he did he saw Iala smiling. Banon put on a polite smile to her, as she quietly remarked about how silly his cheeks looked all swollen around his nose like two wasps nests cradling misshapen mound that had become of his nose.


    He nodded politely again at her joke, and looked around to gauge how the rest of the young Ooura men around him were doing. Few were as swollen as him, to his displeasure. He tried not to allow himself the luxury of fear, since it was known that some had severe enough reactions to the venom that it left them either crippled or dead by the end of the ritual, but he could not ignore the reality that, on the surface, he was clearly responding worse to the venom than most.


    Banon turned his focus internal, ignoring the other men, ignoring whatever the giggling one was giggling at this time, just focussing on slowing his entire body down, and in doing so, lessening the negative reaction. His eyelids fell closed. He started with his breath, moving it to a slow and even pace without even taking a break between the in breaths and out breaths to pause. After a few minutes of that, it became easy to keep up without conscious effort.


    He then turned his first mind to his muscles, envisioning their tightly bound coords loosening, even forcing their underlying fibers to stop the irregular contractions caused by the venom coursing through him. Several minutes after that, he felt much better, and upon opening his eyes no longer had the haze of panic hanging over everything. The beat of the drums was getting close to the point where he would be taking another round of drinks.


    The first sight he was greeted with upon emerging from his meditative state was Iala, leaning in slightly and studying him. ¡°Good,¡± she whispered with a small nod. ¡°Slowing down is the way.¡± Had Iala been watching him through that entire time? Waiting to make sure he didn¡¯t fall asleep, perhaps? Well, there was some comfort in that. Banon did feel the first waves of something coming over his mind that he felt would soon put him at risk of that. The visions would start soon, he was sure of it.


    Goija looked no different from when he last saw her, but when the third one noticed him opening his eyes again, she reacted in a way that made him certain his hunch about her was correct. She jumped, when she noticed him looking, and then instantly switched her expression back to that wide smile, and started giggling again. She was faking, and in more ways than just her demeanor. If he didn¡¯t know any better, he might suspect she had been trained from birth to be the perfect bride for an emperor''s son. Her hair held together without a single tangle, every speck of plaque had been picked from her ivory whites, but not too roughly since her gums were not receded either. She was unscarred and unmarked by anything but the tiny creases the corner of her eyes had when she smiled¨Cwhich was almost constantly. She had been groomed for this day, designed and fashioned into being as appealing as possible. Her family had no doubt put immense effort into presenting him this facade. Shame, then, that the effort would all go to waste.


    Banon took a deep breath, and sighed his frustrations into the fragrant festival air.


    ¡°Not happy about something?¡± Goija asked, hardly even looking at him.


    ¡°What is there to be happy about?¡± Banon asked, voice muffled from the swelling.


    The faker put on her fake laugh, Goija ignored him, and Iala merely readied her cup for the imminent drum beat.


    Again Banon drank. And again, the chorus of war began anew.

 24: Inner eye

    Lithilyn sat in darkness.


    Part of her was disgusted in what she had witnessed so far.


    It was just a guess, but something told her the three female attendants to every Ooura undergoing their bug swallowing ritual were either all the reward for completing the trial, or perhaps the man got to choose one of them. The better part of her mind quickly dismissed her affrontedness towards such a tradition. She was, after all, more or less a token that her mother was negotiating with and planning to sell for a series of well cataloged concessions from the Enka, in return for her hand in marriage. There was hardly a difference between her and a shipment of raw minerals, when you looked at it that way.


    The majority of her mind, however, was filled with fear.


    The song they played throughout the ritual was as harrowing on the ears as being forced to bend to the whims of these savages was on the morale of her guard. She could feel it in the air, the tension and weaning conviction in her leadership. Her torch bearers had been removed from the chamber. All other light besides had been snuffed out as well, leaving her and her men barely able to make out the silhouettes of the nearest Ooura in front of them. If the Ooura were planning an ambush, this would be a perfect time to execute it. And yet, as time wore on, nothing happened besides the continuing of the ritual. Her eyes adjusted somewhat better as the hour wore on. Her mind never did, though.


    The fear was only getting worse.


    ***


    Banon sat in darkness, though he could see just fine. With every passing moment, his own thoughts threatened to betray him. The mind-bending feeling that something was trying to separate him from himself came in waves, and with each barrage of self-sabotage he endured, reality itself began to bend around him just a little bit more than it had the last time.


    The walls of the chamber were breathing¨Cit was the only way to describe it. The floor appeared to have flowing currents overlaid onto its surface, making him feel like an immobile stone sticking up in a river. The drums the men hammered and the scraping instruments the women played seemed to coincide with the rising and falling in intensity with which he felt these distortions.


    When he looked to Iala for support, the flesh of her face was melting into multicolored liquid that dripped upwards off her face as if gravity was in reverse. He cringed, looked back towards the floor and squinted, and for a time that gave him a kind of mild relief. It wasn¡¯t long, however, before a new sensory intrusion forced him back into the present.


    Someone was breathing.


    Someone angry, hungry and vengeful. It was the strangest thing that Banon could tell all of that just by the subtle differences in the breathing patterns of this individual, but in this elevated state, he could. He slowly forced his gaze to hone in on the sound, though in the pit of his stomach, he already knew. When he met the subtle glimmer that came from elder Tema¡¯s eyes, he knew they were focussed on Banon. The face attached to them, however, was another horror in and of itself. Tema¡¯s face was his own, but exaggerated in every conceivable way. His jaw and brow were set in demonic angles, and every twitch and flare of his nostrils exuding hatred. All at once, Banon became completely convinced what he was staring at was not elder Tema, but an evil spirit making a bad attempt at hiding among the mortals.


    Banon felt his heart speed up, his muscles tightening. He was prepared to fight.


    Until a small yet stern hand brushed against his knee.


    Iala tilted her head at him, eyes inquisitive. ¡°Calm,¡± she said. ¡°The fight is inside, not out.¡±


    Banon blinked at her. A small part of him knew she was making sense, but he¡¯d already worked himself up. And as his body sped up, panic filled him as another threat made itself known. His heart rate had gotten fast enough that now he could feel the venom spreading faster than he could handle.


    ¡°Calm,¡± Iala repeated. ¡°Slow down.¡±


    The chorus ended with the thundering crash of all of the drummers beating at once, causing Banon to flinch and snarl. A moment later, he shook his head. There was no immediate threat. He¡¯d only barely managed to keep himself from jumping to his feet and lunging for where the offending sound came from, just then. He felt little better than a feral animal. Iala was right. He needed to slow.


    He barely managed to take a sip of water from each of his attendants before the chorus began anew.


    He tried to listen to Iala¡¯s wise words, but even his deepest and most deliberate of breaths felt like he was inhaling a storm.


    The feeling was too intense. He just needed to close his eyes for a moment.


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    Far more time than a moment passed in the blackness inside his eyelids. He saw purple flashes, bursts of color around him from where he knew the other Ooura closeby him sat, and surging fractal patterns emanating from them that blended together with each other at their fringes. Every shape within each pattern was interlinked with others. Nothing was solitary.


    And it was all too familiar.


    Including the fractal that he felt emanating from within himself. In that one, he could sense much more detail. So, he decided to push further. Banon extended his awareness inwards, finding the pattern not only extended outward, but inward as well. Each surface shape he probed unfolded, branching off into a thousand impossible directions. It all seemed too familiar to be a coincidence. This was the same thing he had seen when his ancestors brought him to the end well in the eye of Kimitrius. This was his own soul he was sensing. Somehow, it was much easier to perceive in detail now than it had been back then when he was wrenched from his body.


    This was also, undoubtedly, the sixth sense he had been noticing building up ever since then. A life sense, he had thought it to be at first. But now he could tell it to be something different. This was his sense of soul. Not only his own, but of every living thing around him. His fellow Oora¡¯s soul¡¯s were the easiest to notice since they resembled his own, but everywhere around him there were more, though less distinct and bright.


    The Pyathen behind him, he sensed as bundles of taught strings. There were tiny, insectoid souls crawling along the walls of the chamber of rites. On the forest floor below him, the mat even had a soul¨Cone lacking in the same brightness and complexity, but a soul nonetheless. He was fairly certain he could even get vague impressions of fish and other water dwelling creatures beneath that in the lake underneath their village.


    When he turned his soul sense towards the Mew tree whose branches cradled the chamber of rites, he was suddenly overwhelmed with brightness. He had to retract his awareness because it was actually painful to look at. But in the small glimpse he had gotten, he saw a colossal pattern branching out in a similar¨Cthough much more complex¨Cway to actual tree branches. It extended so far he could swear it was touching both horizons¨Ceven though, within his soul-sight, there was none to see. He had also gotten the distinct impression that it was watching him, and perhaps all of them here in the chamber. And there was one more thing, something he was less sure of than his other observations.


    He got the distinct impression of two souls. One, the tree itself. But another¡­ overlaying it? No, that was wrong. Nestled within it might be more apt, but still not entirely correct. They felt almost two parts of the same whole. One ancient and uncaring, one sapient and observing. Their patterns were separate, yet interlinked deeply. Not merely tentatively connecting at the fringes like his own soul with the Ooura surrounding him.


    He hid within his own soul for a time, fearful of glimpsing the Mew tree¡¯s spirit again, and moreso whatever than creature was hiding within it. It was not that it had felt antagonistic towards Banon himself. Both were quite beautiful, despite their intensity. But some things had such majesty that fear was the only appropriate response.


    Now that his focus had turned inwards again, Banon resolved to explore as much of his own soul as he could. He found that, though he could sense it was deep, maybe even boundless, he was hardly able to navigate the shallows without getting lost in it. His frustration grew and grew, until some time later he noticed something restless and resentful making itself known. Banon retracted back to the surface level only to see a dark presence looming over his own soul.


    It shifted, flickering menacingly upon his notice. The monster hovering over his soul was blacker than the surrounding void, yet all too visible, pronged with fangs and arachnid arms springing totally at random. Its spider-like arms were poking and scraping at his soul¨Cwhich, from this higher level perspective, appearing as an armored orb wreathed in fire, as if some automatic defense had been activated by the black entity¡¯s presence.


    This arachnid being was not another soul, for it had no pattern nor depth. Once he realized that, he recognized it immediately. It was his own ambition, given form, fiber, purpose, being, and that black mass was what it looked like. It was mocking him for being unsatisfied, for needing to have figured it all out on his own rather than accepting that real change takes time, and most of all for not trusting in those around him to be anything more than useful tools for his ends.


    But how could that be? Every ambition he had ever had had been selfless, for all his people. A twinge of pain came from the monster as it scraped deeper, telling him he was wrong. He got the impression it would refuse to leave until he admitted it so. Banon meditated on that, desperate to justify himself and prove this presence to be merely a weakness that he only needed to fight against harder. But as he felt himself stray further from the inevitable truth, the pain worsened. Eventually, he relented, trying to accept the point tentatively at first.


    That did not work either.


    It was only when he opened up, and in honesty admitted that his ambition was not only a weakness, but his greatest weakness, that the entity of which it was made from relented on him and disappeared. It did not leave him without one last sentiment, however.


    It is also your greatest strength.


    He had expected admitting weakness in such a complete and open way to cause even worse pain, but he only felt liberated.


    Colors that he felt as much as vibrations as he actually saw them began to appear, swimming at first around the edges of his black void. They eventually descended to an impossibly bright point, and then that point began to expand again until his usual awareness of his flesh and blood body returned to him. As he creaked open his eyes and took in the room again. He was still sitting, not sprawled out on the floor sleeping, which seemed impossible. He was sure he had spent hours being unconscious in that place where his soul was visible, though, weirdly, he could no longer quite picture that place any longer. The fractals, he remembered in a sense still, but their shapes were a blurred mass of color in his memory now.


    Banon blinked until it became bearable for him to take in the room around him once again, now devoid of bright, fractal souls, but instead populated by the ordinary bodies they belonged to.


    When he glanced to the side, his attendants looked mildly concerned, but only as much as if they had seen him nod off for minutes, not for hours like had felt to him to have passed.

 25: Golden feast

    At long last, the rays of the rising sun met the chamber of rites, signified by the slivers of orange light coming in through gaps in the wicker walls. The only other light remaining in the chamber came from the dull glow permeating through the stomach cavities of all the Kothai undergoing their trial. And they were Kothai now, all of them. Not one light had gone out before the sun''s rays touched the chamber again, meaning that they had all succeeded, and now their only task left was to fill their stomachs and drown the wasp once and for all. As an aid towards that end, the rhythm along with which they drank gradually increased until, within the hour, they had all drowned their wasps and the glow inside all of them had gone out.


    The Donai princess¡¯s torch bearers were brought back inside shortly, still possessing their ever burning blue flames. They rejoined their princess at the rear of the chamber.


    After collecting all the cups and reigniting the torches scattered throughout the chamber, the shamans all left, save for the one with the swamp lion cloak. He stood in the same central spot he had when announcing the rules for the night wasp trial several long hours previous. ¡°Good, then. Besides a few who failed to start, we have an overwhelming showing from our young warriors. And you are warriors now. All of you. Kothai.¡±


    Cheers, grunts, nods, depending on what each newly christened of their warrior class felt was appropriate. Out of all of them, only two remained silent. Banon had his reasons. Good, bad, or simply that from what he had seen in the trance that he did not understand yet. All swirled around in his mind.


    ¡°Now,¡± the shaman said, drawing back Banon¡¯s attention. ¡°Each group, when called upon by the name of the Kothai, will approach me and declare in front of his kinsman and emperor the name of the woman who will take his name and follow in step with him along the path of the warrior.¡±


    The selections went off as could be expected. Most of the time, the two attendants who had not been chosen were not all that surprised, given many of the new Kothai here had been paired with those they already shared existing bonds with. However, when it was Banon¡¯s time, he did not find a decision coming so easily.


    He stood at the head of the chamber, Iala, Goija, and the one he still did not know the name of standing alongside him. He could practically feel his fathers eyes on the back of his head, and beyond that, he suspected somehow that Lonka was somewhere watching this in hiding. He shifted awkwardly, for once in his life finding confidence and evasive concept. It wasn¡¯t that he didn¡¯t have a clear choice in mind, but he had seen so much in these last few hours, so much that had changed the way he saw his own future.


    Banon glanced once at the shaman¡¯s expectant face, shrouded in shadow as it was. And then, instead of addressing the room, he turned and spoke up to his father. ¡°If the emperor would permit it, I would request permission to choose a wife after my duties negotiating with the Donai family¡¯s representative are over with.¡±


    Poh raised an eyebrow, but did not outright deny him. ¡°You would put on hold such an important decision?¡±


    ¡°With respect father, the first negotiation between peoples in more years than I have on my life is of a weight of importance that is above anything. Such is the strength of that importance that I do not feel clear of mind enough to make this decision until I have done my duty in representing the needs of my people first.¡± And it wasn¡¯t entirely a lie, either.


    There was a soft clicking noise coming from Tema¡¯s direction, but Poh ignored it, simply nodding. ¡°Very well. You may break yet another tradition, and somehow I doubt it will come to haunt you the way it would any of us.¡±


    ***


    After he had made his curious declaration, the huge Ooura who she was soon to negotiate with had simply stood off the edges of the chamber while the rest of the other Ooura young men¨Cwho were now officially Kothai¨Cmade their choices, giving Lythilyn plenty of time to stew. She knew her angle, but she was also painfully aware of how many holes there were to poke in her plan. All it would take was a little inquisitive thinking on the part of her opposition and she would have a lot less leverage than she would like.


    She bit her tongue so she wouldn¡¯t make a more outwardly obvious gesture of frustration. The likelihood of one of these savages putting the whole puzzle together was slim, she reminded herself. The emperor''s son had already seen through her to some extent, but he only knew that she was compromised in some way. There was no way he could possibly know to what degree, let alone that she was not here with official permission. Even her own mother would have more than likely kept the secret of her surprise departure under wraps. Appearances, when it came to royalty, usually mattered more than reality. All the same, Lythilyn¡¯s absence would certainly be noticed the moment she returned home. She just hoped she could return with something valuable enough to sway the opinions at court in her favor.


    ¡°Now, my son will serve you the delicacy of our people, the Dragon Eagle.¡± Poh¡¯s voice carried across the chamber, shaking her out of her worry for the future, only to replace it with worry for the present. She also wasn¡¯t entirely in agreement about her being served what appeared to be an uncooked, even recently deceased bird. She hardly expected the corpse was even cooled yet.


    Thankfully, a large clay platter carrying a bed of still smoldering coals was hastily brought over by Oouta servants and placed on her table, which at least reassured her that these creatures had the decency to cook their food before they¨Cand in this case she¨Cate it. The next to approach was, as expected, the son of Poh himself. Banon, she remembered him being called during their first meeting.


    His skin, like all of those around him, was a smokey tone of light grey. His hair, on the other hand, was practically a beacon of color now that the torch light in the chamber had been restored. As he approached, that rich orange color gained a striking tint to it thanks to the uniquely colored flames her surrounding torch bearers carried.


    He plopped down into a cross legged position on the other side of her table spread, completely ignoring the anxious shifting of hands on crossbows all around them. He drew a knife made from obsidian, thankfully having the grace to do so slowly and in full view of her guard. The knife was set down next to the platter of coals as he moved onto other things. He held the corpse of the massive, golden feathered bird in both hands, and with equal parts disgust and confusion, she regarded the fact that one of the barded talons of the eagle was still lodged deeply in his palm. With a single, violent motion, he tore it free, sending blood spattering in a remarkably¨Cand unfortunately¨Cwide radius.


    She clenched her jaw, forcing herself not to react as a gob of hot blood ran down her face. In between then, the coals belched steam as his blood sizzled upon them.


    From there, without a word, he sat back down and began to pluck it one feather at a time. She raised an eyebrow, wondering why this hadn¡¯t simply been done beforehand by another. But, she assumed, it probably had something to do with the fact that the bird had not left his person since she had first seen him with it. Tradition, she mused, was quite often the death of sanity.


    As he continued about his monumental task of removing each of what must have been thousands of feathers by hand, another tray was brought out by the same Ooura who had brought the plate of coals.


    It was placed in front of her with the briefest of explanations. They claimed the translucent, rubbery bowls with which a whitish grey meat had been served in were the suction cups from a jungle kraken''s tentacles. Each ¡®suction cup¡¯ could have probably wrapped around her entire head twice over, so, while she was impressed to see something that looked so much like the unique shape and texture of a kraken suction cup, she found it impossible that it came from an actual living kraken. The meat, however, she already knew by the smell was undoubtedly kraken. There were few things that had such a unique smell as the jungle krakens flesh when cooked. It sort of smelled¨Cand to a certain degree, tasted¨Clike the bottom of a lake.


    The Kraken meat had already been cooked, so, tentatively at first, she took her first bite. It was¡­ remarkably better than her previous experience with the species. Perhaps it really had come from a specimen big enough to have produced those bowl sized cups. There had to be something that made it different, because if it was not the age of the creature itself that had shifted the quality of the meat so much, then her people had been preparing them completely wrong.


    While she continued to eat¨Cand pretend it was only slightly above acceptable to her pallet¨CBanon simply plucked the feathers. There was a pile beside him now almost as high as the table, neatly stacked into a stable formation that suggested he had infinitely more practice plucking birds than his status as son of an emperor might have let on.


    Several more minutes of this passed until, finally, the Ooura sitting across from her finished his work. Setting the last feather aside, he then reached for the knife he had left on the table, and with it, he began at first to cut such thin strips off of the mighty carcass that she would have likened it more to peeling a fruit than butchery. Deliberately, he placed each slice, skin side down, onto the coals in front of him.


    The air filled with the sound of sizzling flesh and an overpowering scent of sweetness. Banon waited until the sizzling began to die down, and then flipped the meat strips to their flesh sides.


    Some minutes later, the pile of golden brown eagle meat had grown large enough that Banon began to distribute it between them. She stared down at the strips of yellow tinged, sweet smelling meat in the fleshy bowl for several seconds before deciding that, if they really wanted to poison her, they already would have. The moment she took her first bite, all notions of anything besides the wondrous texture and the honey-esque flavor filling her mouth fled away. Her hand was already reaching to grab another slice before the gruff voice of the Ooura across from her gave her pause.


    ¡°Your people,¡± Banon said to her in garbled, albeit understandable Pyathen, while he pointed at her. Then he pointed at himself. ¡°My people.¡± Then he took a bite himself. ¡°If we can¡­ E¨CE¨C¡± he looked to be searching for a word.


    ¡°Eat?¡± she asked.


    He raised an eyebrow briefly, then nodded. ¡°If we can eat together, we can k¨Ckeep the war¨C¡±


    ¡°I can speak your language. So just speak that,¡± she interrupted in his own language with perhaps a touch more annoyance than she wanted to let into her voice. Much as she would never admit it, the prospect of doing anything besides filling her belly with what had been laid in the bowl in front of her was suddenly about as enticing as sleeping out in the jungle with its ever present buzz of life for another night.


    ¡°Tell me,¡± Banon began, thankfully in his own language this time, ¡°how is it that your grasp of our tongue is so complete? My only practice with yours has come through those of your kind who were weak enough to allow themselves to be captured rather than die as warriors.¡±


    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    ¡°I have very good teachers, who have very good information to rely on themselves. Go on, finish what you were trying to say before in my language. I am curious.¡±


    Banon nodded, then considered her for several moments before proceeding to finish his silly little speech of peace, after admitting to regularly torturing her kind for information a moment before. ¡°If we as the younger generation can eat together, perhaps, eventually, it can be us who change things in the future. Even we, as heirs to dynasties, do not have the time nor the power to accomplish this within our own lifetimes, but peoples uniting is not impossible. Just look at your own family, and your own imminent marriage to an Enka. This is not a small change. This is a uniting of not only peoples, but ways of doing things as well.¡±


    She hid the shock that he was somehow aware of her promise to the Enka prince well, probably only because he had brought it up so casually himself. She could not help the disgust from bleeding onto her face in regards to his other points, however. ¡°If you think that, then you have not read history. You have not learned from the mistakes of our ancestors.¡±


    Banon swallowed a mouthful he had been chewing for longer than the others. ¡°And what mistakes are those?¡±


    ¡°The mistake of considering Ooura as a people, and not a group of animals tearing at one another in the forest.¡± She made sure it was a whisper she only hissed loud enough for him to hear. She was still terrified that any affront could lead to an immediate battle breaking out, but this was the angle she had chosen, and she was not planning on letting a little fear shatter a plan that she had spent months concocting.


    ¡°And yet you come here,¡± he replied without pause, tearing another strip of meat from the carcass and eyeing it quizzically before setting in down on the coals. Odd, that. She had expected them to eat like savages, but the Ooura she had watched eating so far were actually remarkably delicate with their food.


    ¡°I come here out of necessity. If you don''t know that by now, then you do not know much.¡±


    Banon nodded. ¡°You come alone, with a small guard, and you accept my fathers bargain to join us in the chamber of rites. The way I see it, each decision has made you more vulnerable than the last.¡±


    Well, there was some consolation in that mutual understanding. If he had been shrewd enough to assume she wasn¡¯t the real heir to the Donai and instead a disposable game piece, they might have killed them all by now. Of course, she was the heir, but since she was here against the will of the current figurehead of their regime, forcing her to bring only a small honor guard trustworthy enough to go about something like this, it had been one of her primary worries in this whole endeavor. Apparently, both the one in front of her now and the Ooura¡¯s other leadership seemed to be the perfect blend of smart and stupid for her own plans to have made it this far.


    She leaned forwards until the could feel the heat from the coals on her neck, doing everything she could to appear imposing despite her circumstances. ¡°Vulnerable, yes. I am vulnerable, but I am not my people. I should not need to explain to you the situation your entire people are in. You could kill me here. Yes, you would sustain losses in the chaos that followed, but I would taken off the board. Do you know what would follow next?¡±


    Banon was completely motionless, waiting, though his expression was stoney and unrelenting.


    She forced a small smile onto her lips. She needed to sell herself as ruthless during this next part, otherwise it would come across as hollow as it felt. ¡°Things are already unstable in my family,¡± she admitted. ¡°There are factions that seek to burn so much of this forest you and yours will have nowhere left to hide, and while I believe they are fools, I also know they are right about one thing. They are right that we could do it. It would be a push unlike any in our history, a crusade that would cost us thousands of lives. But it would work. And then it would be over. No more threat from your kind. A permanent, and one that you might be surprised to learn how close it is to becoming the one that is chosen. It wouldn¡¯t take much to push us over the edge towards such an action. Say, something like an heir to a prominent family murdered during a last attempt at diplomacy. Now you see, while I may appear vulnerable, it is me who has the leverage here, not you.¡±


    Banons expression fell, and for a moment fear panged in her gut that she might have just pushed things too far, sewing her own undoing. When he abruptly stood, for a half a moment, that thought became a sure inevitability. But instead of enacting an impulse towards violence, he turned on his heel and then began walking back through the chamber towards the dias the elders and emperor sat upon.


    Once there, the huge Ooura stopped, looked up towards his father and emperor, and they began speaking back and forth with one another. She couldn¡¯t make out exactly what was spoken, but contrary to her worries that she had played things too up front and ended the negotiation before it could begin, it appeared the purpose of this disruption was not for Banon to call things off. Rather, he was already on his way back over to her table. When he arrived, he sat down in the same place as if nothing had occurred. Banon did not acknowledge her, even with a glance, opting to continue feasting on the eagle instead. A moment later, she learned why.


    ¡°My son has made another request.¡± Emperor Poh¡¯s voice carried easily from all the way at the back of the room. ¡°While normally, we reserve this for the end of the ceremony after all have taken their wives, it will be done now instead.¡± A short, terse silence filled the chamber, only broken up by scattered grumbling. ¡°Bring out the sacrifice,¡± emperor Poh declared with an unnerving note of almost cheer in his voice.


    Her eyelid twitched.


    Despite her assumptions, and her learned histories and all the political games that she had read taking place in them, she could honestly say that her first diplomatic mission had been, almost start to finish, full of unexpected events. And this moment was no exception as Lithilyn watched a short¨Crelatively speaking¨COoura woman escorted into the middle of the chamber by two older Ooura men¨Cpresumably Kothai.


    Now that the apparent sacrifice was closer and lit well by the torchlight, Lithilyn¡¯s breath caught as she took in the state of her. For one, she was more a girl than a woman, barely older than a child. Secondly, and horribly obvious, was the state of her skin. All over, her body was covered in rippling scars, and dotted by ulcers.


    The realization was instant. Lithilyn knew how their new chemical weapons effected flesh, even if she had never witnessed them in person. And yet¡­ how? Those injuries were the mark of the acid from their launchers, not from the sickness brought about by ingesting contaminated water and soil. Her stomach wavered at the thought of her own kind using their weapons of war on a child that could not possibly have been anywhere near a battlefield. She bit down, forcing away the tells of her uneasiness. One glance towards Banon, whose eyes were locked on her, told Lithilyn that she had not kept her reaction as well concealed as she hoped.


    Unfortunately, Banon¡¯s withering stare was the least of her worries. Though at first the wounded girl had seemed hardly aware of her surroundings, her eyes now found Lithilyn¡¯s, and in them, the Donai princess saw a kind of rage and hatred that she would have never been able to understand from the second hand battlefield reports she was accustomed to. Just as quickly as it had been laid bare, the hatred faded in favor of pain as the girl began a fit of retching and coughing.


    And just like that, Lithilyn¡¯s entire world had changed. Her goals were the same as they had been before, yes, but the means, perhaps, would need some minor reshaping. Otherwise, Ooura or not, she no longer had quite the same surety of how much higher her place was above them.


    ¡°You have never seen it in person,¡± Banon guessed.


    Finally, Lithilyn remembered to breathe. ¡°Yes,¡± she admitted, her mind swirling in too much chaos to worry about saving face for the moment.


    The two of them, heirs alike, stared at each other for a long moment. Lithilyn was sure she knew what was coming next. He was going to press the advantage. It was exactly as she would have done if she noticed her opponent on the back foot from an unexpected surge of emotions.


    Instead, Banon took in a long breath before he next spoke, and when he did there was not a trace of hostility in his voice. ¡°Good. If you had seen the consequences and still spoken as you have, then I would have already given up this negotiation.¡± It was then Banon¡¯s turn to lean in, though unlike when she had, his was not for the purpose of intimidation. If anything, his voice had never been more quiet and calm then when he next spoke. ¡°If my people are animals, then yours are monsters.¡±


    Lithilyn had no response for that as Banon leaned back away from her. And it seemed he wasn¡¯t waiting for one, as his eyes were drawn back to the young girl covered in scars.


    Another group was approaching, one made up of those same strange women wearing woven clothing with tassels of fur hanging out all over. Together, four of them were carrying a large wooden object. It was only when they set it down next to the sacrifice that Lithilyn got a hint as to its purpose. There was a body shaped cavity carved out in the center. From there, her eyes began to catch more and more details, each more impressive than the last. The entire sarcophagus¨Cfor that is what she now knew it was¨Cwas covered in ornaments made from feather and fur, and any seemingly bare section of wood was proved to be much more when she focussed long enough to make out the carvings. There were hundreds of figures in the carved wood, some shaped as Ooura, some as various beasts from the jungle. But there was one unifying theme.


    Every creature depicted on its surface had red paint placed appropriately to imply wounds, and those wounds were not minor. The entire sarcophagus, every inch of it, was covered in dying things. There were lone flecks of blood here and there, but far and above the majority of the red paint depicting gushing wounds that formed pools of red on the imagined ground beneath the bodies. There were even entire rivers and streams where the blood from all that was dying coalesced, which wove across the canvass of death and decay.


    If it wasn¡¯t for the overwhelmingly grim nature of it all, she might be far more focussed on the quality of the craftsmanship. Even if multiple Ooura had worked together to create this thing, she had no doubt the effort would still have been a massive undertaking across weeks, if not months.


    The acid-scarred girl was first lifted and then set gently into the cavity inside by the two Kothai that had led her out there in the first place. She didn¡¯t protest. She hardly seemed lucid, in fairness. She coughed, a grinding and raspy sound, before settling down with her eyes half open.


    As the fur-clad women took their leave, the two Kothai did the opposite. Each of them pulled out long, obsidian knives from their primitive belts. Stepping in closer, they both fell to one knee on either side of sarcophagus.


    Lithilyn had expected there would be some kind of additional ceremony. Another rhythm, perhaps prayers said, but there was nothing. Only the subtle sound of flesh pulling apart in the quiet room as the two Ooura men slit her throat and plunged obsidian through the flesh of her chest in tandem. Lithilyn¡¯s entire body flinched, betraying her despite her knowing what was coming.


    ¡°You will not look away,¡± Banon said.


    As much as she should have resented taking such an overt command from him, within the tone of his voice there were hooks that pulled her focus back towards the young Ooura girl at the center of the room.


    A few seconds of silence followed, only to be interrupted by the sound of blood running out of a gap in the wood and into what she now realized was a basin designed to collect it. Next, for some ungodly reason, the eyes were carved free of the young girl¡¯s face. As barbaric as it was to watch at first, the now disembodied eyeballs were carried away with a palpable reverence.


    After that, each new Kothai was brought over to the basin, all taking their turns painting their faces with the blood. All did it wordlessly, and with the exact same method of first dipping two fingers into the blood, and then swiping the red from the top of their forehead down to the tip of their chin. Banon went last, though after painting himself in her lifeblood as all the others had, he lingered long enough to press his lips to the scarred forehead of the dead girl, muttering something quietly that Lithilyn could not make out. And when he returned to sit with Lithilyn, she was finally ready to speak again.


    ¡°Fine, you have made your point,¡± she said.


    ¡°And what point is that? I thought you cared nothing for the ¡®animals¡¯ tearing at one another in the forest.¡±


    She fought down a curse. He couldn¡¯t have seen through her that easily, and yet, the brief smirk on his face while he watched her squirm said otherwise. Well, just because one card from her hand was shown did not mean she didn¡¯t have others to play. At this point, she may as well come clean on the fronts which she was already exposed.  ¡°I speak for my people. That does not mean I agree with every sentiment of every one of them, just as you surely do not either. Their interests are mine, however, in some things, even those with the best of intentions lack the forethought to see the consequences of their actions coming before it is already too late.¡±


    Banon made a wide smile. ¡°I could not agree more. Now that we have shed our false masks, let us begin the real negotiation. No more games of push and pull.¡±

 26: Negotiation

    Not long ago, Lithilyn would have called her resolve unshakeable. Now? After seeing the results of Pyathen acid in person, she needed to divert the attention for a minute until she was gathered enough to negotiate terms of any kind. ¡°Before we proceed, I do have a few personal questions largely unrelated to this negotiation.¡±


    ***


    Banon leaned forward, hesitant, hanging on her word.


    ¡°Firstly why did they take that girl¡¯s eyes?¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s the only part of the body that will not be burned.¡±


    ¡°What will they do with them?¡±


    ¡°Preserve them.¡±


    ¡°Then what?¡±


    Banon looked at her for a long moment before turning his eyes away briefly. ¡°Curiosity, I can indulge. But some things are ours and ours alone.¡±


    ¡°Very well,¡± Lithilyn said. ¡°The Yibu¡­ you have befriended such creatures? How? They have no language.¡±


    Banon frowned for a moment until he realized she was talking about the Yubuou. ¡°Just because they cannot use words as we do does not mean you cannot come to an understanding.¡±


    She blinked at him blankly, despite Banon thinking that an apt explanation.


    Eventually he caved and gave her more. ¡°I am less friends with the Yubuou as a whole, and more friends with one. His name is Ugtang.¡±


    ¡°His name? They do not have names.¡± She shook her head. ¡°Still, tell me, do more of your people befriend Yibu?¡±


    Banon sighed. ¡°The Yubuou are spirits who were too kind to be allowed to suffer like us, which is why they are protected by us. Ooura and Yubuou rarely interact beyond in passing, as far as I know. Like you said, they cannot speak to us, so there it is.¡±


    ¡°But they listened to you.¡±


    ¡°The one I have a friendship with listens to me, and his tribe listened to him. I think you overestimate the significance.¡±


    ¡°The significance of an entire new¨C¡± she cut off, shook her head in annoyance, and flashed him an unknowable glance. ¡°I apologize. We should get to the discussions at hand, I just wish you had more answers. I never thought I would see Yibu myself, given their illusive tendencies.¡±


    Banon frowned. She had an awful lot of knowledge of a creature of the deep jungle for someone who had spent most of her life in a palace atop the corpse of a mew tree. ¡°And I wish I had more time to ask you about your own knowledge. I know your kind remembers in writing. Mine remembers in spoken words, in stories and knowledge our elders carry until they have passed it on to the next generation, and so then it repeats.¡± He levelled a long glare at her. ¡°Until something comes along and kills those knowledge keepers. You have stolen much history and wisdom from my people already in the lives you have taken.¡±


    ¡°You are not the only one who has been stolen from,¡± she replied, finding some of her resolve returning to her. ¡°As recently as last night, in fact, something very precious has been stolen from me. A life whose responsibility was mine to oversee.¡± She gave him a hard look, one in which she seemed to be searching for a reaction. She didn¡¯t seem to see what she was looking for, judging from the flush of frustration afterwards. ¡°One of my guard disappeared last night, gone from our camp at the edge of your clearing without a trace. Do you have any idea what might have happened to him?¡±


    Banon heard a noise that would certainly have been too quiet for her to hear with her elven senses, but to his, it was clear as a voice spoken in his ear. He zoned in on the area of the room it came from quickly, and there, unsurprisingly sat Tema, his twitching lips over baring teeth making a series of wet scrapes and slaps.


    Banon turned his attention away from the animal and back to her. He looked hard into her eyes and saw that she was not lying for the sake of something else, and combined with Tema¡¯s reaction, it wasn¡¯t hard to figure out what happened. Inwardly, Banon cursed Tema¡¯s name for all it was worth. ¡°I promise you, it was none of my doing.¡±


    ¡°Fine,¡± she conceded, though her face told him things were much the opposite. In honesty, he could not blame her. If their places were switched, he would have pushed far harder on this point. The only reason he could think to the contrary is the fact that she must be aware it was impossible to prove wrong doing at this point. Or, Banon could only assume it was. After all, if Tema had been seen dragging one of the elves into the jungle, this surely would be a much different discussion.


    ***


    Well, it wasn¡¯t as if she expected to get anything more from it. If Banon¡¯s reaction had been anything other than genuine surprise, she would not have dropped it at that. But as things were, she had no proof, let alone reason to believe he was lying in his claim that he personally was not involved. And in honesty, even she could not rule out the possibility it had simply been a predator attack. Swamp lions, for one, were known nocturnal hunters with a knack for stealth.


    However, those side tangents in the conversation had allowed her the time to regather her thoughts. And as things were, there was hardly a positive angle to be found. Between their own overuse of their new weapon polluting the jungle, and the rising numbers of hunting parties falling to Ooura raiders, merely sustaining the status quo was not an option. And since the predominant theory back home was based more on finding a way to blame the Ooura exclusively rather than admit to even to a partial blame being laid on their own actions, she was left with few options.


    There were less grazing animals wandering through their forests, even in the untainted regions. And since they still had yet to see a tainted section of jungle make a full recovery, there was no way to tell how long, if not permanent, such problems would last.


    The way Lithilyn saw it, her goal here was singular. Any agreement was better than none, even if she was not sure she could back up her side once back home. There just weren¡¯t any better options. She just had to hope that a promise from the Ooura would hold more weight if Lithilyn was the one to deliver it back home personally.


    ***


    ¡°If we are to talk about what has been taken,¡± Banon said, picking up the conversation after a bout of silence.¡°There is a village called Bodasdam, a village full of innocents. Your death droppers attempted a covert attack on it, intending to poison the same water supply drank by children and babes. None of your murderers returned that night, did they?¡±


    She looked him up and down, completely unmoved, blank in the face. ¡°I think we both already knew that.¡±


    Banon tried to hide how annoyed it made him that she wasn¡¯t intimidated, outwardly anyways. She seemed to notice it though, showing the tiniest fraction of amusement on her face as he frowned. ¡°Good,¡± he went on, ¡°Then we have established what is already known. Death looms in all directions of this conflict. There is no point in comparing whose is worth more or less. All that matters is that we work towards an end to it.¡±


    ¡°Of that, we can agree.¡±


    ¡°Well, if we are of the same mind, then what need is there to talk?¡± Banon asked, spreading his hands out wide.


    ¡°If only it were so simple.¡±


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    ¡°What about it is not?¡± he asked.


    ¡°Everything. Our needs for food grow beyond what the near jungle can provide as populations prosper, and new spires are being built to both the west and east. Whether a crusade against your kind is off the table or on it, nothing is going to stand in the way of our expansion. The only reason I am here is because I, among some like-minded others, view it as below ourselves to wipe you out completely in the process. I am here to make you an offer that works in both of our favors. If there could be a promise of conditional peace between us, then perhaps I could use that promise to stave off the more radical factions within my family until a more permanent solution is reached.¡±


    Banon raised an eyebrow. What she really meant, he suspected, was that his group of unconventional raiders¨Cmany of which were young enough to have yet taken their trials¨Chad been stretching the Donai family¡¯s hunting parties ability to function to the brink. After all, that was the only front on which the Ooura were not consistently finding themselves overpowered, as minor as it was in comparison to the continued devastation of village after village. It was exactly what Banon had been working towards; proof that a more subtle, targeted touch was the way to win this war. Whittling them down may not hold the same glory as standing in a shield wall, but nothing besides results should be looked to when in a position as desperate as the Ooura empire found itself in. However, he still found it strange this would happen so soon. He thought his efforts were more on the level of ensuing fear and unease. A morale hit. Less that his occasional, isolated attacks were putting a dent in their overall food supply.


    Right now, however, he was questioning all of that.


    Good. They needed this leverage, especially considering the gamble Banon was about to make.


    ¡°Peace?¡± Banon asked.


    ¡°Temporary, but yes, peace. An end to the bitter wars that have plagued our respective peoples for centuries.¡±


    ¡°Peace,¡± Banon repeated, leaning back. ¡°Everything about this is too abrupt, far too simple. You are to be married imminently, a prospect that will strengthen your already growing power. The Enka are undoubtedly an ally that provide you more strength than we possibly could, so why come here at all? Why risk so much to speak to me, to us?¡±


    ¡°Because sometimes the price for more power is too much.¡±


    ¡°Are you saying that you do not favor that alliance?¡±


    ¡°My family favors it very much,¡± she replied evenly.


    ¡°But you?¡±


    ¡°I believe when you give humans any power at all, they reinforce it, grow it like a parasite within you. And then, before you know it, you are an accessory to their wealth. Nothing more.¡±


    Now that was interesting. Banon put on a wide smile. Perhaps his gamble had more chance of succeeding than he might have thought. ¡°Let me tell you what I think. I think much of your claims of imminent expansion are false, and I will not be intimidated by them. I believe that your hunters are weary from fear of who might be waiting for them should they cross to far into our jungle. I think your marriage to the Enka prince is one of desperation, not opportunity. I think you are afraid, Lithilyn. And your weakness shows.¡± Banon gestured at the Pyathen around them. ¡°So, I will put a condition on this peace agreement appropriate to where the leverage lies. If you want the raids on your hunters to stop, there is only one condition I require you to agree to.¡±


    ¡°And what is that?¡±


    ¡°Marriage,¡± Banon said simply, ignoring the eruption of whispers coming from various places in the chamber behind him.


    ¡°Marriage?¡± she repeated. ¡°To you?¡± she asked, her tone full of confusion.


    ¡°Joining houses might be to your detriment with the Enka, but with us? Your spire is the closest to the Ooura controlled jungle, meaning you are most effected by the raids I lead on your hunting parties. Maybe you can afford to ignore it for now, but it is only a matter of time before I am emperor. And then, with that power, and what I know of how your food gatherers operate, I will place a weight on your resource supply you cannot bear.¡± Banon paused only long enough to hear a scattering of quiet hisses coming from behind him. He leaned forward towards the Donai princess, ignoring them. ¡°Or, you can agree to a complete peace, not a conditional one. Our peoples joined. In name if nothing else.¡±


    ***


    Despite his offer of binding, there was something in his eye that spoke of danger regardless of her answer. She had known any kind of successful negotiation would be incredibly unlikely, even with their clear leverage above the Ooura savages¨Cand the leverage was theirs, no matter how much of what he said was the truth. Her people were capable of doing far more damage to the Ooura than the reverse, and far more likely to as they got more desperate.


    Regardless of truth or logic, however, something in the air told her that one wrong move could turn their festival hall into a bloodbath. And yet, it was hard not to admire someone who spoke what they believed. And he believed it, she could tell. Misguided and insane or otherwise, he did believe it.


    It was then that she noticed how crestfallen one of the three girls who had been left standing at the head of the chamber looked. She almost felt bad for her, savage or not, until she noticed the girl''s eyes were not forlorn on the son of the emperor, but rather they were looking down off to the far end of the seated elders. There, an elder was looking back at her, making a clearly apologetic look.


    Lithilyn almost had to smile at that. It was clear to her instantly what was happening. This son was clearly someone who the elders had designs on reigning in, and this one, whether a daughter or a niece to the elder she was gazing so forlornly at, had been designed to do just that.


    The other two had more muted reactions, to their credit. The tallest one, who was so broad she looked more imposing than some of the Ooura men in the chamber, was utter unmoved. While the shorter one who wore a similar¨Cif less ostentatious¨Cversion of the tasseled furs, looked merely curious as to what Lithilyn would say.


    However, Banon was only waiting on the reaction of one.


    Hers.


    ***


    ¡°No,¡± she said, gradually scowling deeper and deeper. ¡°No, I will not do that.¡±


    Banon told himself that was the outcome he had hoped for. It would, at least, make his next proposal seem minor in comparison. ¡°I will then request something else,¡± Banon replied, feigning that he was rattled by her denial. What he requested next, however, needed to be accepted. It was the key to the plan he had been working at for years not, yet had only crystalized once he had learned of the Donai princess coming here in person during that fateful night when he and Lonka had been caught eavesdropping on the elders. ¡°I will request instead, that in exchange for my agreement to halt raiding on your hunting parties, that you provide one hundred Enka crossbows to us, and one Enka ballista.¡±


    She scoffed almost as noticeably as when he proposed marriage.


    He tried not to think much of that.


    ¡°It would take money, time! Too much money!¡± she shot back.


    ¡°You have them present in your own spire city already. I know you do. Trade between Enka and your family may not flow as freely as it does to spires closer to the human mountain cities, but that does not mean it has never occurred.¡±


    He let her open her mouth to retort before overpowering her voice intentionally. ¡°We do not intend to cripple your own spires defenses, if that is your next thought. One of your five ballistae, and a few crossbows that you already have will not render you vulnerable enough for a takeover, from us or otherwise.¡±


    She gaped at him.


    Banon, despite himself, shifted uneasily. This was the turning point, good or bad.


    Lonka¡¯s voice, of all people, came from somewhere unseen. Judging from the direction, it sounded like he had climbed on top of the outside of the chamber to eavesdrop. ¡°There is always the first proposal¨C¡±


    The princess leaned closer towards him, anger slowly replacing confusion on her face. ¡°This is a ploy! Some kind of trick!¡±


    Banon shrugged. ¡°Maybe. Or maybe we simply want to test a new variety of shield against your strongest ranged weapons.¡±


    ¡°Our acid launchers are our strongest weapons!¡±


    ¡°In a sense, but I am not asking for those.¡±


    She stopped herself from responding again, instead taking the time to think, shaking her head all the while. ¡°This is an expensive¡­ foolhardy request. Your people are not capable of using crossbows sized for us. A single ballista will not be enough to increase your defenses by any meaningful degree. If you choose to use it offensively on our spire, even with your kinds strength you will not retreat with it in time to escape our wrath. Why not ask for a ceasing of our death droppers raiding your villages in return? Even if only a temporary one?¡±


    Banon shrugged. The truth was that he wanted exactly that. But a temporary peace was also not worth the price of discontinuing his only consistent way to weaken the Pyathen. If he could get his hands on what he was asking her for, then he could have it both ways. Agree to cease his raiding for now, and in exchange receive what he needed to scale their palace and pluck her from it. From there, he would have all the leverage, and no reason not to continue whittling away at their resources and morale. Not to mention that having their heir indefinitely captured would do more than whittle, it would shatter their morale, their hope, and force the same fear into their hearts that his people had known for decades. ¡°To die now or to die later is the decision of the old and sick.¡± It was Banon¡¯s turn to lean forward, now, and his long torso took him much closer. ¡°Your people may be a sickness upon mine, but my people will never give up fighting until we find the cure. We will go down with a fight, or we will refuse to go down at all. One hundred crossbows, one ballista, that is my bargain in exchange for an end to my raiding. However, I cannot promise not to continue defending our villages against your death droppers or any ground assaults.¡±


    She didn¡¯t have a response for that for an uncomfortable amount of time.


    Banon, eventually, realized he should probably lean back. He had been leering almost directly face to face with her. She smelled like ground-up nettles, so much so it had been an effort not to wrinkle his nose while he was that close. Soon, though, as the flesh of the eagle was digested, she would gain an aroma of sweetness overpowering even to the dim senses of elves.


    ¡°If I agree to this, you will cease your raiding? It must be a total stop. One hunting party goes missing and we respond with another dead village.¡±


    Banon cleared his throat while he leaned away, then made a compromising gesture. ¡°Agreed. So, is this a deal?¡±


    ***


    Lithilyn steadied herself.


    And then decided to take a chance.