Eight 5.13: Codes and Circumstances

Tru came back to the campsite with a satisfied smile on her face. Kana, though, held his side like he’d bruised a rib. Melwei immediately sat him down to apply Nature’s Spring to the injury and about twenty minutes later, the dolbec breathed a sigh of relief.

The actions of all three appeared to be well-rehearsed—something they’d done countless times. Wilaeina and Butrus just kept working as it had happened. They’d set up alarms at the camp’s periphery and unpacked our meals for the night, which were tamales stuffed with smoked duck, sauteed greens, and onions.

We couldn’t risk the scent of smoke spreading, so the food was cold. Being tucked away in the ravine, though, did mean we had candle stones to eat by.

“Well, then, isn’t this cozy.” Melwei said, once everyone was settled in and eating. “Not exactly according to plan, but that’s the way of things out in the wilds.”

“We’re farther along than we expected to be,” Wilaeina said. “That’s good.”

“Could’ve been worse,” Butrus said, his mouth full of tamale.

“And there’s the light we’ve gathered,” Tru added.

They all nodded their heads in reply.

“What was the creature anyway?” I asked.

“A dark mammoth,” Kana replied. “A charger, with tusks that ripped apart trees, but he couldn’t withstand our Tru once she got close. She tore him open like he was a bag of masa.”

Tru laughed, then pawed through Kana’s things to bring out and unwrap the bundle of light. The mammoth’s core was only about the size of a man’s fist, but it felt dense, the creature Level 12 or 13 at a minimum.

“You did well to kill it so quickly,” Fala said.

“The mammoths are only hard if they stray in odd directions,” Melwei said, leaning forward. “There was a time when we came across one the size of a small hill. I joke not, the monster was enormous, with the top of his head taller than most village walls. No matter how many times we poked him with our weapons, they didn’t penetrate past the muscle and fat surrounding his organs.”

“So what did you do?” Fala asked, also leaning.

“We ran, of course,” Melwei said, laughing.

“But the light…” Fala said.

“We got it the next time we found him, and by then we were prepared.” Melwei gestured, encouraging us to listen closely. “We’d dug a hole as big as he was to trap him, and our Tru carried her poleaxe, of course, but the rest of us brought picks. Once he was stuck, we dug through the beast’s flesh until we got to his heart, then we cut it from his body. It still took an eighth of the day for the mammoth to die, but we had him trapped and there was nothing he could do. We grilled his heart and ate well while we waited. And then we showered ourselves in his light. Truly, that was a glorious hunt.”

“That’s an amazing story,” Fala said.

And a complete fabrication as near I can tell, I thought.

‘All of it?’ Fala asked.

There was likely a mammoth, which they did kill, but all the details appear to be hyperbole.

Fala quirked her head. ‘His spirit tells you so?’

Yes, I thought. Although, while he’s telling the story, he believes what he’s saying. It’s just that afterward there’s the hint of a letdown, like an ability cooling. Also, his teammates have clearly heard him tell this tale many, many times, and they recognize how he’s embellished it.

Yuki’s qi signaled a question: ‘So the deal to cross the badlands between nations includes nightly entertainment in the form of storytelling?’

It would seem so, I replied.

“Field rules apply,” Wilaeina said, bringing me back to the wider conversation.

“They always do,” Melwei replied. He reached over to his pack to remove a small scale. Then, we watched as he carefully apportioned shares for his team.

Both Tru and he got double shares, while everyone else got singles. Our deal didn’t include any light that didn’t involve us fighting, so both Fala and I were left out.

Interestingly, in all my years on Diaksha, this was the first time for me to witness a true dusk warrior absorbing light. Tru took a seventy/thirty mix of darklight to silverlight. Her face flushed, and her breathing became heavy. The muscles wriggled under her skin before spasming like she was going through an epileptic fit. Throughout the experience, Kana was right there with her, overseeing the process and making sure she didn’t bite her tongue.

And then, when it was over, Tru’s breath billowed out like gray smoke. “Whoo!” she cried out. “That was good! I need more!” Her expression was wild, and when she went to get up, Kana forced her back to sitting, to face him and to look him in the eyes until she remembered who and where he was.

Eventually, Tru smiled, a big toothy grin. Then she grabbed Kana by the back of the head and brought him in for a sloppy kiss. “I’m ready to go again.”

A weary sigh escaped from Kana then. “Just let me take my light first. I’m almost to Level 8.”

Tru nodded, but couldn’t sit still, so she got up to pace while he absorbed what was typical for most people—a seventy/thirty mix of silverlight to darklight. And yes, he leveled—I saw it in the way his spirit shivered and the pleased smile on his face afterward. No new talents that I could see, but his spirit did deepen. We all congratulated him, but then Tru couldn’t wait anymore, and she dragged him up to the thicket once more.

Kana was the only one to level up. Everyone else simply progressed on their Paths to Perfection.

One more thing I’ll note: Tru wasn’t the only true dusk warrior among us. There was also Butrus, and for his experience, he brought out a sketch of a person that he glared at while absorbing his light. I couldn’t tell who was represented; he angled the paper so that no one could see it. But yeah, whoever it was, they were apparently the object of his Focused Rage.

###

Watches were arranged by Melwei, with Fala and I excused from them since we were the clients and didn’t have the necessary experience with the deep wilds. Yuki and the Deer God kept an eye on things while we slept, though, just in case.

I ended up spending an hour of dream time in my office comparing our progress to the maps in my possession. When I finally came out into the courtyard to join Fala, instead of training I found her sculpting a mammoth from water and stone. The power to grow in levels meant that many animals that were extinct on Earth were still alive here, though the only one I’d seen in person so far was the undead general at Old Baxteiyel.

I found a spot to sit and watch. “What do you think of our guides?” I asked after a moment.

Fala was mixing her dyes to get the fur’s color right. She paused briefly to consider my question. “They’re talented enough to be treasured by any lodge. I wonder why they’re not. What have they done to be exiled so?”

“See, I don’t think that’s it. My sense is that they prefer it out here. Besides, where would they go? Albei or one of the other big cities?”

The color of the mammoth’s fur deepened, becoming a dark ochre with streaks running through it. “They would have to, wouldn’t they,” Fala said. “My sense is that Tru and Butrus are Level 9, and the rest are Level 8, including Kana now.”

“That’s my take too,” I said.

“You don’t think they’ll betray us?” Fala asked, looking over her shoulder at me.

I shook my head. “It’s too early to tell, but there’s nothing in any of their spirits that indicates they have something planned. If it happens, it’ll be in response to something unexpected.”

The mammoth went still as Fala fully faced me. “You’re worried, but not about betrayal, not exactly.”

“I was just thinking… we each absorbed an enormous amount of light from Amleila, who over the course of her long life was betrayed a countless number of times, either directly or through Baxtei.” I shrugged to indicate it was just an idea.

But Fala took it seriously. “The thought is that her experiences are influencing our decisions?”

I felt her attention focus inward, and enough time passed for me to wander away to begin training. Eventually, though, I heard a “hmm” from Fala, followed by a sigh.

“Maybe,” she said. “There’s that and I’ve also become increasingly anxious about immortality.”

I nodded. “Amleila’s boredom was overwhelming. At least until Asiik and the rest arrived on the scene.”

Fala quirked her head. “We have the Path to Perfection to occupy us, but how long will that last interest hold, I wonder?”

“You’ll find a way, I’m sure of it.”

She frowned at me. “We will.”

“I’m not immortal love. Sure, three hundred years is a long time, and my lifespan will get longer as I level, but I will eventually die.”

“Asiik didn’t,” Fala pointed out. “He lived for almost fifteen hundred years.”

“That was a secret of Baxta,” I replied. “Him and his sorcerers. Not even Amleila knew how they did it.”

Fala sniffed. “A secret that might be in our possession. I have faith in our Yuki to break the codes keeping us from reading the secret texts we found in Old Baxteiyel.”

Having been invoked by name, Yuki appeared as a pink fairy hovering between Fala and me. “Were we called? So far, nothing has happened of note in the waking world, other than Butrus likes to scratch his ass when no one is looking.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” Fala asked.

To which I could only agree, but I also refused to be distracted. “We’d like to know if you’ve made any progress with the coded texts from Old Baxteiyel.”

“Not yet,” Yuki said, the frustration evident in their voice. “We’ve confirmed that it’s nothing simple like a substitution or transposition cipher. It shouldn’t be a codebook either—there are too many patterns in too great a complexity for one to be feasible.”

“So you’ve made no progress at all?” I asked.

Yuki flew over to bop me on the nose. “We didn’t say that! It’s just that our current theory is a bit…complicated. And we’re not sure if it’s even possible.”

Fala came over to also bop me on the nose. “Yes, have more faith in our Yuki.”

“Fine, fine. It was my mistake, I apologize. Now, what exactly does ‘complicated’ entail?”

“Our suspicion is that Baxta used the motion of the earth, sun, and moon to create the code. The rods we found in the secret room—the engravings on them turned out to be representations of planetary bodies at various points of the year. However, these movements are predictable, which would leave the code vulnerable to decryption, so there must be a spell involved too. That is where the qi-notches in the texts’ lettering comes in. We think; it’s our most current theory anyway.”

“That does sound complicated,” I said, “and impossible to figure out without knowing the spell.”

“Not impossible, just time consuming,” Yuki corrected. “From the notches in the text, we can be relatively sure the spell is qi-based. And, while the human meridian system isn’t limitless, that still means testing millions of combinations to find the patterns that might match up with common words. From those patterns, assuming we find them, we can start to reverse-engineer the spell.”

“Yuki,” I said.

“Yes?” they replied.

“You’re a god-damn genius.”

They giggled at that, pleased with the praise. “What else would you expect from a Qi Savant, Magical Technician, and Otherworldly Sentience?”

“See,” Fala said. “More faith in Yuki.” Then she reached out to give the fairy a pat on the head.

Her words had been spoken soberly, but beneath the facade she’d delighted in teaming up with Yuki to put me on the spot. Our Fala was turning into a hell of an actor.

###

The next morning, I excused myself from the camp to care of personal business and afterward wandered farther afield to let the Deer God loose from the herd. Now that it was apparent we wouldn’t need him to immediately defend ourselves against a betrayal, he would travel separately so that he could take care of his own needs. Otherwise, he’d be cooped up in the herd twenty-four-seven, only eating and pissing and pooping whenever I could get away from the others. That was no way to live.

The Deer God offered a slight nod before bounding away into the trees. The connection between us meant I could sense the general direction and the distance between us.

I realized then that I’d be surrounded by people for the rest of the day, so I took a couple minutes more just to stand alongside the trees and breathe with them. The Yuki network tended to be active on most mornings, but they were kind enough to mute the signals so that I might enjoy a moment of solitude.

###

The camp was all packed up by the time I got back. Fala had rolled up my bedroll for me and collected my gear. All her stuff was in order too, and we checked each other over to make sure nothing was out of place or left behind.

“You’ve traveled together a lot,” Wilaeina commented from the side. “The two of you act like a pair of veteran hunters.’

I paused a moment. For one, a notification on my phone dinged.

The skill Acting has increased to 0.

The skill Acting has increased to 4.

And then I had to think of a justification for our behavior, which wasn’t too hard actually, since I could simply draw on a personal truth.

“Your team leader said it yesterday… ‘What works, works.’ If there’s a hunters’ practice that’s proven effective, why shouldn’t I try it to see if it works for me too. Soldiers, artisans, farmers—they all have things to teach us, and I’m willing to learn.”

“And what does a farmer teach?” Kana asked with a snort.

“Patience, stubbornness, timing,” I replied.

“Every profession knows those things,” Kana said.

“That’s a truth,” I said, pulling the straps of my pack tighter, “but the farmers have a different angle on those learnings. Their outlook is seasonal, annual, generational. Everyone could do with a little more of that—investing in long-term goals versus instant rewards.”

Melwei wove his way through the expedition’s members to make sure everything was in order. He stopped in front of me to say, “That’s not so easy to do when you might die the next Long Dark. Every year might be your last.”

“Another truth,” I replied, “but then what’s the result? What are you accomplishing with your life?”

“We revel,” Tru said, clapping her hands to emphasize the point.

“And maybe that’s enough for some,” I said, “but a merchant has more to consider than a single day’s profits.”

Melwei turned to Fala. “You’re awfully quiet when you’re the one pulled along by these long-term considerations. What say you, bodyguard?”

But she just shrugged. “I find that if I act rightly from moment to moment, day after day, then the years take care of themselves.”

Kana laughed, the sound surprisingly gentle for such a big man. “We’re escorting a pair of philosophers is what we’re doing.”

“It’s too early for all this talk,” Butrus said. “We should go.”

Melwei nodded. “We should; we have a long day ahead.”

###

All through the morning we traveled, our route veering dramatically at times. Wilaeina and Butrus were proving to be quite expert at spotting danger and navigating us around it. Slow and steady was the pace—maybe a couple of miles an hour if I had to estimate.

The terrain, the flora, and the fauna all continued to be familiar. There were the usual trees—oak, pine, horotonei, and so on. Squirrels darted among their branches; mice hid beneath their roots.

We occasionally came across a larger animal choosing not to grow in power, and those creatures gave us wide berth. At one point, we startled a mountain lion resting under a maple tree. He took off at the sight of us like his tail was on fire.

I heard Tru chuckling then and knew that I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed playing that game. Then I took a closer look and saw the hunger on her face. The expression was more rictus than grin.

“Easy now,” Kana signed. “There’ll be a fight coming soon enough.”

That wasn’t to be, though. Morning rolled into afternoon, and after a quick break to eat, we continued through the rest of the day into early evening. Because we’d gone farther the day before, we reached our goal early—a limestone cave about fifteen yards deep in a hillside.

The place showed obvious signs of being used before: rocks had been moved to create a barrier around the entrance, and a fire pit had already been dug and lined with stones. We had about an hour before sunset, so Wilaeina and Butrus left the camp to see if they could hunt something fresh to eat. Tru demanded to also go hunting, so she and Kana left in a different direction, with her joking that they’d nab the bigger prize.

“Are they going to be all right?” Fala asked, staring after the dolbecs.

Melwei checked the height of the sun in the sky and the lengths of the shadows on the ground. “Aye, they should have enough time to bring back something good.” Then he saw the expression on Fala’s face, and said “Oh, you don’t have to worry. Tru has her rage under control. She won’t bring the wilds down on us.”

###

Wilaeina and Butrus returned, each with a brace of rabbits in hand, while Tru came back with a decapitated deer carried across her shoulders and Kana following behind. For some reason, he carried the head, the velvet-covered antlers about a foot long.

“We won,” Tru said, grinning.

“Yes, yes,” Wilaeina signed. “Now, let’s get these kills inside the cave and out of the wind.”

I took a closer look and saw that the deer’s neck had been cleanly sliced through, and the body had already been field dressed. The animal had been scrawny in life—winter wasn’t that long ago—but there was still a good twenty or twenty-five pounds of meat on him. Fala and I were hiding our Hoarder’s Pocket, so that meant most of it would spoil before we could eat it. What a waste, I thought.

‘Not if it calms the dolbec,’ Fala replied. ‘Then the price was worth it.’

I took a second look, this time focusing on Tru, and her spirit did indeed seem more settled. She continued to joke with Wilaeina about the difference in sizes of their kills, culminating in her attempting to put the deer’s head onto one of the dead rabbits to create a hybrid creature.

“Now that reminds me of a story,” Melwei said, starting the work of skewering the rabbits. “This one isn’t mine, but I heard it from a hunter passing through Bashtotwei—about how he’d encountered a giant hare with antlers, and sharp as swords they were.”

For a while, as we all settled around the fire pit to help with dinner, I thought he might be talking about a jackalope, but no, the creature turned out to be unrelated to the mythical joke-like animal from my previous world. Still, Melwei told a good story, and the hunter protagonist eventually survived, though the scars on his ass would haunt him for the rest of his life.

And, similarly to the last story told by Melwei, almost every word of it was a lie.