Raw VIII Preview | Chapters I & II

CHAPTER I

The sun burned coldly above them as Jak led his small group across the winter desolation.

It was just visible through the clouds, a pale gray stone glimpsed in a shallow creek, rubbed smooth by the passage of time and water.

The winds were bitter and strong enough that he had considered delaying the journey.

But the situation was getting more dire.

Ahead, he could see the treeline that served as Avat’s Forest’s northern edge.

He led the warparty through the snow, squinting and raising one hand as the wind shifted and began blowing right into his face. At least it wasn’t snowing.

The sun had risen and fallen fifteen times since he had saved Azure.

Much had happened in that passage of time. Niri and Rylee had since relocated to Ara Forest, to live with and help the elves there, and to help integrate their own people to living in the forest, as it was now the safest place on the entire island.

Jak had spent most of his time trekking back and forth between Fair Field and Ara Forest, getting his people and whatever supplies they could spare to the safety of the woodlands. It wasn’t a perfect solution, as there were an increasing amount of corrupted between the two locations, but the monsters did seem to have a slight aversion to the northern forest.

The rest of the time he spent resting, hunting for supplies or food, and, mostly, fighting off corrupted.

While the first days after he had completed his trek of the island and gotten Azure to safety had seen relatively few of the creatures, it was not to last. Or so it had seemed at the time. They had begun attacking in small clusters at first, but then real warparties had come. Not just former humans and elves and karn, but creatures as well.

And then monsters, real monsters.

More of the awful, impossible things that looked more made than born began attacking them, doing some real damage.

Jak and Keeza and Nessa and the others fought them off, almost always losing a few people. It was a difficult way to live, but he had to admit that it could be much, much worse. And he kept expecting it to get that way.

It did, until suddenly it didn’t.

The day before yesterday was the first where there were no attacks. Everyone kept waiting as the sun rose over the cold, barren landscape, hunting for signs of the attack that was coming. The tension kept rising as nothing kept happening, and this continued well into the night. Eventually, everyone went to sleep, or tried to.

The next day, it was even worse.

Still nothing came. No corrupted were sighted.

The sun crawled across the gray sky. The winds tormented the land. The cold persisted. Still no corrupted came as night fell a second time.

That was yesterday, and Jak was feeling the pressure of time and other constraints.

Their time was limited and he had to act.

Moving people from Fair Field to Ara Forest was just a single step on the path that had to be walked if they were to survive this catastrophe. Every day that passed was another day that their enemies could enact whatever dire, evil plans they had concocted. It was also another day that they were consuming precious food.

Azure had told him something several days ago that had frightened him deeply, something none of them had even truly considered. Thinking ahead was possible, but not necessarily obvious to the average person. For the most part, the farthest they thought ahead was a single cycle of seasons, and only then because they had learned from the past that there was a set cycle to the seasons, and that if they wanted to survive winter, the final season in the cycle, they needed to spend the previous seasons leading up to it preparing.

But for the most part, people didn’t think much beyond the next few days.

Azure had pointed out that it was possible that even if they defeated all their enemies and slayed all the corrupted and dealt with the Barrens, they might still die due to a lack of food. The winter had killed much of the plant life and some of the animal life, and the death spell that had been cast over the island had killed much more than that.

What if not enough deer survived the winter? What if they went extinct?

This question could be applied to every form of life on the island, plants included.

And so Jak had spread the word: no hunting, no gathering. The only exception was fish from the ocean. It was still a source of food and the ocean was much larger than the island. So now he was faced with a problem of hundreds upon hundreds of mouths to feed, and a rapidly dwindling reserve of food left to feed them.

A lot had been stored up at Fair Field, but it was already diminishing. What they had left would not see them through the winter, even with half the population moved to Ara Forest. The same was true at every other village.

It wasn’t an immediately dangerous problem, but it would be soon, and so they had been trying to find a way around it ever since. Jak’s first inclination was to ask everyone, every last person, if they knew of any hidden stores or caches of food. Or really of anything, because at this point just about everything would be useful.

They had lost a lot in the attack.

Today was the day that they would begin acting on this knowledge they had gained. He got all sorts of answers. He and Nessa and the other leaders had organized three primary warparties. One would go to the Verdant Valley and to Gather Village, and gather up whatever was left, as well as check any caches in the area or on the way there. The second would go to Wetstone and do the same. The third, Jak’s warparty, would return to Avat’s Forest.

A lot had been left behind during the invasion, and now it was time to see what was left.

At last, they reached the treeline.

Jak paused, holding up his fist, and took a look around. He saw nothing. No movement among the dead forest save for the occasional drift of snow dislodged by the winds. Standing for a long time, he stared, ignoring the cold, the press of time, everything but what his senses told him.

And they told him there was nothing in the forest ahead of them.

He still didn’t like it. Every single time there had been a lack of corrupted so far, it had led to something bad. And they’d run into only a handful on the way here.

Jak motioned for them to continue. He led his warparty into the treeline, taking a less obvious path that would lead them in a more direct route to the northern outpost. He sensed someone getting closer and then Nessa was beside him.

He glanced quickly at her. She looked out of place in the snowbound environment, wrapped up in heavy furs. Karn were tough, but they were at a disadvantage during winter. From what he’d come to understand, they tended to stay in their caves or huts more than any other race when the cold days came.

It was having an effect on her. Since the snowfall began, she’d been quieter and more withdrawn and, just lately, sullen. Normally she was filled with a rowdy kind of hope, and it hurt him to see that stifled. She was sleeping more and she’d lost weight, but, then again, they all had. She was no less fearsome though.

“There’s none here either, huh?” she murmured, breaking a silence that had stayed with them most of the way here.

“It seems that way,” he replied.

“Where could they have gone?”

“I wish I knew.”

Some had postulated that perhaps the death spell had worn off, that maybe they had simply collapsed and died a true death after enough time. But the handful they did enter cut against this theory. Jak supposed it wasn’t impossible, that all but the heartiest of corpses had fallen to be buried in the snow.

It didn’t strike him as correct though.

So far, they had yet to see another Revek. Or, if they had, he had not heard of it. He was absolutely certain that they were hidden away somewhere, probably in the Barrens, in some secret, well-defended place, and they were planning something.

Something dark and dangerous and deadly for everyone else on this island.

He kept thinking that the corrupted must be hidden somewhere, some location he was not aware of, some secret place. They were hidden and gathering, perhaps even being strengthened somehow, and they would launch a massive attack on his settlement, or others.

That was why it was important to do this now, and quickly, while there was still time.

Of course, that didn’t even deal with the other problem that they may be facing. The embyr were still an unknown element to the overall situation. They always had been, but now it was worse. Jak had thought on it much during the days and the nights.

In the end, he had decided on a course of action. They had sent runners to the embyr lands, with careful instructions from Keeza. Whatever news they brought back would decide the course of action he, and as many others as he could muster, would take.

If there were no karn slaves seen within the embyr lands, then he would leave them be while he dealt with the Revek and the corrupted.

If there were karn slaves there, and if there was no obvious or immediate way to deal with the Revek and corrupted by the time he learned of it, then Jak would muster his warparty, his army, and he would march on the embyr.

It occurred to him that this task would be even more difficult than before, because if there were karn slaves, it meant that it would be too dangerous to bring any karn with them. They would become mind-gone and turn against them.

After that incident with Nessa, he knew it to be true.

Even she, with all her might and resistance, could not stop the power of the corrupted Star Crystals.

And the karn were the main fighting force on the island, meaning they would have to make due without them. Because he couldn’t just leave them there. And, on top of that, he was going to need every last living soul on the island to defeat the corrupted.

Well, every last soul but the embyr.

Even if they offered an alliance, he was fairly certain that he would not take it.

Jak paused again as they reached the northern outpost. He felt a tearing at his heart as he saw the dilapidated, desolate state of it. A few of the huts had collapsed and everything was covered in snow. It had a feel of eerie abandon, not that dissimilar to the old karn villages they’d visited. There didn’t seem to be anything living around it.

Making quick hand motions to the others, he had a handful of them remain behind to watch their backs and brought the rest forward with him to clear it. Their feet crunching lightly in the snow, they made brisk work of searching the outpost for threats.

Jak took one of the remaining huts and peered cautiously inside, his adze out and ready. It was cold and dim within, and he felt a curious mixture of annoyance and hope as he saw that one of the baskets holding grain had been disturbed by something, a rabbit or a deer maybe, and somewhat recently. He took it as a good sign.

Finishing up his search of the outpost and finding nothing, Jak made quick motions to everyone, and they all got to work, Nessa leading them now. They dug into the derelict and collapsed huts, hunting for supplies, food and tools and medicinal plants, anything.

Jak walked over to the boulder and assumed the exact same pose he had struck what felt like so long ago during that first night, when he had made the decision to abandon Avat’s Forest. It had been a good decision, but how much did it matter?

Well, a lot of people were alive right this very moment who would otherwise be dead if he’d chosen to stay.

Perhaps it mattered more than his abused, exhausted mind thought.

Someone was approaching him. He tossed a glance back and saw Keeza as she hopped lightly up onto the boulder.

For a moment, they simply stood together, surveying the woodlands.

It had been difficult for Keeza, but less so than he’d assumed. She had assimilated well to a life lived alongside him and the others of the Dektyr Tribe. In truth, she was a part of the tribe in all but name. He’d offered to give her the ceremony six days ago, but it was clear she still wasn’t quite ready for it, so he dropped it.

She was clearly very ready to continue joining him in his cave every night, though.

Jak had the impression that if it wouldn’t be seen as improper, she would join his bond if he asked her to. She seemed very enamored of him, and not just when they were on the bedding. She rarely left his side.

For a while he had taken it as anxiety that she would never admit to, and in the beginning, he figured that was true. She was among new people, and she came from a place where trust was a cruel joke, and often fatal. He was the only one she truly trusted, and so he was the one she stuck close to. But that was no longer the case.

She had not said it, but Jak suspected that Keeza loved him.

He had not said it...but he knew that he loved her as he loved the other women in his cave.

She was not ready for this, though, and given the nature of the situation they found themselves in, he was content to let it wait.

But she was also having some difficulty adjusting to life among so many people. She often explained that she was used to being alone, going off on her own for days at a time, and her emotional turmoil had always been endured in isolation. He thought that perhaps it would help to have someone there who loved her, but it only seemed to frustrate her.

She saw emotional turmoil as a weakness and she hated to be weak in front of him.

And Nessa.

Nessa...had not been helping things. It was also clear that his karn bond-mate was not handling everything all that well either. Nowadays, it was often just the three of them in their cave. Niri and Rylee had moved, Zora all but lived with them as well now, Azure now had her own cave she was recovering in, and Dawn was now sleeping away the cold months with all the rest of her dryad sisters in a secure, hidden location in Ara Forest.

Consequently, normally calming voices and relaxed personalities were gone, leaving only him, Nessa, and Keeza.

They had been fighting a lot, thankfully not physically, but Jak had to break up at least one fight a day, sometimes two or three. Keeza more or less admitted that her nerves were frayed, but he could tell Nessa was taking his interest in her more personally.

And it really didn’t help that when Keeza was feeling particularly petty she played that up.

Then, when Jak had to remind her that Nessa was his bond-mate but she was not, they started fighting. He hated it. He didn’t want to make anyone feel bad, but he also had to let Keeza know that his love of her did not invalidate or override his love of Nessa, and that while he was not playing favorites...Nessa was indeed his bond-mate, mated to him through a ritual of trust and love they both had openly committed to.

Mostly they were reasonable, but the situation was definitely wearing them all down.

“I see none,” Keeza murmured.

“Neither do I...how are you doing?” he asked.

“I did not start a fight with Nessa, if that is what you mean,” she replied, a little curtly.

“That isn’t what I meant, Keeza,” Jak said gently.

Keeza wasn’t looking at him, her face set in stone as she continued surveying the forest.

“Keeza,” he said gently.

Finally, slowly, she looked at him. “What?”

“I know this has been hard for you, and I know I’ve been asking a lot, and I want you to know that you have done a fantastic job so far.”

She looked away again, angry. “I am not a child who needs to be coddled,” she snapped.

“Keeza,” he said, more sternly this time. She looked at him again, reluctantly. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Because something did seem to be wrong. She was harsher, sterner today. He thought it might be the extra strain they were all feeling due to the sudden lack of corrupted, but maybe it was something else.

Her expression remained stony, then finally softened. “I am scared,” she whispered, her voice so quiet her words were nearly lost to the wind. “I’m scared of losing this. You. Nessa. Zora and the others. The tribe. My...home. I spent my entire life never really feeling safe, but I feel safe here with you and your people. And now…”

“You won’t lose us, Keeza,” he said.

“You can’t know that,” she murmured, but didn’t resist when he took her hand.

“You’re right, I can’t. But I can believe it. I can believe in us, and I do. We’ll make this work. We will defeat our enemies, stop the corruption, and bring this island back to life. And then we will live our lives in glorious peace.”

“I really hope so,” she muttered, then she gave her head a shake. “I apologize. I know I’ve been difficult.”

“It’s all right, Keeza. It’s been very difficult for all of us.” He brought her hand up and kissed the back of it. “Just...stop provoking Nessa, please?”

She sighed. “I’m trying, but I’ll try harder. She...is struggling, too. There’s just something about her that provokes me. Usually in a good way, but when I’m stressed out…”

“I understand, and I appreciate your effort. Now, we should continue with our journey,” he said, letting go of her hand. “I don’t see any of them and we should take advantage of that.”

“What will we do?” she asked.

“Split up into groups, head into the forest, get the supplies,” he replied.

“I’m ready.”

Jak took one more look around, then hopped down off the boulder with Keeza to go and organize his warparty.

CHAPTER II

Jak and Nessa led the warparty deeper into the forest.

After some discussion, they had ultimately agreed that they should continue on together towards what had once been their home village. They had secured the meager resources discovered among the ruins of the northern outpost in the most intact hut, then left.

Jak had been further considering how he was going to handle this particular engagement as they stalked on through the snow.

He had brought Lekken as well as Nessa and Keeza. The once exiled elven warrior had proven himself several times over since joining the tribe. He was quick and accurate with his bow, and everyone in the tribe respected him. And, despite the fact that she was an embyr and her reception had been a bit cautious, just about everyone now trusted Keeza as well.

Having made up his mind on how the day’s excursion would play out, Jak hesitated as he saw something unexpected ahead.

A thin trail of smoke, drifting into the air.

The winds were not nearly so powerful this far into the forest, and the smoke was coming from their old village.

Jak raised his fist, motioning for everyone to wait, then he and Nessa crept forward.

This would be the best time returning to the village and he had been dreading it all the while. He had nightmares about this village. Burning, bodies, blood. Death and destruction. His people, his home, his life torn apart on that dark, wretched day.

But there was too much that had been left behind, too many useful things to ignore. They had to go back.

He had not expected to find anyone here, though, and he wondered if it might be the Revek that were waiting for him or for anyone.

Jak and Nessa crept through the trees, studying the village as they drew closer. So far, he saw nothing to indicate life beyond the thin pillar of smoke. Nothing moved, no voices sounded. They reached the treeline and waited.

A long, cold moment passed, and still there was nothing.

They stepped out and began to cross the clearing. A moment later, they came to stand at the boundary wall, what had once divided their village from the rest of the island. It was broken in many places, reduced to sticks and stones.

They got their first look at the village.

Desolation awaited them.

Most of it was covered in snow. Only a handful of huts remained upright. Mostly they had been reduced to snowbound heaps with the occasional branch sticking up. There were many lumps beneath the snow, uneven heaps, several of which he knew to be corpses.

Nessa pointed and he nodded. There were footprints in the snow, fresh, trailing all over the village. Someone had been digging. Corrupted didn’t dig.

Or did they?

It was increasingly hard to tell what they were capable of now.

The fire was coming from within the communal cave. Jak motioned silently for Nessa to wait outside and watch his back, then he headed into the tunnel, adze in hand. It felt awful and dislocating to be here like this, his once intimately familiar village that he could navigate safely with his eyes closed not all that long ago, turned into a place of unknown danger.

Anything could be waiting for him in there.

He thought he heard someone talking quietly and stopped, waited, listened. Someone spoke again, another voice, deeper. A karn.

It had to be either someone from his tribe or from a friendly tribe, he thought. Or was that just wishful thinking?

In the end, he decided to speak up. “Whoever is back there, show yourself now.”

His voice echoed down the tunnel and there was a long, uncomfortable silence. Then movement, shuffling, and finally someone peered slowly around the corner of the nearest side tunnel that led into what had once been the communal sleeping area.

“Tribemaster?!” A somewhat familiar face appeared and Jak relaxed.

“Von,” he said. “You’re alive...what are you doing here?”

“Trying to survive, tribemaster,” he replied. “I have others with me. I thought you were dead! I thought everyone was dead!”

“Is the village safe?” Jak asked.

“Yes. We haven’t seen any corrupted, or anything or anyone dangerous, for days now. Are there others? What’s happening?”

“I will tell you in a moment,” he replied. “Nessa! Go get the others! It’s safe!”

“On it,” she called back.

Jak joined Von and they moved back into the communal sleeping area. Von had joined the tribe perhaps five days before the death spell hit. He had been living in the mountain village and when freedom had come, he had wanted to come live with the others, with some friends who he thought might have been dead originally but now hoped were still alive, in Avat’s Forest.

Three others were in the cave, standing around a fire. A human, a karn, an elf. They all looked tired and unhappy, but they all relaxed and brightened as they saw him.

Jak gave them the quick and dirty version of events that had befallen the entire island, then listened to their own tale. Von had been out hunting with Leli, the elf now with them in the cave, to the north, beyond Avat’s Forest, in a small but still sizable woodland between the two vast forests to the north and the south.

They were making camp for the night when the death spell hit. They both got sick, Leli very sick, and he was forced to remain near the camp for days. They spent the time in isolation, healing, taking care of each other, but ultimately regained their strength.

As they began to head home, they ran into Grek, the karn, who was apparently another survivor from the coastal karn outpost. He had been by himself when it had happened, out on a wandering hike, and had been fighting for his life ever since.

They teamed up and returned to Avat’s Forest, only to find it riddled with corrupted, the village destroyed, the outposts wrecked, the dead everywhere. They fought and snuck their way from one side of the forest to the other, looking for survivors. They found some, but Kina, the other human, was the only one who had survived.

He was from Hearthstone Village, but had been sent to the east outpost with a small group to make a request of the Dektyr when the death spell had hit. He was the only survivor, and had been hiding and wandering ever since.

They teamed up, intent on making it to Hearthstone, but had been forced back after a few days’ trek by the sheer number of corrupted.

Since then, they had been hiding, fighting, and struggling to survive, eventually coming back to the village for refuge.

“You’re safe now,” Jak said when he had finished with his tale. “We’re here to gather food and materials, you can help us, and we’ll take you with us back to Fair Field.” He looked to Kina. “If you want, at some point I or another warparty will make the trek to Hearthstone, and you can go with them when the time comes, but you can stay with us until then.”

“I graciously accept both offers,” Kina replied.

Jak nodded. “Good. I and several others must head out into the forest for now. Are you all able to help us gather and organize all the resources left?”

“We are,” Von said. He hesitated. “We did not go into your cave, tribemaster.”

“I appreciate that,” Jak murmured. “Come, let’s get to work.”

He led them back outside, where the warparty had gathered. They were moving among the ruins, digging in the snow for supplies. He looked at a corpse that had been uncovered already, pale and rigid, and frowned, then called over Lekken.

“Do not forget to burn the dead,” he said.

“We won’t, tribemaster,” Lekken replied grimly.

Jak nodded. It had been decided that all the dead would be burned in pits, reduced to ashes, and then their remains would be buried. The elves knew the truth: the dead provided new life if they were buried in the dirt, but now it served two purposes.

A pile of ashes, buried in the ground, could not be resurrected by death magic.

No one was completely comfortable with the new ritual, but no one could deny its necessity. Not after what they had seen.

Not after what they had fought.

Jak motioned to Nessa, and together they moved into what had once been their cave. Their home. Their place of sanctuary and solidarity, a respite from the responsibilities of the world beyond. As they walked inside, Jak felt a pain stab at his chest.

It was a little messy and it was obvious that someone had been through at one point and grabbed what they could, but otherwise, it looked exactly the same.

So many memories in this place, just about all of them good.

The quality of Nessa’s breathing had changed. It was faster. He looked at her. She had bitter, angry tears in her eyes, her tail twitching.

“We’ll come back,” he said. “We’ll make it ours again. We’re going to raise our children here, Nessa.”

She was silent for what felt like a long time, then she just said, “Yeah,” and wiped angrily at her eyes. Silently, she walked over to her stash, dropped into a crouch, and began sorting through it. Jak moved to join her.

It was going to be a long day.

…

Once again, Jak and Nessa stalked through the snow, this time heading into a deeper, more dangerous part of the forest.

They were making for the southern outpost.

For the boarder they shared with the Barrens.

Keeza was leading the best warriors and gathers along the western portion of the forest, while Lekken led his group to the east, and the rest remained back at the village to prepare what they could find for the trek home.

“Nessa...what is bothering you?” Jak asked.

He knew she was upset, irritated, but it went beyond the normal levels of agitation that they all now felt to some degree, being forced to live through this frozen nightmare. He had begun to notice it yesterday.

She didn’t speak for a while, then finally she heaved a sigh. “I am certain that there are karn in the embyr lands. There must be. And that means that I, nor any of my people, will be able to take part in the attack...I still have nightmares about when I was mind-gone. I was so sure it wasn’t possible.”

“I know you want to be there, Nessa,” Jak replied, “and if there was any way, I would make it happen. But it’s too dangerous. And we still don’t know if your people are there.”

“They must be,” she said, looking at him. “Do you truly believe they are not?”

Jak opened his mouth to reply, to say he wasn’t certain one way or another, but in the moment that he considered it, he realized that he did believe it.

There must be some karn over in that distant corner of the island. He had come to believe this, slowly, gradually.

“You’re right,” he said. “It’s almost certain. But we will rescue them. We’ve already saved so many, we’ll save them, and we’ll make sure it can never be done again.”

“How?” she murmured.

“I don’t know,” Jak admitted, “but between us all, I’m sure we can find a way. Or, at the very least, we can work together to prevent it from ever happening again.”

“I hope so.”

He hated seeing her like this. Nessa had been angry before. She’d been sad, bitter, frustrated, but this…

She almost seemed hopeless.

He wasn’t sure what it was. Of them all, she seemed the most resilient. To see her losing hope was, in some deep way, frightening. But his heart ached for her. And he knew she wasn’t the only one. Many people were slower, listless, miserable. Fights had been breaking out among the survivors, often between two separate groups, but even among his own tribe.

And it was only going to get worse.

Jak knew that he had to deal with these threats to their existence. That apocalyptic night had already done serious, lasting damage and he knew that it was entirely possible it may have been a death blow to everyone on the island, it just hadn’t caught up with them all yet.

But worrying about their long-term survival, while undeniably crucial, was second to worrying about their more immediate survival.

“Here, we’re near the first cache,” Nessa muttered.

They stepped off the path and moved along a smaller one that was almost hidden by a dense cluster of trees. Jak maintained his awareness at all times, even though he had yet to see a single corrupted. The more time went on, the more he wanted to see the wretched things. He hated fighting them almost as much as he enjoyed it, but fighting them at least made sense.

This didn’t.

Where were they hiding?

What were they doing?

They came into a tiny clearing and Nessa grunted as she overturned a big rock in the snow. As it flipped aside, it revealed a leather pouch, tightly cinched. She picked it up and passed it to him, then put the rock back in its place. Jak opened the pouch and peered within, then grunted. It was full of several other smaller pouches, each containing rare, important medicinal plants. Rylee had made it herself last season and had told him where it was.

Tying it off to his belt, he and Nessa resumed their journey.

They walked in silence for a ways, moving along the path, among the trees, always on the lookout for dangerous things.

His mind wandered as they hurried along, taking many paths.

He wondered how Niri and Rylee and Zora were doing up there. He wondered if the elves would be up to the task of helping him attack the embyr when it became necessary. He wondered if they were going to have enough food to last the winter.

He wondered if the island would grow back.

His mind kept returning to the embyr, though, and the battle that almost certainly would be fought soon. Their two heaviest hitters, the karn and the dryads, were now out of the equation. Even their most magically gifted ally, Azure, was down, though not quite out.

After they checked two other caches and collected a pouch of rare rocks and a store of dried, salted meat that had been meant as an emergency store of food for hunters or gatherers in need, they reached the southern outpost.

Jak stared hard at the wrecked ruins, little more than lumps beneath the blanket of snow. He expected to see dark, shambling figures lurking among the trees, but there were still no more. Part of him wanted to go further, past the boundary of Avat’s Forest, and look upon the Barrens with his own eyes.

But something told him not to, warned him against it, and he heeded it.

“Come on,” he said, turning away and beginning the trek back, “let’s see how the others are doing.”