HTG - Chapter 199

Kalon

Chapter One-Hundred-Ninety-Nine: Ata - Part Three

Planet: Etheria

My body looks more toned than before. It's been nearly two months since Solara left. My senses even feel sharper, though I’m not ready to admit to Dargo that his training seems to be effective. A storm patters against the glass as I peer into the endless lands of purple flowers and blue hues. It is a beautiful place, one where the water does not always move as it ought. Such a place is peaceful to me. It calls to my weary spirit.

“I think I am ready to see Arrum, old man.”

“If that’s what you want,” he says, furling his cloak over his arm and looking at the storm, “You could’ve picked a better time though to be fair.”

I grin but I don’t turn, “I like storms, they remind me of simpler days.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. Having seen your soul’s realm, storms suit you.”

“Shall we?”

“My shuttle is on the landing pad, though you may want some rain gear.”

“Your shuttle?” I ask, turning to look at him with an eyebrow cocked, “I seem to remember you betting me your shuttle.”

He flinches, “No one took that bet seriously.”

“And I remember asking for your assets too, which will be nice,” I say cracking my neck, “Because, apparently I’m extremely poor.”

He laughs heartily then a grimace follows as he sees my expression doesn’t change. I slap him on the back and head for the exit.  

“Boy… boy!” he yells after me as I round the corner. The air gusts and he is at the exit, clearing his throat he says with the most polite tone I’ve ever heard from him, “Perhaps I can give you something valuable and we can call it even.”

I look at him squarely, “Whatever you have, I own,” a smile curls as I finish with, “Remember?”

“Surely you can’t be serious… it was just a simple bet.”

“The Kuwathi do not make simple bets.”

He groans, “We can discuss some kind of other compensation.”

“I like what I bargained already, Solara told me that your shuttle is very nice, and your ship… my ship, is even better.” The airlock whirs as I step into the chamber that leads outside.

“The landing pad isn’t this way, boy.”

“I know.”

“Are you going to climb up to it like a Gregorian Barbacka?”

“I don’t know what that is, but no, we’re going to walk to Arrum.”

“Walk,” he scoffs, “In the storm with all manner of creatures that lurk in the darkness. When we have a perfectly good shuttle to ride in?”

I nod, walking into the rain. It is strange on my skin. It does not rain on Ora, it only snows where I was from. It saps the warmth from my skin, but it is not cold, it is cool. Almost perfectly so. After a day of training, I find myself spinning in it slowly with a strange and childish smile on my face. This is real rain… I like it.

“It’ll take us weeks to get there, at your pace at least.”

“If you don’t want to come, then don’t.”

“You’d die without me, or have you forgotten the last time you weren’t under the protection of the wards?”

“I have a theory, old man. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps I am not.”

“What madness do you devise now, boy?”

My footsteps are soft as the water drenches my feet. Perhaps it is stupid to do this, but some primal part of me wants to run out into the storm and listen to the calls of the winds. I felt it ever since I’ve had time to think and meditate. There is something here on Etheria, something old and forgotten.

Dargo grumbles but he follows, an orb of air hangs around his frame to prevent him from getting wet. Curses fall as he walks shaking his head. His annoyance brings a little joy into my step as I move between old rock formations and bound over puddles. When I first got to this world, the gravity was fine, after I forsook the bounds I felt the firmness of its embrace. These months I have been training though, I can tell they have made a difference.

“Old man, Solara told me that you put some kind of runic shield around me when we got here?”

“Yes, Minerva’s second set of defensive runes, paired with Haric’s obscurement set, so you wouldn’t notice it right away.”

“You placed it over me, like a shroud?”

He nods, “It was Ravena’s idea, so that we could find you, and protect you from afar if needed. It would have made you less interesting of a target than Kotina’s ample mana aura. Besides that, you’re rather hard to see when you’re not using mana.”

“So I’ve been told. Is it still active?”

He queries a glance, “No, it shattered when those black flames came from you. Something about them is… unnatural.”

“Ioquin told me they…”

“I would be careful with anything she says, I told you before, she was known as…”

“The witch of the damned, yes, old man, you’ve said that a hundred times now.”

“Well at least you remember.”

“Have you ever considered that perhaps Leora told you she was bad because she is in fact good?”

He squints then swallows, “I did not hear about her from Leora. My master was the one that warned of her history. He told me that she guided Krotha toward the darkness.”

“Krotha did not need a guide.”

He sighs as I walk through a deep creek bed, his feet move across the flowing water, “She was not always evil.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“According to my master, she sought power for a good reason. She feared that the Alverian gods were going to make a move for supremacy while Kuwathi was missing. She was not wrong that they were planning it, but she was wrong about the timing.”

“What happened?”

He frowns, “From what my master told me, she forsook the Etheric bounds and renounced her godhood. For a time he said she was even more beautiful to be around. He said she was so inspiring that he would forget to eat for weeks and just watch her weave runes. It is there that he learned many runes, forbidden sets that were not intended for mortals.”

“It sounds like he loved her…”

“He did, but we can finish that story another time.” Dargo looks at the last wardstone and stops, “Are you sure about this, boy? I could get us there safely in a matter of hours.”

“I want to do this. There is something that calls me in my dreams, something beneath the surface.”

Dargo chuckles until he sees I’m serious, “Boy, one does not answer the dreams they hear on Etheria. They are like a siren’s song. The deep beneath the tunnels is where the truly fearsome creatures lurk, the ones that are much older than me. Though I’m surprised you can hear them. Usually, you need to be in the seventh.”

“I didn’t say that I heard anything… just felt it in my bones. Like a longing to discover.”

He looks at me strangely, “As I said, do not listen to the dreams… or feelings. They are echoes from old things that should stay buried in the deep of this forgotten world.”

Curiosity begins to build in me, “Why do they not venture to the surface?”

“Ethaki require constant supplies of Etherium, just to remain stable. The stronger they get, the deeper they dwell.”

“Is the Etherium more concentrated in the deep areas?”

He nods, “Much more.”

“What lies beneath that?”

“Beneath the deep?”

I nod.

“No idea, probably just pure Etherium and despair. You’d find the same phenomenon on your home world, except Ora’s would be Shulka as you call them, as they should be known. As they were before the fall of your people. Anyway, the deeper you go, the stronger they get.”

“Why doesn’t anyone go down there?”

He laughs, very heartily, “Boy, the creatures you’ve met so far are like fresh Shulka compared to the ones in the deep. The things you and Arrum know as Carvers, the ones that eat other Shulka and have some measurable intelligence. Those are weaker than the ones here. Even the one you killed with your strange purple shard, it would be eviscerated by the ones in the deep. Even my master would not venture into there.”

“But the one I killed had so much energy, how can that be?”

“It can have a lot of Etherium stored in it, that variety of Ethaki harvest and hibernate for hundreds of years at a time then wake up in a frenzy and eat until they hibernate again. In the south pole of this planet you can see deep grooves from a herd of them. They rearrange the landscape and wait for the Etherium to wick back up to the surface and repeat the process.”

There is much he is saying that I understand, but at the same time don’t. I do not interrupt him as we stand in front of the last wardstone.

“Basically, imagine all of that energy condensed onto a vessel the size of a regular person.”

“I already had that thought, they would be like Tavjac of the Mordow.”

“Exactly like that, though I think he…”

“So, you do know him?”

He blinks, clearing his throat, “Did I say that I didn’t?”

There is something strange here with the way he speaks, concern, like he thinks that I think he’s lying about something.

“Is Tavjac your master?”

He swallows, pursing his lips, “He’s…”

I put up a finger, “Old man, know this about me, I do not follow those whose tongues speak falsehood. To lie to an enemy is a sin I can forgive, to lie to one that you wish to teach, one you claim to wish to guide, one you try to gain trust with” my eyes narrow, “I would not follow a person like that.”

“Do you have to be this serious all the time?” he lets out a sigh, “Yes, the man you know as Tavjac is my old master. But know this about me, boy, I am the keeper of secrets which are not mine to tell. If you wish to know more about him, ask him when you see him next. Do not ask me to betray his trust to gain yours.”

There is fairness in his logic I can respect so I nod, moving toward the edge of the boundary, “Trust may yet form between us, old man.”

“Does that mean we can take the shuttle?”

I laugh which almost surprises me as I take into the night with more questions that play on my mind.

I was surprised that the Ethaki sought me. Even if they were more interested in Kotina, they still looked at me. The Shulka I imagine would have left me alone. The Shulka only paid me mind when I attacked them or got in their way, otherwise they steered clear from my path. Dargo having placed a barrier of maka around me makes sense then, and makes me wonder if the Ethaki will ignore me without it.  

If the Ethaki ignore me as well, perhaps I could venture into the deep and find what calls to me.

If I am wrong though, it’s a good thing that I brought Dargo.

“I don’t like that devious smile, I think I preferred your more serious face,” Dargo groans, stepping over brambles.

“Keep up, old man.”