Kin comes out of surgery, as they call it when they cut a person open and poke around at his insides, the exact same person he was before that terrible cough, though perhaps less long-winded.
We are gathered in the room once more, this time all of us together, when he taps at his chest with those long fingers and says, "They cut me right here, but there is no scar."
There's not much to say to that. Sinna nods. "We know."
"You do not," he says simply, tiredly. He taps his chest, covered by a healer's green tunic, again. "I would actually enjoy the scar, this time."
For a moment I really don't understand. Most of us have very few scars. Kin has always been a natural at healing, even before he became the leader. The few marks I or the others have is due to either life before the caravan or to a very harsh wound and resources stretched thin. Why would he want a scar from this?
"They cut me open. They could not understand what was wrong, why the cough would not abate. They had to see it to know." Kin is nothing if not a gentleman. He doesn't make us wait for the answers. "My lungs are rotting. No, that is not quite the word. Transforming. You would not understand, the change of cells on such a molecular level, mutation." He takes a deep breath. "No, none of you scholars."
He searches for words as we try to comprehend the entirety of what he has just shared. Mutating? His body changing because of miasma exposure? All of us have been exposed to the miasma before. We've all breathed it, tasted the poison on our tongues. None of us have had this problem. And the people at--I wince at the thought--Tida, they didn't transform. They just died.
As my insides clench I have to remind myself that it was not my fault. That Tida's caravan, whomever they sent out that year, had been the ones to make the fatal mistakes in the field. That Tida's elders, whomever they had chosen to lead them, had been the ones to make the final mistakes in the village.
Sometimes it lessens the guilt. But only sometimes.
"I suppose I will just say what it is I mean to say. I am becoming a monster."
Our surprise is obvious, and Kindryth seems to relish in it. "It is a phenomenal discovery. I am the most popular subject of study in Shella." He coughs lightly, more a clearing of the throat than the full bodied spasms he had before. "Were I younger, I would be investigating the history behind this myself with all the intellect I possess."
He makes a gesture with his paws, a helpless 'Well, what do you do?' pose, and at that moment any horror I feel vanishes. It's just Kin, monster lungs or not, our crazy-eccentric gentle healer-killer Kin.
"So why is this happening to you?" Sinna asks from where she sits against a Selepation green wall. "I mean, wouldn't we have heard of this before now?"
Kin shrugs, something so alien for a Yuke that I know he got it from us. "From what the scientists babble, miasma exposure is relatively a mystery. Caravanners are too busy to be studied, and most others exposed are corpses. There are three theories we have settled on in our observations."
"I love it when you talk all smart," Patrick drawls in a spot on imitation of a wide-eyed bumpkin from Fum. He shifts to stand away from the wall. "But really, what's the likelihood of us being...afflicted?"
I haven't even thought of that. How many times have I walked into that poisonous fog? Too many to count. Am I, too, becoming a monster? Unconsciously Lian Cre puts a hand to her collarbone, and I know she is thinking the same thing.
"Very little," he answers, and with such authority that I find myself releasing the breath I hadn't known I was holding. My relief is echoed in Sinna's sigh and in the quick blinking of Lian Cre's eyes. Patrick relaxes enough to lean back against the wall.
"You're sure, then?"
"Am I certain of anything?" At our glances he huffs a laugh. "Of three theories, only two do I judge possible. The first, that I am a fluke, is entirely possible. The second, that anyone exposed will transform, is impossible. We would all be monsters then. The third, and most likely, that given enough exposure and incubation time transformation will occur, I find myself supporting."
It hits me with such force that I can't believe I didn't think of it before. Is this what became of Tida's caravan? Is this why they never returned?
"It is the incubation that is key. The subject must receive sufficient exposure, yet must remain living to allow the infection to spread completely. Truly fascinating. But no, not one of you a scholar." He sighs. "Truly fascinating."
"How long?" Sinna blurts out, hands twisting in her lap. She says nothing else, can't seem to bring herself to finish the question, but any of us could finish it for her. How long do you have until the transformation is complete? until you die? Are they even the same date?
Kindryth groans lightly, as if we've somehow frustrated him. "The trouble with being the first is the lack of precedents." At our confusion, "I do not know. Some estimate weeks based on the original rapid changes, some say months now that I am in a controlled setting, others posit years on the observation that the changes slowed beyond my lungs."
Weeks, months, years, no matter which, Kin will never travel with us again. He'll never ride on the tailgate of the wagon again, never heal our wounds or let out that low chuckle at Patrick's jokes. He'll never scold me for my recklessness, or congratulate me for what well laid plans I do make. He'll never celebrate another year of successful myrrh gathering. He'll probably never even see Tipa again.
This same realization seems to strike the others, judging by the mournful and downcast expressions they all wear. I swear I even see Patrick blink hard, as if to ward away tears, but the movement is gone too quickly to be certain.
"I will never lead the caravan again," Kin says slowly, an echo of his previous words to me, and though I know little to nothing about Yukes, I think he has grieved for this in his own way. "If you deem it acceptable, all of you, I would appoint Zin Del in my place."
No one objects outright, though Sinna raises an excellent point. "What did Roland think?" As the village elder, he does have a say in the doings of the caravan. He is the one who chooses the leader, after all.
"If I waited on the King of Alfitaria and that man to rule on my decisions, we would be long out of time," Kin says so harshly I'm taken aback by the scorn that drips from his voice. "They would dither over politics while we fight."
There is no reply to that, and Kin gives a sigh when a knock sounds at the door. Healer Thanadril curls his long fingers around the door frame and looks in. "Chief Granady will have my hide for a new robe if I do not request politely that you leave now," he says apologetically. "We have more tests to perform, I am afraid."
I find it hard not to like him, and smile at him understandingly as we all hoist ourselves into standing positions. Kin stops me with a tap on my bare shoulder. "If you would return later?" he asks casually, but I know that what we'll discuss will be anything but casual.
"Listen to me carefully, Zin Del, as we do not have much time." He beckons me further into the dimly lit room, gestures for me to close the door. With only one small lantern to give light, the place seems much more sinister, a prison rather than a recovery room.
I feel like a puppet with its strings cut, uncertain what happens next in the script. And it's true, he's the one orchestrating this scene. "All right, but--"
"No, listen. You must take them through the sluice. Forget the mountain stronghold, there's no time for that now." He ignores the way my jaw drops slightly. He's obviously predicted my reactions.
"Kindryth, you can't mean it. That's suicide. You know what they do to myrrh thieves?" In my mind the image of a dank, cold dungeon appears, stone walls and floor with a hint of straw in the corner to serve for bedding. Of course, that's only the temporary fixings. It only gets worse from there.
"I have already written the letters to Min Doran and his caravan. They will not get the letters until it is too late, but the mountains are close enough to their destination to satisfy them. Not enough to make them happy, but that is impossible this late in the year."
Wonderful. He's got it all figured out, has he? "The last group I want to mess with is Alfitaria. You might hate politics, but even you know that schedule's the only thing keeping us from backstabbing and cornering ourselves into extinction. Do you want Tipa blacklisted from myrrh trees?"
"Zin Del," he says, as if that will stop my tirade.
"Do you want us to die?"
As if I didn't hear him say my name the first time, "Zin Del."
"Because really, I could just hold a mass suicide as my first order of business. Have everyone jump right off one of the bridges here."
"Are you going to listen to what I have to say or not? Really, you are trying my patience." Everything about him is haughty in that moment, from the stiff posture to the imagined raised eyebrow.
"I'm sorry," I say, not sorry at all.
"Look at the clock, there, on the wall. Do you know what it does? It denotes time." Following his gaze, I laugh slightly, a sound that has absolutely no joy in it.
"Wow, thank you for that amazing lesson in magic technology, Kin. Gods, I feel so educated now!"
"How much time do we have left in the year?" He refuses to rise to the bait, and I know I've lost.
I pause, counting the days in my mind. "Not enough. Not enough for both the mountains and the cave. We've been here too long. We knew it might happen when we brought you here, but breaking schedule?"
"It is the only way now," he sounds so solemn and sad that I know it's the truth. There really is no way to go through both the mountains and the cave and return to Tipa in the allotted time. Especially now that so much time has passed. The mountains are difficult even in the best of seasons, in spring, with the snowmelt floods coming any day now, I dare not take my caravan through there.
Strange how easily they became my caravan.
"You know, when Roland went off on his speech about having to give up everything for the village, I didn't think my status as a law abiding citizen was also up for grabs." I say it glibly, but I mean it. Never did I imagine myself mounting the platform in Traitor's Square.
"Will you do it?"
The most important question of all. Years ago when I gave my oaths, did I mean each and every word I said? To give up not only life and time, but everything else I possessed?
"Only if you promise to write letters pleading for my release rather than execution."
He laughs, the low chuckle I'm so familiar with not soothing at all. "...I believe I am capable of that."
"Good." I feel slightly nauseated. I can already picture the rope about my neck, the eager folk standing in the square awaiting my death. Myrrh thieves are the worst criminals of all.
Beneath the helm that is pointed in my direction I can only imagine the twisted grin that lights his features as he gestures to the clock that hangs on the wall, still marking each moment we spend together. "Time is wasting. Tick tock, caravanner, tick tock."
Thus ended the three-hundred-and-twenty-sixth caravan of Tipa, under the leadership of Kindryth the Yuke, son of Khalet and Ayarima.
Mist lays heavy over the smooth stone paths of Shella, a few lone crystals providing the only light on this path, far from the main crystal. My steps echo oddly despite the soft tread of my boots, scuffs rebounding off the water slicked cliff, traveling back to me as if from a distance. Were I not the only one awake on this chill, dark night, I would truly believe that someone is walking to meet me.
As it is, I feel like a ghost. No one else walks the roads this lonely night, all snug in their homes with the lantern wicks snuffed and the blankets pulled high. The business district is more silent than a grave, and with the moon rising large and yellow beyond the cliffs I can't help but recall my mother's tales of witches and red moons rising.
The inn is well lit, at least, enough to dispel the vague fears those memories bring. A warm, golden glow shines beyond the distorted window panes, and I shove the door open in my haste to get out of the cold.
Immediately I spot the others. They lounge about the common room, all frozen in comical poses. Lian Cre stares wide eyed at my damp appearance, a mug of ale paused halfway on the journey to her lips. Sinna, whose fingers trace aimlessly over the worn bindings of the chronicle, has already noted my appearance and gone back to her reading. Patrick can't help but gape.
"Take a swim tonight?" he asks, and I roll my eyes at him.
"We're leaving tomorrow," I tell them, and ignore their varied reactions as I head to the kitchens. Perhaps the cook will have left some porridge heating on the fire. I dearly love porridge, after all. And it's better than listening to them talk.
I'm not afraid of what they have to say. Of course not!
Well, maybe a little afraid. Or a lot. But at least there is porridge, and it has cream to go with it.
My elbow jams into the snout of a lizard man even as I slam my racket into another's leg. It hisses, prods with its scimitar, but I leap backwards out of range.
Bad move. In my eagerness to evade the strike I leap too far, stumbling into Lian Cre and knocking the chalice from her grasp. It tips ever so slowly, and from my sprawled position I watch my horror mirror hers.
Please, don't let that crystal break. if it breaks we die, plain and simple. Linked to the tiny crystal shard is a spell that keep the myrrh safe. Broken, we will lose more than our lives, we will lose our myrrh.
More than our lives. It's true. Those precious few drops are worth more than all of us. So it's no surprise that I can't let out more than a croak as that sacred vessel falls.
It hits the ground with a soft thunk, the myrrh swishing lightly within its invisible sphere, both sounds louder in my ears than anything I've ever heard in my life. Miraculously, it remains one pure, unshattered whole.
My sigh of relief turns into a scream as a scimitar suddenly pierces my hand. The pain is intense, paralyzing--I want to curl around my hand and shout myself hoarse--but before thought can get in the way I'm up, I'm standing, I'm raising my racket, maybe I'm screaming but there is blood spattering from more than just my attacks and the sickening sound of a racket cracking through bone and meeting the squishy resistance of innards, and suddenly there is nothing but me, me and my racket and my hand that might as well be on fire for the sheer agony.
Coolness floods through my veins, strokes delicately at the split in my hand as it reconnects my dangling thumb and forefinger. She's a magical prodigy, that Sinna, and though there is an obvious seam where the separation occurred, my hand is once again usable. I don't mind scars all that much anyway.
"All right now?" she asks, Kin's Cure Ring tight in one fist and a gory sword in the other. Across the circle Patrick duels the second lizard man while Lian Cre lifts the chalice to an upright position. "You scared me." Mild words from such a wild visage, I think as Sinna wipes a splash of blue green lizard blood from her cheek, only smearing the mark even more.
Patrick finishes off his foe with such a sloppy downward chop that I wince for the monster's sake. He didn't even bother to severe the head, though both arms lay scattered about their arena. Gruesome is probably the best description, considering I'm fairly sure that's intestines spilling out over its belt. Usually he makes such clean, merciful kills.
Catching my gaze as he uses the lizard man's scales to wipe the blue green muck from his blade, he frowns. "I was worried," he offers by way of explanation. He kneels to rifle through the corpse's belt pouch. "20 gil, what a rip off."
We're spread apart enough that when the shriek sounds through the air, none of us are able to reach each other. A griffin, fully grown and mad as a Lilty who's just been told that the Yukes won The Great War lands between us, buffeting me aside with one wing as it lunges for Lian Cre.
Two strikes to the face with her racket send the thing reeling back, startled by the quick and vicious response. I'm surprised too, but far more pleasantly than the bird, which tries to score her with its talons. She barely dodges that one, and I curse at myself for not remembering to remind them.
Her failure to recall the extra danger is covered by both Sinna and myself; our attacks to either side confuse the damn thing long enough for Lian Cre to scramble back to her feet. She takes a stance, bashing at the beak, which she does remember is a particular weak point.
The griffin is leaping from side to side now, trying to evade the three pronged attack even as it seeks an opening. I'm distracted for a crucial second by a flash of brown--Patrick?--and cuffed so hard by a wing that I roll rump over head toward the edge of the circle.
"No!" comes the strangled cry, and Patrick is there, between the griffin in me, sword cleaving through the griffin's shoulder with a violent stroke. Blood sprays from the side of its neck as it gurgles a dying scream and slumps to the ground. Sinna steps in to finish the deed from the other side, as his cut is so deep he has trouble yanking the blade from the bone.
"Little early in the year for griffins, isn't it?" I ask solely to break the silence. No one answers, not that I expect them to.
For a moment we all stand there, catching our collective breath, when Patrick makes a sudden move toward one of the rock ledges. "Thought so," he says after a moment. "Moogle house. Think he'll be welcoming?"
"As far as I'm concerned, if he doesn't try to kill us, then he's welcoming," Lian Cre says wearily before stumbling inside the thin crevice.
We don't bother knocking, but the sound of our clanking armor wakes him all the same. "Oh!" chirps the little moogle who, much like his kin, has decided to stake a claim out in the middle of nowhere. "I didn't expect to see you lot this year, kupo!" He sounds slightly disappointed.
Patrick seems to pick up on that particular nuance. "Yeah, well, get over it."
I stifle a laugh as he sprawls out in front of the fire, trying in vain to dry his wet shirt and ignoring the moogle's squeals of indignation about the dripping water warping his wood floors. Sinna had 'accidentally' tripped her twin earlier, sending him straight into one of the many hot springs. It's something easily forgotten in the heat of battle, but beyond that, well, Patrick gets a little cranky.
"That's not very Clavat of you," I tease, dropping onto one of the many cushions littering the floor. I can hear Sinna already rattling around in the poor moogle's cupboards. If her brother's grouchy when wet, she's even worse when hungry.
He sighs. "What would you know, Selkie?"
Sometimes I hate his sharecropping pacifism preaching monster killing hypocritical mediating Clavat guts.
I yawn, jaw popping as it stretches to accommodate the sound. Last night held little sleep for me. Too many worries, too many strange dreams. I lean against another cushion. Surely a nap won't hurt?
Consciousness arrives as a blanket settles over my shoulders, warm hands tucking the corners around my body, ignoring my muttered thanks. Somehow I've ended up atop the moogle's incredibly large bed. Part of me insists on struggling to sit up, then subsides as Patrick runs a callused hand across my forehead, brushing the strands of hair that linger there away.
"Thanks," I say again, the word coming a bit clearer this time.
"Any time," he says, and sometimes, sometimes I love him, for all that he is a dirt digging Clavat.
The sun is just barely shining over the eastern miasma stream when we reach the wagon. It's been at least three days, I think, though it's hard to tell in moogle homes.
Though my arms shake with weariness, the added weight of the chalice is incredibly welcome. I know I'm grinning like an idiot, can feel my cheeks starting to ache and see my expression mirrored in the others' triumphant faces, but a run this victorious deserves it.
Climbing aboard takes far more effort than it did the morning we left Shella. I put the chalice up on the driver's box first, then haul my body up over the wheel and halfway into the back. Lian Cre halfheartedly pushes my legs upward, then pulls herself up as well, grunting in pain. We are the last ones up. For a moment we lay sprawled across the bench, too tired to move let alone prepare to leave.
At last I clamber into an upright position. "Roll you for driving duty," I say, pulling my loaded dice from their pouch on my bandolier and shaking them suggestively at Sinna, who at least looks marginally human.
"Don't bother tricking me," she says. "I'll do it." Lowering herself into something resembling a seated pose she says, "Don't forget to strap the chalice in."
Like I could forget that. I mean, really, do I think or dream about anything else these days?
A tanned hand that waves Lian Cre and myself into the back of the wagon ruins that little thought for me. I'm not that much of a one track mind. Besides, there's only so much worrying I can really do. In the end, I've just got to trust that we'll be all right. So what if we're breaking schedule and are now wanted criminals? So what if we can't seem to keep our caravan safe and sound? So what if we've only got three and a half months--four and a half if we use our grace period--left to gather another drop, cross three miasma streams, two plains, a peninsula and a river? So what if we're all scared out of our minds that we might fail?
We'll be all right. There's simply no other option.
And that, child, is how I became the leader of Tipa's caravan.
Someone had to do it.
End of Arc 1, Rising Sun