Towards a Guide

It was flaying the tapestry of the dunes, a tempest that spewed earth and sand in sundering fury. As the shadows shrunk beneath the waking gaze of the dawning sun, there the object rushed like a cloud spirit, of an avalanche mantled in the beige powders it hurled, sending distant ripples that strummed the earthen threads beneath. I felt them from beyond the other side of the crater. It was the farthest disturbance I have ever felt, more so than the landslides that hewed the great Freljordian mountains.

The power it forced among the stones reached me through that great distance as when a needle tugs the entire fabric when it pricks the edge, and those that sent the most violent rivulets, were stones that shattered. What came before us in that distance sheared them as steel through tightly packed hides. But it was not the shattering that sent the tremors through the threads beneath me. There was another force, alloyed into the destructive snaps of the stone, and when I felt it again, I gasped, for as I focused, I felt far-away ripples of threads twisting and curving, flowing like storm waves through a backdrop of snaps and shears.

It was weaving the stone apart.

Ekko's voice broke me away.

"What is that?"

"I do not know."

My breath was taken. The xer'sai were known to lurk beneath the earth in the bony plains of the Sai'Khaleek, but xer'sai did not wander the northern wastes, much less reveal themselves above the ground as they stalked their prey, and no legends of them spoke of wielding powers like mine. This was no xer'sai and only one thing was certain to me. It wove stone as I did.

I looked at the stranger, his sight fixated on that distant yet approaching cloud. The deformed patterns of uncontrollable threads I summoned from the earth, for a while, withdrew from our memory in the face of this sudden threat.

"I have not seen a force of that size in all my time in Shurima."

Not since Vekaura. I had thought I would not have to see a power in the scale of what I had witnessed so early after I had left that town's ruins. I was wrong. But Ekko did not need to know of that now.

"It looks like it's heading straight for the monolith. Or us."

"We cannot tell for certain, but it is better we evade it, for most things bearing immense power in Shurima harbor no good signs."

"What now?"

"It is coming from the west where my destination lies. If we go east, towards the sun, at this moment, we will only go farther from Greater Shurima, farther from safety, so we must either move to the south or the north."

For I had talked without considering the stranger's knowledge of Shuriman travel, he looked at me, unable to question or remind me of what I had so recklessly shown him. The approaching cloud stole the attention it once merited.

"It's coming closer."

He did not need to tell me. The tremble that ran through the threads were now shock waves, running through the tapestry as rapidly and abruptly as the candlelight that flickers in the wind. From an enigmatic and distant speck, it had become a blotting surge formed from the powders and splinters mangled from the strings of dune and threads of earth. Its power was greater than anything I could muster.

There was no time. I had to decide. If we are to engage in a prolonged chase with the approaching object, assuming that we were its target, then we must choose north, for there caravans mostly roamed, shipping goods from the upper coasts and weary travelers to their destination. South of here was what I had described to the stranger: weeks of sand and the slim chance of an oases, but south would bring us a slight distance closer to Greater Shurima. But there was no way of knowing the two apart for now, as there were no stars and the desert fowl whose flight marked the locations of rivers, coasts, and well-known oases were repelled by yesterday's storm. The dunescape had not a mountain nor coast to discern our direction, and now, as I often did, I wished that I could afford the expensive tools of the Noxian sailors and the Piltovian explorers.

Oh, Great Weaver, help me to decide.

Then, as I looked down to my feet in thought, there I noticed my shadow stretching into the sand and towards the crater. Towards the monolith. I looked up to its massive form, and noticed, from where I stood, that I could not see its own shadow, for it was positioned in a way that was perfectly aligned to the rising sun. Sunlight struck its arced pinnacle in a flawlessly reflected gleam.

I realized now. The side of the monolith facing us was parallel to the eastern sun, and thus, the monolith's arcing tip was pointing to either north or south. There was no way of knowing. Time could not allow it. But at least following the point of its arc would not be a completely ignorant guess.

Great Weaver, please let it be right.

"Taliyah, uh, what are we going to do?"

The force I felt was immeasurable. The sound of rock and powder cracking, crumbling, and billowing in upward hurls reached our ears. This was weaving, a force of creation intermingled so closely with destruction. A force that brought fear.

"Taliyah."

To the direction pointed by the monolith, I faced. I had made my decision. The deformed hanks of stone behind me began to crumble.

"Taliyah!"

Ekko turned to me, and he stopped, eyes widened, and watched the earth I had woven out of the ground dissipate on its own, like pottery breaking quietly to the sway of the wind. As it did so, I walked to him.

"There is a way for us to escape."

"Well, we actually need that right about now." He said as he took a glance at the object, frantic that the first malevolent sight since his waking approached him. "That thing is-"

"But you must trust that I will not hurt you."

Taken from a glance, he paused and stared in the way someone had heard something he didn't understand. Threads wrapped around the anxious twirls of my finger. Then, wordlessly, he nodded.

The twirling was anxious no more. I struck a heel against the stone beneath my feet. Out jutted a slab that lurched up and then propped before us. Ekko jumped back, yelping and taking a face no different from when my laughter summoned the earth.

While I mouthed a quiet prayer to the Great Weaver, I stepped on my slab, raising a tightly inclined mound of earth at the center as I did so. It divided the slab the way a slope divides the two humps of a camel; one for the driver, another for a passenger. To the front of that mound, I stood. There was space for the stranger behind, and as I got to my space, a glance to the object showed me that it was close enough that it was no mere speck, but a wall of whirling winds, threatening to cradle the other side of the crater.

When once its power pricked my toes, it now rumbled through my body, rolling like war drums. I felt the threads I wove shake. I could not focus.

"Get on!" I said between gritted teeth. The slab shook on its own, like a thin boat disturbed by the strong push of conqueror turtles, but there was that curious tree gecko look of Ekko toward the slab.

"By the Gray..."

"There is no time!"

Then he looked at me and, after a pause, noticed the space set for him. Sense at long last found him. He climbed up to his space and held both arms to the mound separating us. The unfamiliar weight upon my slab, combined with the approaching object's earth-shaking force, hesitated my control over the earthen threads as when a finger fumbles in looping a thread through a needle's eye.

"What is this thing supps- woa- woah!"

I thrust my hands back but the tremors pulled and yanked at my arms. The slab began to glide drunkenly through the sands, tilting left and right, and almost threatening to hurl us to one side, if not for my constant resistance towards the other weaver's interference. Ekko gripped hard at the mound between us and his struggle to keep his feet on the slab made it no easier for me. I clenched my eyes shut. I had to balance our weight. I needed control.

Control.

The wall of dust and flaked earth was as far as a ralsiji's sprint from the opposite side of the crater.

Balance, Little Sparrow

Wind seeped into my ears. My knees bent carefully, and, shifting my arms, I found a better center of gravity. A deep breath came before the transition of roaring winds. The threads soothed to the weave of my fingers. We were moving faster. We were gaining distance, and from the changing weight of Ekko, I could tell that he was looking back. I opened my eyes and set them forward the dunes seemingly speeding past us. Sands began to rise upward from the surfing slab's trail, but compared to the sand billowed by the object, it was a puff of air to a howling storm.

But that howling storm grew fainter as I surfed the slab forward, and fainter it faded as we climbed a great dune. The object's weaving came no closer. We were not followed, and this we both realized in silence as I calmed our speed and passed rows of the sun-basked dunes whose grains sifted to wandering winds. I could not tell Ekko's expression, for I wove the slab forward in front of him, but the slight shifts of weight that the threads allowed me to feel told me that he was looking left and right.

We had escaped the unknown object, but not what I had done. So that silence of relief we shared, had now become mere silence, and nothing more.

There came a point that his searching eyes stopped and looked forward, where the threads could not let me feel the tiny turns of his eyes and to where his sight lay. I could not know if he looked to the muted amber vastness of Shurima and the equally vast azure sky above, or if it was to the windy flutters of my short hair and the subtle movements of my weaving fingers. For the memory of my sudden laughter and equally sudden weaving rendered in this silence, somehow, knowing where he truly looked mattered. But the once-quiet winds roared in our ears, and they allowed him no questions, and I, no answers.


AN: I suppose this is where the 'adventure' part of the story begins to kick in a bit more. We had a lot of dialog prior to this chapter and among my main mistakes is using dialog as the only means of development in my stories, so prepare for more movement is all I can say. Also, notice the short length of the recent chapters. Since there are now two characters in the limelight, I am compelled to cut some brevity to help keep the story going without delving too much on individual and shared details in the way that I did in earlier chapters. But don't worry, this does not diminish what I have in mind, and I felt quite comfortable reading it the way it is. I can only hope you were too. Sometimes, you just have to save the other details for later, in the right time, and in the right place.

All said, I enjoyed writing this chapter. Moments of smiling dumbly while the scene makes itself are something to live for, as well as the many, many frustrating bouts of revision and editing that goes into polishing the scene. There are many more happenings, mysteries, and eventual answers to come that I have already laid out, and I am excited to share them with you all as I try my best to write them daily. I project that this story will reach 80k-100k given what I have already outlined, and I plan to keep things steady, understandable, and succinct enough that everything is said the way they should have been, nothing more and nothing less.

So again, thank you to those who have given feedback and who continue to read this story. I am grateful for the appreciation all of you have shown towards this story. Not a lot of people are interested in shipping Ekko and Taliyah, but I am glad those who do enjoy this story. I hope that I have written Taliyah and Ekko accurately and that they talk, act, and think like themselves, and I truly hope that, I can teach a lesson or two through their adventures together and the roles they'll play in their fast changing world.

Thank you again, and see you in the next one.