Chapter Thirty: Jaunt Through the Sky
Oh my god, I'm gonna get to ride a sky river. I felt like a little kid visiting a water park for the first time…only instead of a lame waterslide, I got to ride a river. That flowed through the fucking sky. I love my life, right now.
Scales and I had left Aztlán around mid-morning—it was nearly evening, at this point. As the elders had said, two warriors were waiting for us at the eastern entrance to the desert capital, waiting with a canoe and some water supplies. Unfortunately, the two warriors would not be accompanying us, so Scales and I had to carry the small wooden boat by ourselves. And so we set off into the sand dunes, carrying the canoe with our collective Vis.
Carrying objects with my Aspect wasn't necessarily effortless… The larger the object, the more energy it expended to remain aloft. When I first started unlocking the secrets of my Aspect, the idea of lifting something like the canoe would never have even crossed my mind. Before I went on my journey through time with Anna, I probably could've done it…but I wouldn't have been able to carry it very far. Without getting a headache and nosebleed.
My echeladder sprang to mind, the imaginary image of a ladder that appeared to me every time I came closer to mastering my Aspect. Before, over three-quarters of my echeladder rungs blazed with color and light. Learning how to use my Aspect to create fire had been a giant step towards mastering Force. And my little jaunt through time with Anna…I hadn't really noticed anything different, but my echeladder was now completely alight, save for the top two or three rungs.
I hadn't really learned anything new about my Aspect during my time with Anna, but I'd gradually come to understand that I also gained power when I completed integral parts of my quest. And I could only assume that ensuring Xolotl became the White Warrior, and subsequently ensuring the birth of the Great Liberation of the enslaved desert clans, was a giant part of my quest. I wondered if I'd feel any different when I finally reached the top of the ladder.
But the point was that, after my time spent in the past with Anna, carrying the canoe with Scales felt super easy. I wondered if climbing the echeladder was what made me stronger, or if getting stronger was what made me climb the echeladder. Very chicken and egg, if you ask me.
But enough of that. Less echeladder talk, more sky river talk.
"You know, we've gone all the way from the Knightswood to the Sands, and we walked the entire way," I pointed out to Scales as we crested what felt like the thousandth sand dune we'd climbed since leaving Aztlán behind. "Why don't you guys use the sky rivers for transportation?"
"We do not know where they all lead," Scales admitted. "We do not make mapss. It ssurprisess me that the Desert Fires know where thiss river leadss… Ssave for the Forbidden River, it iss not known where any of the riverss will take you. Perhapss the desert clanss have been exploring, over the yearss…"
"And where does the Forbidden River go?" I asked.
"It ssupposedly leads to Hyperion'ss Palace, deep within the Old One's Garden," Scales reminded me. "I have told you thiss, already."
"Slipped my mind," I grunted, trying not to roll my eyes. "I guess that's a good reason for it to be forbidden, though. Wouldn't wanna end up inner-tubing past Hyperion's palace by accident."
"What iss inner-tubing?"
"Don't worry about it."
We continued making our way across the red-orange sand dunes. The heat was getting close to unbearable, and I had to stop myself from completely chugging all the waterskins my consorts had given me. If I didn't have to keep lugging this canoe along with us, I probably wouldn't have been getting so thirsty. We slogged onwards, doing our level best to ignore the heat of the desert, the quiet whispering sigh of the flowing sky river always in the background, growing louder and louder. It wasn't until the daylight started to fade into evening that Scales and I finally reached the sky river.
It was weird, standing underneath one of the sky rivers… I almost expected the noise to be like standing next to a waterfall, but it was really much quieter than that. I guess it really shouldn't have surprised me—yeah, maybe it was flowing through the sky, but it wasn't moving any faster or slower than a normal river. Normal rivers didn't roar, unless there were rapids…and sky rivers don't have rapids, for obvious reasons. The water was shallowest at the edges of the river and deepest in the center, giving the bottom of the sky river a curved shape. The water was bright and clear at the edges and a deep, opaque blue in the middle, showing off the changes in depth.
"How do we get up there?" Scales asked.
I gave him an odd look. For people whose lives revolve around their use of the Force Aspect, a lot of my consorts really didn't know how to use it to its full potential. I let the canoe thud down to the sand, the oars rattling around in the bottom. "Climb in," I stepped into the rear of the canoe, gesturing for Scales to do likewise. "We'll raise ourselves."
"Levitation?" Scales sounded intrigued.
"It's really not all that hard," I shrugged, taking a few deep breaths, preparing myself. "It's just like lifting any other object…only this time, we happen to be on said object. Levitating your own body, though; that's where it gets tricky. Hard as balls to keep yourself from spiraling off all over the place every time you try to move."
Scales and I both lifted the canoe at the same time with our collective Vis, sending the small wooden boat on a gentle upward rise. I kept my breathing steady as the sand dunes surrounding us gradually fell away. The sky river was at a low point, here; sixty feet off the ground, maybe seventy. As it flowed north, however, I could see that it seemed to gain altitude until it vanished into the clouds. I could only hope it took us where we needed to go.
I think it took us maybe forty, fifty seconds to raise our canoe up to the level of the sky river…but it felt like a goddamn hour. Eventually, though, we were rising up over the river. Scales and I nudged the canoe over the moving water. I resisted the urge to let us just splash down onto the surface of the sky river—that probably would've ended badly—and instead lowered us gently down onto the water. The current of the river snatched us even before Scales and I released our hold on the canoe. Immediately, the boat started to spin out of control.
I scrambled to grab one of the oars at the bottom of the boat, seizing the short paddle and plunging it over the side into the water. I hauled the paddle against the current, executing several powerful backstrokes to stop us from spinning, forcing us back into a relatively straight line. We started to turn to the other side, then, after my efforts to keep us straight…but Scales picked up his own oar and started paddling on the other side of the canoe, stabilizing us.
After those first few harrowing seconds of fuuuck, we established a rhythm and began gliding along smoothly. Considering the fact that we were canoeing down a river that flowed across the sky, over a hundred feet up in the air…it was kind of uneventful. I've done my fair share of canoeing, and this really wasn't very different. I mean, other than the added risk of not wanting to stray too close to the edges of the river, where the depth of the water was very shallow. If the canoe broke through the bottom of the sky river…well, I didn't want to think about that.
I let Scales make the more powerful strokes. He was sitting in the front of the canoe—that was where the bulk of a canoe's propulsion was supposed to come from. The job of the person in the back was to steer. And so while I paddled along with Scales, I focused mainly on keeping us from falling off the edge of the river…which really wasn't all that difficult—this river was pretty wide.
If I hadn't been living with telekinetic cobras for the past month, the sight of Scales paddling might have unnerved me. From my perspective, the red-scaled consort didn't seem to be moving all that much, while his oar floated in the air to his right, seemingly paddling all by itself. The only evidence that he was using his Vis to manipulate the oar was a faint amber glow that shone about the edges. The only reason I could see it was because the daylight had already faded, for the most part.
Normally, it was nearly impossible to see a glow like that, at all. The stronger the Vis, the brighter the glow, which meant that Scales's control over the Force Aspect was pretty damn strong.
We canoed down the river until the daylight completely vanished, ushering in nightfall. It was not necessarily dark, though. After a couple hours, Scales and I found ourselves canoeing underneath the rainclouds. I instinctively used my Aspect to redirect the rain before it actually hit me, but I could hear all the raindrops quietly splashing into the surface of the river, mottling the water with millions of tiny droplets and ripples.
The rainclouds themselves shined with a muted violet glow. I've described this in the past, but that was when I was down on the ground. The light from the rainclouds, visible only at night, wasn't as bright as the daylight, but was quite a bit brighter than moonlight. And when we were up this close to the clouds…the purple light was even stronger. I had no problem seeing where we were going. And after another hour or so, the river changed its incline and rose up through the clouds.
We actually paddled through the rainclouds for a long while. Sometimes, the river would climb up through the clouds, and I'd be able to see the black night sky beyond. There were no stars, here, so the night sky was nothing more than a dark void. There was only one visible object in the sky; a lone point of light that did not flicker like a star should. It was a planet—Cruz's planet, or Cass's. I had no way to be sure which. As for Skaia, Prospit, the other planets…well, it was nighttime, right now. The part of my planet which I was on right now was facing away from everything else.
Scales and I didn't speak for the longest time. We paddled in relative silence, save for the occasional cough or sneeze. Yes, snakes can sneeze. At least, these ones can.
"So, uh… What can I expect from the Northern Fires?" I decided to break the silence with something that could actually yield useful, relevant, and helpful answers. Potentially. "I mean, I've kinda gotten off on the wrong foot with everyone else, and I'd really appreciate it if the North dudes didn't try to kill me or make me do something that'll likely result in me getting badly maimed. I feel like that's really not too much to ask!"
"They are the largesst of the three peopless," Scales's response was. "Nothing particularly sspecial about them, if you assk me. They ussed to live in the Golden Grasses until the time of the Cataclysm, when they migrated to the hillss and mountainss to the north, following the ssurviving Lifebeasst herds."
"Okay, next question," I moved on to address something that had been on my mind for a while. "What the hell is this cataclysm that everyone keeps talking about?"
"You would have to assk an elder for the full Story on the matter," Scales replied. "It happened ten thoussand yearss ago, when the Old One walked among uss. A darkness desscended over uss, and the very light of Great Sky Flame wass ssnuffed out."
"A darkness?" I frowned, trying to understand. "Was it clouds?"
Scales shook his head. "No, the sskiess were unchanged. The Great Sky Flame itself wass ssmothered, and we had only our fire to light our darkness. It wass called the Long Night of Sorrows, and the Story tellss uss that it lassted for over a month. Fire fell from the ssky, and the Golden Grasses were ravaged, which forced the People of the Plains to move to the north, eventually becoming the clanss of the Northern Fires. The Old One left uss and found a way to banish the darkness, but the cosst wass her life. She ssacrificed hersself to ssave uss all."
"Hell of a girl," I kept myself from making any outward show of my impatience. I mean, it was fascinating what he was saying, but it really wasn't giving me any answers. Almost like asking someone for a food recipe, only to have them describe in vivid detail what it tastes like. Cool stuff, but not exactly helpful. "But what actually caused the darkness? What could possibly cause Skaia to go black?"
"The Long Night of Sorrows wass but a ssmall part of the greater Cataclysm, which affected everything touched by the Great Sky Flame's light," Scales went on to explain. "We never knew what darkened the Great Sky Flame. We never knew why the Old One had to give her life. Ssuch thingss were beyond our undersstanding at the time. The light of the Great Sky Flame wass renewed, but the Old One was losst."
"Okay, so then how do you know the Old One actually sacrificed herself when you say she left?" I asked next, pointing out a potential flaw in the red-scaled consort's story. "Sounds to me like a classic case of 'disappeared, never to be seen again', rather than all-out self-sacrifice."
"Sselect memberss of the three Peoples went with the Old One when she left uss," Scales replied. "We called them the Witnesses. They returned to uss. The Old One did not. They proclaimed that the Old One wass dead, that she ssacrificed hersself to ssave uss all. They refused to sspeeak any further about what happened, and ssome of them even committed ssuicide in their grief."
"Ah. Well, uh… Okay," I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. Still, it became clear that Scales wouldn't be able to give me anymore answers. I kinda felt bad—I remember telling Gwen a long while ago I'd try and talk to my consorts about the Cataclysm, but…well, I hadn't really gotten around to it. I honestly haven't been maintaining communication with the others very much, since my dream self left Prospit. I'd have to fix that, soon. "For not knowing very much about this shit, you sure had a lot to say."
Scales glanced back at me, fixing me with his emerald-eyed stare. "The Story of the Long Night, as told by the elderss, iss over an hour long. You got the paraphrased version."
"Oh, I like paraphrased! Paraphrased is good."
We continued to paddle up the sky river in silence for a little bit, watching all around us as we passed through the violet rainclouds. It was pretty weird, because the clouds glowed with that violet light…and so when we passed through them, that light was sort of everywhere. It was weird, and pretty cool.
"So, be honest…you really think I'm ready to fight Hyperion?" I asked, not exactly wanting to spend the entire night paddling in silence.
"I do not know," Scales replied, certainly not wasting any energy on sugarcoating. "The Denizen conquered a world. Do you think you could conquer a world?"
"…unlikely."
"That'ss what I thought. Sstill…" Scales murmured. "You are the Knight. And I have a feeling that defeating Hyperion may be more complicated than ssimple combat."
"What makes you say that?"
"The Old One prophessied that one day the Knight would come and deliver uss…and here you are," Scales's neck hoods flared for a second, the cobra equivalent of a shrug. "Sso if you are no match for Hyperion in combat when we march on his palace, then there musst be ssomething we are missing, because the Old One wass not known for making incorrect predictionss."
I decided not to think about that. I would keep honing my Aspect with Scales as we traveled through the north, and soon I would reach the top of my echeladder. I don't know if I'll really feel any different when I master Force…but the difference would have to be critical. If I couldn't take out Hyperion now, surely I'd be able to then…
But yeah. Not thinking about that, anymore. That's just a one-way ticket to Stress City.
I got the feeling that we were actually moving a lot faster than the speed at which Scales and I were paddling. I mean, we were certainly propelling ourselves along alright with the oars, but I couldn't shake the feeling that the canoe was being drawn along the current by some other, subtle force. It was impossible to really tell, however, because of the dark.
Scales was the one to break the silence, this time.
"Are you going to explain what happened to uss—Xolotl and I?" Glimmering Scales asked. It occurred to me that while I'd spent many hours, maybe even close to a day with Anna as she pulled me through time…Scales had spent around three months in the labor camp. He probably had a shit-ton of questions. "Why did you leave uss in that place to rot?"
"I did not leave you," I honestly didn't know where I should even begin trying to explain myself. "Uh, okay, how can I explain this… Look, there are seven others out there who are like me. The one dressed in red who brought us to the labor camp…she is a Hero like me, only on another world. And instead of having a Vis, she is able to manipulate time itself. After we arrived at the labor camp, she took me forward in time, and we observed key events from our arrival until Xolotl's uprising…you have to believe me, there was nothing I could do to get you out. I think…I think it had to happen that way, though."
Scales seemed to be interested, but wasn't quite willing to give me the satisfaction of noticing it in his tone or body language. "Nearly thirty people died in that sso-called uprising," Scales muttered. "That wass when the female in red retrieved me and brought me back to Aztlán. Did you watch them die and do nothing?"
"Yes," I answered, deciding not to lie. "I watched a lot of people die. I stood invisible on the walls of the Dersite compound while you tried to storm the place, and I watched you and your friends get slaughtered."
"But why? Why did it have to happen that way?"
"Because that uprising would have failed no matter what," I went on to explain exactly what had happened to Xolotl after Anna had sent Scales back to the present. The white-scaled consort's imprisonment, his family…the incident in the quarries…and finally, Xolotl's successful insurgency against the Overseer and his guards. The somewhat paraphrased version, of course.
"You were the voice of reason to Xolotl during the failed uprising," I finished. "The only reason he was able to pull it off the second time was because he learned from your advice that he'd previously ignored…and the only reason you were the one advising him to be more patient during the failed uprising was because you had to learn to be patient while you were teaching me to use my Aspect—don't you see? Everything is connected. And when I think about it, there's probably a good reason why the liberation of the Desert Fires had to happen all those centuries ago, instead of today."
"What, you think it wass all planned by ssome mysstical force?" Scales sounded doubtful. I knew trolling when I heard it.
"Planned? Maybe not," I shrugged. "But everything is supposed to happen a certain way. Skaia knows its own fate—that's how it can show us the future, that's how the Old One was able to make her predictions…and nothing can change it." It was kind of challenging, trying to explain this. I mean, Scales wouldn't be able to understand the concept of doomed timelines—it would mean nothing to him. I didn't know how to explain the idea that everything would go to shit if the alpha timeline wasn't maintained without going into ideas and concepts that I still barely understood.
I was just glad I wasn't time traveling, anymore. Can't fuck quite so much shit up if you don't time travel.
By the time the daylight started to return, the muscles in my shoulders and upper back were sort of burning. I enjoyed canoeing, but I definitely wasn't an Olympic athlete. Then again, do the Olympics even do canoeing…? Fuck it. Don't know, don't care. Olympics got blown up by the meteors, along with all the rest...
Scales and I settled into a silence yet again, quietly continuing to propel ourselves further and further north. The sky river flowed through the clouds for a long while, so we didn't actually get to see the daylight return. All we could notice was the violet glow of the rainclouds slowly lessen while the external daylight increased, until they no longer shined and everything started to grow bright. Then the sky river dipped back down below the rainclouds…and I was surprised to find us soaring over a landscape of rolling hills and rocky steppes, with small clumps of mountains scattered about the region.
We weren't in the desert, anymore.
Now that it was morning, I was able to notice how fast the land below was speeding past. I mean, it's not like we were on a jumbo jet, or anything…but we were definitely moving faster than a canoe should be able to move.
"The river hass a Vis of itss own," Scales explained to me, somehow knowing exactly what was on my mind. "Even before the riverss were ssundered from the riverbedss, they had a Vis of their own. The elderss ssay it would be possible to travel from the Knightswood to the Northern Hills in a ssingle day. I thought it impossible, though I wass obvioussly wrong…"
"So where do we get off?" I asked the red-scaled cobra. "Do the Northern Fires have cities?"
"The northern clanss dwell in villagess, like my people," Scales answered me. "The Northern Fires have a high council, however, unlike uss. They dwell in the High Council Fire, which iss a common, central ssettlement shared by memberss of all the northern clanss, much like Aztlán wass to the desert clanss, though to call it a city would be a sstretch. The desert clanss were the only people ever to build proper citiess."
Scales had no idea where we should get off the river. He'd never been to the northern regions in his life—the western clans of the Treefolk rarely left their forests, and when they did it was usually only to trek to the Forbidden River for a Trial of Legends. The three tribes really didn't seem to have interacted with each other very much, recently.
Ultimately, we decided to get off the sky river when it dipped down to an altitude of about fifty or so feet. This was the only time it'd gone so close to the ground since we'd first gotten onto the river, back in the desert east of Aztlán. We probably wouldn't get another chance like this, and I really wasn't in the mood to help lower us through several hundred to several thousand feet of empty, open sky.
When we reached the lowest point in the sky river's downward arc, Scales and I both took deep breaths and used our Vis to lift the canoe off the surface of the water. We brought ourselves over the edge of the sky river and slowly lowered ourselves downward towards the ground. It didn't feel nearly as long lowering ourselves as it did when we levitated the canoe up into the river. Maybe we were just used to it, maybe we were both just anxious to get ourselves back onto solid ground.
The terrain here was almost similar to the Golden Grasses. There were hills, ridges, valleys, flowers, tall grass, and the like… The differences were that the grass was a much more conventional green color, rather than the golden yellow of the savanna. The hills were much more frequent and steeper, there were small ranges of mountains that dominated the local horizon. There were also trees—normal trees, not the giant Baobab trees of the Golden Grasses, mind.
"I'm not sure we thought this through very well," I remarked to Scales after we'd been hoofing it through the hills for an hour or two, finally stopping in a small meadow for a quick breather. "Get a canoe, check. Paddle up a trippy sky river to the north, check. Find the fucking Northern Fires…yeah. You see the problem? Where do these guys live?"
"I… I am not quite sure," Scales answered hesitantly. "My besst guess would be to make for the mountainss in—hsss!" The red-scaled consort broke off in a startled hiss upon being suddenly interrupted by a not-so-distant growl.
I had my Roman Lightbowie out of my sylladex and in my grip within half a second. I'd heard that growl, too, and it brought back some uncomfortable memories. "What direction did that come from?" I whispered, my eyes flitting from hill to hill, trying to pinpoint the source of the growl.
"That way," Scales gestured off to the left with his head, his forked tongue flitting in and out of his mouth, anxiously tasting the air. "It came from-"
Another growl, coming from a different direction. Behind us. Rustling. As I turned towards the sound of the second growl, I became aware of many more noises coming from all directions, all at varying distances…all clearly heading our way.
"Top of the hill," Scales hissed, drawing his sword from the sheath strapped to his back, making for the nearest hilltop. "Now."
I certainly wasn't gonna argue. Scales and I sprinted across the meadow, trampling the tall grass and flowers. The rain was light, today, so the ground was only slightly muddy. The earth of my planet seemed to be incredibly resilient to water, which I supposed was good considering one of the fundamental aspects of this place was rain. Rain and rivers. It occurred to me, then, the irony of having a Hero capable of pyrokinesis dwell on a planet so heavily influenced by water.
Then I was yanked back to reality when Scales and I reached the trees at the edge of the meadow. The howls and growling grew louder. Scales and I charged up the hillside, pounding through the dirt and shrubbery—well, I was the only one doing the pounding; Scales was doing his awesome sidewinder flying-across-the-earth thing. We ran like the hounds of fucking Baskerville were on our heels.
There was a giant oak tree at the top of the hill. I briefly considered climbing it, but there wasn't enough time. When Scales and I reached the top of the hill, we were able to stop and catch our breath. Glancing around, we could see dark shapes emerging from the trees and bushes, lumbering up the hill towards us. Imps and ogres.
Underlings. And a lot of them. Boy, I'd missed these guys.
I took a deep breath, tightening my grip on my Bowie.
"Son of a bitch…"