Chapter Thirty-Seven: Casting the Die
The smell of rain was the first thing I really noticed when I woke up. Apt, I would think, for waking up on a planet where it constantly rained. It wasn't called the Land of Rain and Rivers for nothing. And I actually preferred it this way—waking up to gentle rainfall is infinitely preferable to blaring sunlight, no matter how drunk or sober you are.
When we got off the Nanuk River, it was early morning, before Skaiarise—I call it Skaiarise for obvious reasons, Skaia being the light source in this 'solar system' of planets, and not a conventional sun. The daylight was still in the process of overcoming the pre-dawn shadows, with the eastern horizon steadily brightening, heralding Skaia's arrival. The rainfall was gentle, and millions of crystal globes of dew scattered atop the grass started to catch the light.
The High Council Fire was a three-hour walk from the Nanuk River's drop-off—a three-hour walk across lightly wooded hills, heading towards the mountain next to which the Northern 'city' was built. As we trekked through the hills, winding our way towards our destination, we never lost sight of the mountain. It was a natural beacon, drawing everything towards it from the surrounding hills. I could see why the central settlement of the Northern Fires would be located here.
The High Council Fire was protected by stone walls, accessible through a gate which was guarded by Dersite sentries. Yeah, between the three of us, we could have blasted in, but that would give away our presence here. The revolution in the North would be ended before it could even begin. For now, we had to play the stealth card.
And that meant we'd have to wait until dark. We made it to a ridge less than half a mile distant from the High Council Fire by midmorning. It was not the proximity of this ridge to the city that mattered—it was the fact that it was covered in thick woods, especially at the very edge. We could sleep here with relatively no threat of discovery, unless one of the Dersite guards wanted to go on a sudden nature walk…which I highly doubted any of them would ever do.
And so, we slept until dusk. I had a bit of an adventure on the Battlefield with a division of Prospitian soldiers as my dream self—I worked with one of their special forces units to take down an enemy outpost. I really hadn't done all that much; most of the dirty work was taken care of by some uber-badass Prospitians.
Then we all made camp and sat around a fire, toasted marshmallows, and sang fucking Kumbaya. Well, minus the Kumbaya. Then it was back to reality.
I really wished I could remember my dream self's exploits more clearly—everything is so much more vibrant and clear when I am my dream self, then I wake up as my waking self…and things get a bit fuzzier. Almost like my waking life was the dream.
Unlike many of the other times I've woken up in the wilderness of the Land of Rain and Rivers, the daylight was fading, not growing. As I said, it was dusk, and we could gain entrance to the High Council Fire much more easily under cover of night. Glimmering Scales was coiled up at the edge of the ridge, gazing out at the High Council Fire alongside Aiyana. Inuyyak—the jolly violet-scaled giant—rested behind them, not bothering to look. He knew it would be the best time to go whenever Aiyana said so, such was his faith in the brown-scaled female cobra. I rubbed the remaining vestiges of sleep out of my eyes and trudged over to join them.
"What do the walls look like?" I asked the consorts, who possessed much better eyesight than me. Like Inuyyak, I personally didn't bother trying to scout out what lay ahead.
"Ssentriess, possted at regular intervalss," Aiyana replied. "Not sstationary, either. They are consstantly moving."
"We will have to kill at leasst one of them to get by," Scales murmured. "Do it quietly, while it iss sstill dark…hide the body ssomeplace out of the way."
"Little Treefolk'ss right. Better to have a vanished guard than a corpsse on the wallss," Inuyyak rumbled in agreement. "If the Dark Oness disscover the body, there would be reprissalss."
"So if we just make him disappear, then that'll buy us some time before the Dersites realize their man is dead," I finished for the violet-scaled consort. "By then, they'll have a fuckin' revolution on their hands, so who gives a shit about a dead guard?"
"Well, we will not accomplish much if we sspend anymore time talking about it," Aiyana hissed with some measure of impatience, turning away from the edge of the ridge. "Dussk iss upon uss. We should move, make contact with the Underground well before dawn. We could complete our tassk before the Great Sky Flame returnss tomorrow, if we move fasst enough."
And that was that. We erased all evidence of our having camped here—leave no trace, and all that shit. Then we got a move on, backtracking a little bit so that we could get down from the ridge, then resuming our eastward path towards the mountain.
"Does the mountain have a name?" I asked as we left the ridge behind us, unsure of why the sudden curiosity chose now to make its appearance. Maybe it was because I really wanted to start calling it the Lonely Mountain, but I wasn't gonna stoop so low as to rip off Tolkien, so…
"Yess, we call it Inuilangoyok," Aiyana replied. "This means lonesome in the old northern tongue."
The lonesome mountain. You gotta be kidding me.
I guess I'd made a face, or something, because Aiyana blinked at me several times, and asked, "Doess thiss bother you for ssome reason?"
"No." I shook my head. "No, it's actually perfect." The consorts, who've never read a word of J.R.R. Tolkien in their lives, didn't understand, poor things.
When we started drawing near to Mount Lonesome, whose proper name I won't even attempt to pronounce, we stopped speaking. We really hadn't been talking all that much before, but now we completely stopped altogether. The only noise, apart from the gentle pattering of rainfall, was the chirruping of small insects who remained awake even after Skaiaset. Once or twice I stepped on a fallen twig, producing a quiet snap that sounded about a hundred times louder to us than it actually was. But the trees were sparse in the hills surrounding Mount Lonesome, so incidents like those were few and far between.
The glow of Skaiaset in the western horizon had fully faded by the time we reached Mount Lonesome. The onset of darkness had been gradual, so my night vision was in good shape. Unlike our escapades in the Bear's Thicket, however, we would soon have the lights of the High Council Fire to guide our way when we reached our destination, so I wasn't totally dependent on my consorts for guidance.
We scaled hill after hill until I stopped keeping count. When we reached Mount Lonesome, the trees thickened a little bit—there were some moderately dense woods covering the lower slopes of the mountain, but we were simply traveling along the eaves, not venturing too far in. It took us a total of two hours to get to the High Council Fire. We could've made the journey in less than one under normal circumstances, but we didn't want to be seen, so it took us a while longer.
It wasn't dramatic, or anything, like cresting a hill and being suddenly subjected to a breathtaking view of a magnificent city of light. Nothing like that. Rather, we simply hiked around Mount Lonesome's western shoulder, and the thousands of tiny flickering motes of light that could only be the myriad torches and lamps of the High Council Fire came into view, shining dimly through the veil of trees that still lay between us and them.
It was much more like returning to a waiting hearth than a city of light. Considering what we've gone through in the Bear's Thicket to reach the Nanuk River, I could very well appreciate the whole 'light at the end of the tunnel' feeling that seeing the quasi-capital of the North brought.
We stuck to the trees as far as we could, but ultimately had to put a little distance between us and the mountain. I was about to ask why—the trees would provide much better cover for us, never mind the fact that it was dark. But then I remembered that the High Council Fire was overlooked by a sizable Dersite fort, which was built into the mountainside. If we continued traveling through the woods on the slopes of Mount Lonesome, we would eventually encounter that fort, and…well, the Dersites probably wouldn't have spotted us in the dark, but why chance it?
Approaching the walls of the High Council Fire was enough risk in of itself. Earlier, I'd asked why the Underground didn't have any secret tunnels or passages into the city. Aiyana had told me that there had been, but every time a new one was made, it would be discovered within months—such was the competence of Dersite security. Eventually, efforts to create secret entrances and exits into the city ceased.
Veteran members of the Northern Underground, however, were easily able to traverse the walls without being detected. They usually worked alone, though, or in pairs. We were a group of four, which was harder to hide. And Inuyyak, who seemed to have made this trip several times in the past, commented on how the number of guards manning the wall had definitely increased.
I guess when word traveled round of the Knight arriving in the Western Fires, the Dersites in the North started ramping up security. Yeah, they probably knew that I'd be able to rally the Western and Desert Fires. They knew it wouldn't be easy, but I'd still be able to do it. But the Northern Fires was by far the largest tribe—perhaps as populous as the other two tribes combined, maybe even more so. If I was unable to get the Northerners onboard with the inevitable attack on Hyperion and company, failure was certain.
It was a good thing the Sand Dwellers had been helping the Northerners prepare for this for a long time. A tribe as large as the North would have taken ages to spark off a fully-fledged rebellion.
The sentries on the walls were constantly moving along the ramparts, keeping watch over the city on the inside just as much as the darkness on the outside. Darkness would not be too much of an obstacle to them. They were Dersites—they lived in the silence and darkness that existed beyond the Veil, at the very edge of the incipisphere.
And so, we were quiet as spirits as we crept closer and closer to the walls, not even daring to breathe too loudly lest we alert the vigilant carapacians. It was almost uneventful, when we finally reached the wall. Everything was going smoothly—no one was making too much noise, none of the sentries had noticed us… We were in the green.
I levitated myself with the Force Aspect while the cobras scaled the walls. I had gotten much better with it lately—I was no longer wobbling and flailing all over the place like I used to. It's pretty damn hard to levitate yourself; it's very much a matter of balance. Get too distracted, and you might end up veering off to the left all of a sudden. You had to practice and practice until it just became second nature.
Well, I wasn't quite there, yet, but I was making progress. I was at the point where I could start discovering on my own new ways to effectively utilize my Aspect, without Scales's help. But Scales was still able to best me most of the time when we sparred, so don't think I'm saying that he's become obsolete as a trainer, or anything. I still needed him.
There were many crevices, cracks, and other similar spaces on the wall which the cobras could use their Vis to help them climb. I think the Dersites believed that the consorts' Vis was used exclusively as a weapon, or a means of holding objects. They really didn't have any idea of the vast array of different ways in which the Force Aspect could truly be used.
And the consorts obviously had never educated them. Why share your secrets to your oppressors when they do not even know that they exist?
When we made it up to the ramparts, we waited silently just below the edge, waiting for a sentry to walk past. I offered to warn the others when the next sentry would pass us by, but I was rebuffed. Inuyyak would handle it.
Within fifteen seconds, we could all hear the light footfalls of an approaching sentry. I fought the urge to glance around the parapet to see when the sentry would be overhead, forcing myself to remain calm and trust in my consorts' instincts.
Inuyyak remained coiled under the parapet, still as the rock on which he clung to. Then, at some critical moment that would have passed me by had I been the one waiting for it, the burly violet-scaled cobra struck, rearing back his head, baring his fangs. His head snapped forward out of view, and I could hear a sickening crunch…but that was all. The cobra then slithered the rest of the way up the wall, vanishing from view.
Taking their oversized companion's cue, Scales and Aiyana both started to climb over the edge of the parapet and onto the battlements. I raised myself up onto the battlements as well. The unfortunate Dersite sentry was lying limp on the ground, her neck bent at an impossible angle between Inuyyak's jaws.
I didn't even bother set myself down on the wall—I just drifted up and over the battlements, lowering myself down to the ground on the other side. The consorts were hot on my heels, Inuyyak carrying the sentry's corpse on his back. There was an empty band of space separating the walls from the city within. Within this space were a few Dersite camps for the sentries, but we merely snuck in between two such camps, vanishing into the conglomeration of stone and wooden buildings that formed this village-like city.
The High Council Fire…well, it was a very strange-looking place. Almost like an oversized Native American village that tried to convert itself into a European town, but kind of ended up somewhere halfway in between. There were no streets, or any kind of stone on the ground, or anything—the few paths that existed were all dirt. And unlike Aztlán, where all of the homes and structures were made of stone, these dwellings were a mixture of stone and wood, more closely resembling the wigwams of the Northeastern Native Americans in shape and architecture. Many of them even had several floors.
All of the dwellings had lamps of some sort that illuminated their entrances. Oil derived from animal fat, maybe? Don't think I mean glass oil lamps, or anything—my consorts weren't quite so modern. These lamps were much cruder, made of some sort of clay, but no less effective for it. These were the lights we had seen from the slopes of Mount Lonesome.
I couldn't really get much more of a feel for the city in the dark, though. I had no idea what its inhabitants were like, or what their everyday lives entailed. That, I suppose, would have to wait until tomorrow.
I'm not sure if Aiyana had ever been to the High Council Fire before, but Inuyyak definitely had, and he knew where to take us. Maybe that was the real reason Tlanextic and K'eyush had sent the violet-scaled consort with Aiyana, rather than simply sending him as brawn. At some point along the way, the violet-scaled consort found a dark, secluded place to dump the Dersite sentry's body where no one would find it for a while. Then we continued on. There was a larger structure towards the center of the city, too big to be a house. It took us nearly twenty minutes to reach it, such was the size of the High Council Fire.
Inuyyak instructed us to wait in the shadows while he slithered up to the door and knocked on it with his Vis. He knocked quietly—loud enough for someone inside to hear, but not so loud as to attract unwanted attention from the neighbors. I wasn't sure if Dersites patrolled the city itself, but it would be safe to assume that they did. After a minute, the door was cracked open, and I could hear Inuyyak having a hushed conversation with whoever was on the other side of the door.
Whoever lived within the large building obviously didn't seem too pleased by our presence, but Inuyyak was able to win them over, because he waved with the tip of his tail for us to come. I was the last one inside.
There were crude wooden tables set up all over the interior, with what almost resembled a bar counter lining one of the walls, and a ramp in one corner that led up to the higher floors. I think this place was the closest thing the High Council Fire had to a tavern. A grayish blue-scaled consort—middle-aged, neck hoods that were less angular than those of the Treefolk—greeted us after closing the door.
"I am Tanaraq of Clan Inokksuk, and thiss iss my esstablishment," the bluish-scaled consort introduced himself. "Show yoursselvess to the bassement—Inuyyak knowss the way. If there iss anything you need, do not hessitate to assk. I will ssummon you when the Faithful hass arrived."
And with that, Inuyyak led us over to the ramp leading upstairs. Rather than going up the ramp, however, he went around to the side and tapped a knot in the wood, causing a small doorway to slowly swing open. It was like a little closet under the stairs, stocked with foodstuffs and some kind of alcohol. Inuyyak pushed aside a stack of supplies and lifted up a small section of the floor—I wouldn't have been able to tell it was a trapdoor just by looking at it—beckoning us to climb inside.
And so we went, one by one, Inuyyak bringing up the rear, down into the basement. Down here, there were a whole lot more stacks of supplies. This tavern must get busy during the day. "Who all stays here?" I asked Inuyyak.
The violet-scaled consort gave a contemptuous huff. "Dark Oness, mosst of the time, when they do not wish to ssleep in their campss. I believe they are forbidden to do sso by their ssuperiorss, but there iss much that the eyess of their fort do not ssee."
I blinked. "Dersites stay here? Are you kidding me?"
"If Tanaraq denied them, he would be killed." Inuyyak shrugged. "And bessidess, a tavern full of Dersites iss the lasst place they would expect a resisstance meeting to take place. I doubt they even know of thiss bassement'ss exisstence."
"So no one thinks the tavern keeper is a collaborator, then?" I asked. I could think of many examples throughout history where people who accommodated the enemy were considered scum by their neighbors. Good thing my consorts obviously weren't humans…
"We have accommodated and ssubmitted to the Dark Oness' rule ssince the defeat of the Bear," Aiyana replied. "Doing thiss for the passt few centuriess—and not consstantly rebelling as the Desert Fires did—hass lulled the Dark Oness into a falsse ssensse of ssecurity. They have grown lax. The Northern Fires are a ssleeping beasst, waiting to be awakened. And when we are awakened, nothing will ssave these Dark Oness from our fury."
"Well, alrighty then!" I nodded, a faint smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. "Glad to finally wake you guys up."
We ended up waiting less than an hour before Tanaraq came to retrieve us. That was mildly surprising—I hadn't been expecting anything to happen until morning. I was glad the Northerners acted fast. I don't think it was even midnight, yet. Then again, I haven't actually known what time it was since…well, since before all this started. You know, that one time when humanity wasn't extinct?
I was also expecting business to be conducted in the basement, but I was surprised again when Tanaraq told us to come upstairs.
"My tenantss have been drugged in their ssleep," the bluish-scaled consort explained as we ascended. "Nothing will be waking them tonight."
I was the last one out. I sealed the floor hatch and closed the closet door, turning around to face a tavern full of consorts. Around twenty, twenty-two, twenty-three; somewhere along those lines. A couple of them had scales that were beginning to gray, and the rest were all various cool colors. There were brown-scaled consorts present, blue-scaled, purple-scaled, and even a dark green-scaled cobra.
But there was one consort who stood out from all the rest. His scales, too, were beginning to gray—the sign of advanced age—but they were still a vibrant lime green. He also had wider neck hoods, and his eyes were a bit more slanted and almond-shaped than everyone else's. Lime Scales was a Sand Dweller, no question about it. Which would then make him…
"Hello again, Inuyyak. It hass been ssome time ssince your lasst visit. How iss Tlanextic these dayss?" Lime Scales asked.
"Fine," the violet-scaled consort rumbled, clearly not in the mood for a conversation.
"I ssee your converssational sskillss haven't improved any over the yearss," Lime Scales remarked. He then turned to the rest of us. "My name iss Achcauhtli of Clan Tlaxata, and I am the Faithful of the High Council Fire. My friend Tanaraq, here, roused me from my ssleep with ssome rather compelling taless. I would ssee them proven true."
"Yess, I do not fancy being pulled away from my resst in the middle of the night, Achcauhtli," one of the other gathered consorts, an indigo-scaled specimen, grumbled. "The Underground had better have good reasson for thiss."
"Be ssilent, Unalaq," a navy blue-scaled cobra spoke up. I could see the consort actually roll its eyes—though I'd seen Glimmering Scales repeat the same action time after time, it still kind of looked weird to see a cobra doing such a…such a…a human gesture. Navy Scales went on. "The Underground would never gather all the clan chiefss unless…" He turned his gaze to me, his pupils narrowing to slits. "Could the rumorss be true…?"
Murmuring arose amongst all the gathered consorts…the chiefs of the twenty clans of the Northern Fires, unless Navy Scales was lying. Which I'm fairly sure he was not.
"Enough!" the dark green-scaled consort raised his voice above all the others, ushering in a new silence. "Allow the sstrangerss to introduce themsselvess, then we may proceed."
Achcauhtli the Faithful, who'd been quietly watching the clan chiefs bicker amongst themselves with some small amount of amusement, cleared his throat and took the floor once again. "Yess, cusstomss musst be followed. Name yoursselvess."
Aiyana slithered forward, fully aware that the eyes of all twenty clan chiefs were fixated on her. If she felt any pressure, though, she didn't show it. "I am Aiyana of Clan Unagwe. Thiss iss Inuyyak, alsso of Clan Unagwe, whom I believe you have already met…" The brown-scaled female introduced Scales next, and there were murmurings of surprise at the presence of a Treefolk, who were known for rarely leaving their forests. And when it was my turn to be introduced, Aiyana looked unsure of what to say. After a second or two, though, she made up her mind, and turned back to the Faithful. "I wass named an Acolyte by Tlanextic. I bear the Words."
That really got Achcauhtli's attention. The lime-scaled Faithful leaned forward, his tongue darting in and out, unconsciously tasting the air. "You have the Words, you ssaid?" he asked. I don't know, there'd been something off-putting about him to begin with. An odd sense of humor, maybe; I just didn't like how jovial he sounded. But now, all trace of that was gone. The Faithful grew very solemn. "You should have told me that to begin with, and we may have dispensed with all these unnecessary formalities. Come, child, let me hear the Words…"
Aiyana slithered forward once more, approaching the Faithful. She dipped her head and leaned forward, whispering something that only Achcauhtli could hear. When she was done, the Faithful could not help but widen his neck hoods in surprise. Maybe a lot of evidence pointed to me being the Knight, but considering how I was a figure of mythology to these people… I could understand their inherent skepticism.
I decided to try my best to give that skepticism a swift kick in the derriere out the window. I stepped forward and raised one of my hands, palm-up. I focused on my Aspect and conjured a modest flame. Once I had the fire in my 'grasp', I started weaving it in and out of my fingers, almost like I was rolling a quarter between my knuckles.
"Hey, guys, uh…" I cleared my throat, squeezing my fist around the flame and extinguishing it. "I'm the Knight. Yes, the Knight… Uh, you've probably all heard of me, and I just wanted to-"
"That iss prepossterouss!" Unalaq exclaimed. "How could that creature be the Knight? Jusst because he can perform fancy trickss with fire doess not mean that-"
It was my turn to interrupt him, now. While he spoke, I used my Aspect to pull the cushion that the indigo-scaled clan chief was sitting on out from under him, sending him sprawling onto the floor. Many of the other clan chiefs broke out into laughter—it was fairly obvious that Ultralack, or whatever his weird Northerner name was, was not very popular.
"Can cheap fire tricks do that?" I raised an eyebrow as Unalaq angrily regained his balance. "No, they can't. But a Vis can. And I'll also have you know that I've already had to go to great lengths to prove myself to the other two tribes; I'm really not in the mood for this, right now."
This time, the Faithful was the one who called for silence. When the room quieted down once more, he continued to speak. "The Words have been given. Thiss alsso coincidess with a message I recently received from Aztlán, sspeaking of the Knight'ss coming to my own peopless. His identity wass confirmed by Matlal, He Who Sees All."
Even though Matlal was a Sand Dweller shaman, he really must be pretty well-known even in the North, because his name had an effect on many of the gathered clan chiefs. Unsurprisingly, though, Unalaq seemed unconvinced. "Forgive my lingering sskepticissm," he apologized without sounding very apologetic, "but I fail to ssee how a few whisspered wordss and the ramblingss of an old Sand Dweller priesst can consstitute proof that thiss creature iss in fact the Knight. I do not believe it."
Scales started forward, baring his fangs in anger. Oh boy, now that clan chief's really done it…
"Lissten to me, you old fool," Scales snarled. "I doubt you'd recognize a good opportunity to tear down Hyperion even if it whipped you across that morass you call a face-"
"Scales, dial it down a bit," I started to say, but Scales silenced me with one of his death glares.
"No, I will not 'dial it down', whatever that meanss," Scales shot back. "I will not sstand idly by while that fool inssultss you!"
"What our friend the Treefolk iss trying to ssay iss that, ultimately, it doess not matter if our friend here iss the Knight or not, though all evidence points to the affirmative," Aiyana stepped in before Scales could really tear the indigo-scaled douche chieftain an asshole. Too bad, if you asked me; Scales losing his shit was always a sight to see, especially if the recipient of his wrath was someone other than you. "What doess matter iss the fact that he hass managed to rally the other two tribess to march on the Denizen. Ssuch unity hass not exissted ssince the time of the Old One, and we would be remiss to allow it to pass uss by."
Sure, she was simply reiterating what K'eyush and Tlanextic had said to us, but that didn't make it any less true. It was too bad that the wisdom of the Unagwe elder and Faithful was not present in all the clan chiefs. Achcauhtli, at least, was on our side, and seeing as how he commanded the Underground, that was what counted. I got the feeling that the clan chiefs…while it would be untrue to say that they were unimportant, I think they seemed to serve as more figureheads than anything else. Almost like a puppet government—they were allowed to continue existing, but they had little real power with the Dersites looming behind them.
These clan chiefs certainly did not command the same respect as the clan chiefs of the Treefolk or the Sand Dwellers. But it was not really their fault; I could only imagine what a wound to their pride it must have been to spend their lives in submission to the Dersites, waiting for the arrival of the Knight and forcing themselves to remain complacent until that finally happened.
Well, now it happened, and with the exception of Unalaq, the rest of the clan chiefs seemed eager to start the long-awaited revolution. When Aiyana finished speaking, many of them rose to get a better look at me, all of them murmuring amongst themselves.
The dark green-scaled clan chief, who seemed to command the most authority in the room other than the Faithful, scrutinized me with a steely gray-eyed gaze. "Eyess of red…" he murmured. "He Who Walkss Tall… Jusst like the Old One, according to the Firsst Sstoriess. She did not share our appearance. Why should the Knight?"
The whole meeting had taken less than fifteen minutes. After that, the clan chiefs all showed themselves out of the tavern. Tanaraq went outside as well, for a moment—I watched as he snuffed out the flame in the lamp hanging above the entrance. "It iss happening," he said excitedly to us as he slipped back inside. "Thiss very night, it iss happening."
"He mean the revolution?" I asked Aiyana after a few moments of silence.
The brown-scaled female nodded. "The chiefss are going to sspread the word to the ssenior warriorss, and they will in turn rouse everyone elsse." I then asked about the lamp, prompting Aiyana to go on. "It iss cusstom to have a lamp shining over the entrance to every home. That way, one musst alwayss pass through light to enter, and therefore leave any malevolent shadowss behind. But for centuriess, we have awaited the return of the Knight. And on the eave before the inevitable revolution, it wass decreed that every lamp should be extinguished. Messenger cardinalss have likely already been disspatched to all of our citiess…tonight will be a very dark night indeed, all across the North."
"How can you guys mobilize so fast?"
Aiyana fixed me with a benign stare and suggested I ask her that again in half an hour. And so I waited patiently. Tanaraq vanished upstairs, not returning until twenty minutes later. I noticed a small knife floating next to the tavern keeper, held in his Vis. It was stained red with blood.
I already had a good idea of what the tavern keeper had been doing…but I asked anyway. Tanaraq blinked several times, informing me quite offhandedly that he no longer had any Dersite tenants. Any living ones, that is. Damn…
A little bit after that, I made good on Aiyana's suggestion and asked her again how the Northern Fires could possibly mobilize so fast. The brown-scaled female had been sharpening her sword when I reminded her, so she quickly finished up and sheathed it. "Come with me," she gestured for me to follow as she started heading up the ramp leading to the upper floors.
The tavern was four stories tall, one of the tallest dwellings in the entire city, and the ramp ran straight up to the highest floor. I noticed all the rooms on the floors that we passed, but I tried not to think about what was inside most of them. Aiyana led me over to one of the windows and slithered outside, making her way up onto the roof.
I decided not to say anything and just go with it. I climbed out the window and used my Aspect to levitate myself up onto the roof as well, standing next to Aiyana as she showed me all the city around us.
"How can we move sso fasst, you assk? We have been waiting to desstroy Hyperion'ss dogss for hundredss of yearss, consstantly planning for thiss day. You could ssay we're ssomewhat prepared." The brown-scaled female gave a quiet, dark chuckle. "Now you will ssee how Northernerss ansswer the call to war."
It had only been half an hour since the clan chiefs left, and every single lamp in the city had been extinguished. The walls still bore their torches, but within… The High Council Fire had gone dark.
There was a clap of thunder in the distance, and the rain started to intensify.
Looks like the Northern Fires were ready to rock.
I awoke, as I've awoken many times before, to the sight of a ceiling of green stones. I rolled over in bed, looking out the open window on my bedside. I could see the marble white buildings of the White Keep down below, the rolling black and white grasslands beyond the walls, the mountains in near distance with the river flowing down from them, the rocky knoll in front of the mountains that the river flowed around…
Yep, I was back in my dream turret.
And on my computer screen…another post-it note, right next to the one Theo had left me. I pushed back the blanket and floated out of bed, over to the computer, peered closely at the post-it note. The handwriting scrawled upon it was legible, but barely so.
GREETINGS, KNIGHT
COME TO MY THRONE LIBRARY WHEN YOU WAKE UP
THIS IS QUITE URGENT, SO DO HURRY IF YOU CAN
-WK
So Theo must have introduced the White King to post-it notes. That was…that was just priceless.
Not wasting any time, I climbed out the window and rode the breeze down to the entrance of the citadel. I traded nods with the Royal Guards out front—they let me inside without questioning me, at this point. I walked fast; down the grand hallway, through the oaken double doors, and into the White King's library. The Prospitian monarch was sitting at his desk, massaging his temples as he studied a set of maps, a Marlboro Red hanging lazily from the corner of his mouth. He looked like five different kinds of exhausted, and then another eight kinds of worn out on top of that.
The King looked up from his desk when he saw me coming and was quick to put on a smile, removing his half-moon spectacles. "Ah, good to have you back, Knight," he grinned wanly.
"You look like shit." Hey, I called it like I saw it.
"Yes, I confess I have seen less bleak years than these," the White King chuckled, taking my comment in stride. He rose to his feet and walked out from behind his desk, taking a long drag off his cigarette. "The loss of the Airfield is certainly taking its toll... But enough on that, and on to more important matters. I have a simple request for you. Radio signals are going a bit crazy, and I have thus far been unable to contact the Thane, so I need you to carry a message for me."
I arched an eyebrow. "That it? Just a message? Nothing insane?"
"I want you to tell the Thane to begin marching the Browncoats to the west, not the north. Their new orders are to join the Alabaster Rifles at Fort Terminus. I am sending them through the Badlands," the White King explained, taking the cigarette out of his mouth. "You are going to accompany them, Knight. You will help them take the Black Keep."