Goan savored the flavor of the food well after it was consumed. But despite his enjoyment, his face was a mask of dancing shadows from the firelight. Nemu and Kuuderika had fallen asleep a few feet away from him. He glanced to where Nemu lay, snoring lightly and moving a bit, it was enough to make him smirk, the way she lay sprawled out and scratching her exposed midriff. Kuuderika by contrast, lay curled up in a fetal position. From where he sat, poking idly at the remains of the fire, he could see their expressions as they slept.
Decades together, and he still liked to watch them. His blank face, as empty of emotion as the skinless face of the god that blessed him before birth, was at ease. When the two giggled in their sleep, he smiled, when they flailed as old nightmares of old hardships reared their ugly heads in nightmare form, he whispered comforting words or held their hands. "Sisters." He snorted, 'Nobody gives me more shit than you two but… I can't imagine what life would be like if we hadn't grown up together. Enri would be proud of you both… how many years has she been gone now? Forty? Fifty? Hell, a hundred? It all runs together. How long has my own mother been dead?' He shook off the thought and jabbed his sword into the heart of the dying embers, shaking off the unpleasant line of thought.
He stood and stretched out with a mild groan of satisfaction. Taking the hilt of his sword in hand, he withdrew it, sending a few more sparks into the air and a brief flare of light into the dark before he walked the camp. Moving from the fire posed no problem for him. His eyes pierced the veil of shadow as easily as if the sun were still in the sky. He looked down below where the forest lay, waiting for the three of them to penetrate it's hidden and mysterious depths.
It was because he was where he was, that he saw the first great and unexpected oddity. He reached up with both hands and rubbed his eyes. 'Am I dreaming? Is my night vision not working? How can a forest… do that?' He thought with awe as the trees rose up, and began to move. Their roots moved like the legs of a spider, and only his life long training and raw courage kept him from immediately crying out in alarm and possibly drawing the attention from the now, more than mysterious woods. He narrowed his eyes and watched as they moved, their branches and leaves swayed back and forth, rustling like they were being blown by a steady wind. But their movement was deathly silent otherwise.
'What magic is this… what magic lives here…?' Goan wondered, and clenched his jaw, the trees creeped like they were trying to be stealthy, barely a hint of noise beyond the creaking and rustling of swaying branches, leaves, and trunks.
He slowly backed away, and went to wake his team mates. He laid a hand on each of their shoulders, and their eyes flew open, instantly wide awake and their hands darting out for staff and bow.
Goan crouched low, close to their faces and let out a low, "Shhhh." He used the sign language that Nemu taught him, his fingers and hands flying through his silent explanation. They looked at him with pursed lips, but slowly rose to follow him. Pride in his team rose up in his chest. There was no fear in them, not even a little. Almost as importantly, he could not hear a single sound. Noiseless as a corpse, they crept after him, remaining low against the ground until he led them to the hill and pointed out at the forest below.
Nemu and Kuuderika lay there on the grass on either side of him and stared. They stared for several minutes. They could feel the tension from the stoic man between them. Yet nothing happened. The forest sat as it had during the day. Finally Kuuderika used her message spell. 'Alright, what are we supposed to be seeing here?'
'The forest moved!' Goan replied urgently.
'Forests always move, wind, other animals, it's always shifting around…' Kuuderika replied somewhat uncertainly.
'No, I mean the forest 'walked' the trees got up and walked… it's not moving now, but… I swear to you. The trees lifted up by their roots, and walked.' Goan insisted fervently
'Well it isn't moving now.' Nemu interjected her own answer and popped up to her feet briskly. "I'm going back to bed. If I don't detect a threat out there, I doubt there's a threat to be had, at least not at this range. If there were, it seems to me the colonies would have drawn His Majesty's ire a long time before now."
Goan rubbed his temple, "Fine, but I swear the trees got up and walked."
He and Kuuderika slowly rose as well, Kuuderika's hand twisted the staff absently, "I'd suggest magic, maybe an illusion, but I don't detect anything, maybe you're just tired, maybe it was just an optical illusion, like that demon woman did with the mirror to make fake ghosts, but natural? Nobody has ventured much out this way in a generation or more, and I never heard any stories about walking woods."
"The locals have never much opened up to our people either, at least not most of them." Goan frowned, "I know what I saw, we've been together a long time, I know it sounds strange but… take my word for it." Goan's hand tensed around his sword ever so slightly, imperceptible in the darkness except for the slight sound of dragon skin leather tightening on the adamantite hilt.
"OK, fine, but it isn't moving now, we'll put up some extra barriers, and I'll go ahead and start my shift now, it starts in a few minutes anyway, you get some rest." Nemu looked up at her little brother and put her hand on his shoulder. "It's fine, I know you've been under some stress lately. Get some rest and let me take up the slack for now." She smiled warmly up at him, and Goan let out a breath he didn't know he held. His shoulders slumped and he made his way over to his spot at the fire.
"Thanks Nemu, you're the best." Goan replied and went to lie down.
A few feet away, Kuuderika snorted, "I'm right here, you know." She said as she expended mana on the slope facing the trees, putting up small barriers and extra alarms 'just in case'.
Goan managed a wink at her, and flopped himself on his back to doze off. 'Maybe I really am just tired… even my eyes can play tricks on me… but it seemed so real…?'
He was still thinking that when he dozed off.
When Goan was breathing rhythmically, Nemu began to walk the circle of their little camp around the top of the hill. Less because she needed to, and more out of boredom. Passing the time by pacing around. She glanced over to the small rock by the fire where he'd sat himself. She saw barely a footprint in the earth on the ground, whereas within minutes she'd laid hers all over the camp. It brought a smile of bemusement to her face. 'Good old Goan, steady, reliable, stable, strong. Probably has no idea I know he watches us at night like he's afraid we'll disappear. If we're together for another hundred years…' she stopped the thought, and reframed it, '...when we're together still a hundred years from now, will he still wear that mask and watch over us when we sleep? What a pleasant thought.' She turned her mind to his assertion about walking trees, and when she roamed past the forest side of the hill, she looked down the slope again.
She watched the forest, the branches swayed back and forth in the breeze, if not for her excellent ability to see in the dark, she was sure her hearing was all that would have told her it was there at all. The thick branches seemed to cling together like lovers in a tight embrace, only a single opening allowed passage within, and that one not much. Nemu thought that over. 'This, well maybe not a road, but a 'path' at least, must predate our coming to this continent. So why so small? Did very little trade take place here? Very odd. Perhaps the answers lie farther north?' She rolled her eyes at herself. "There you go overthinking things again. You're worse than Goan is." She forced herself to stop thinking and focused on just her slow walk around the top of the high hill, pausing occasionally to look down at the forest until it was time to wake Kuuderika.
The magic caster rose slowly and stretched out from her fetal position and looked up side-eyed at Nemu's face over her own. "I'd say 'good morning' sister, but we both know it's too early for that." She managed a slight grin on her face as she rolled onto her back and sat up slowly. She had slept clutching her staff against her body, and rested it on her shoulder as her arms stretched out left and right when she yawned.
"You're right, last shift at least, so it's only about three hours, and who knows? Maybe we'll find a village we can stay at later today, now up with you and down with me." Nemu replied and looked around, Goan was snoozing soundly, and a conspiratorial look came over Nemu's face. "You know, if auntie Lupu had heard that, she'd have deliberately taken it the wrong way.
Kuuderika covered her mouth to keep her titter quiet and got up to her feet as Nemu lay down a short distance away.
The magic caster was quick about her duties, she moved to the center of the hill and cast a fairly minor spell. [Bird's eye] She said as she tossed a small wooden bird up in front of her. The little wooden bird was painted with bright colors, giving it the appearance of the real thing and its wings even moved for added effect. She closed her eyes and let it float away from her, a marvel of magicine technology… and a prototype, her 'birds eye' spell acted on a tiny crystal holding a small amount of mana. The wings had crystals with a flow of mana that shifted a levitation spell's relative strength to simulate flapping, while also keeping the whole thing aloft, and it acted under her guidance. It floated away from her and began to spiral higher over the hill. With her mind synced up to it, she saw through the crystal as if it was her own view.
Within a minute or two, she was seeing everything around her in a panoramic view. She crossed her legs and began to sway lightly, holding her staff in relaxed hands over her lap, she watched over the pair.
'Family, my remaining family…' Kuuderika thought with a rare fierce sense of determination, and she felt a quickening of her pulse as she thought back to the lost. 'Sisters… wherever you are, whatever you're doing in the world beyond… I'm doing my best here, I couldn't help you then, couldn't protect you, now I hardly remember you. Arche, all I remember is the back of your head, and the ghost of an embrace, and that you loved us. Ukerika, I can only remember your last smile, and last grimace of pain before you fell. I don't know if you can hear this, if my thoughts or prayers can reach you, but if they can… I'm going to do what I couldn't do before, and protect the only family I've got left.'
Her prayer and thoughts cast off into the silent night, unspoken beyond her own mind, she gripped her staff all the more tightly and expanded her view more widely with her little scouting bird, until she felt a hand on her shoulder that could only have belonged to one man. It was powerful enough to crush the bones of the weak, yet rested on her with barely more than its own weight, enough to draw her mind back from her attention on her spell.
"Kuuderika, it's morning, you can stop…" Goan said with gentle concern, "It's time to go."
The sun moved slowly across the sky, it felt like it had moved halfway before the swaying of Kenmet's corpse stopped. The truth was, it had stopped its own momentum long before, just a stronger than average wind kept it swaying slightly. As if to make it more gruesome for the passersby, the sun beating down on the body cast a shadow on the ground below, a long one which stretched over the steps that led into the court, over which everyone had to pass.
Kenmet's defiant words spread like wildfire, and some of the Ongeku residents and workers stayed to watch and retell the story, expanding it with every retelling. "He was thrown into jail standing up for some of us, got into a fight and held off no fewer than ten death worshippers in a bar."
"Bah, it was fifty if it was ten. Shows what happens when you stand up for yourself. Death worshipper justice… they think they can just kill us and we'll submit… bastards. Land stealing bastards."
Such were the whispers of the crowd as Kenmet the day laborer became a legend. By the time the flies began to lay eggs in his eyes, buzzing around a corpse that was turning pale and white as the blood pooled closer to the feet, thousands of Ongeku heard the story of how a great warrior working as a day laborer fended off a hundred death worshippers after interrupting the sacrifice of an Ongeku girl. They knew all the details of the conspiracy to subject him to forced labor, and how he killed the abusive overseer… or so the story spread.
Jeaph sat at the table of the bar for hours after Kenmet fell to his death. One beer became two, became four, became eight. 'It's not your fault, all you did was start a fight with some loud mouthed Newcomers, you didn't know it would come to this.' He told himself over and over again. 'You didn't mean for this to happen… you didn't. Nobody can know...' His hazel eyes stared morosely into his beer, he'd lost track of how many times his mug had been refilled.
A buxom Ongeku waitress approached him, with a large pitcher. "Hey, weren't you here before…?"
Jeaph nodded morosely. "Me, Kenmet an the resht…" His words slurred a bit.
"Right… the fight… a shame he died…" She leaned over and began to refill his mug as soon as he downed the contents of his mug yet again.
"Itsalltheirfault!" Jeaph shouted loud enough for the entire bar to hear. 'It's not mine, it's theirs! Theirs!'
Heads turned and chatter stilled, "Damn deasth worshippersh! The damn death shlovers went an'killed him! They shtart a fight, they take our land, they takesh everything! Then they kill'im fer fighting back!" Jeaph slammed his mug down hard, for a moment oblivious to the stares.
...At least till drinks started coming his way and people were asking for stories about his deceased friend. "I tellshya he was the best! Damn death worshippers!" The beer flowed as he told the story and the crowd drew closer to him, tighter, pressing around him, he felt the waitress, sympathetically caress his arm… and a new element came to his story.
"Him an me, we used ta talk about fightin back, an I think they found'us out, they shet us up! Kilt him cause of it! He said'fore he died, found out they had plans to wipe's'all out, no Ongeku temples here, on our own land! Not one real place but a run down mockry! Now they hang Kenmet's corpsh up ta scare us! Ah aint scared!" He slammed his fist down hard enough to rattle the table, gathering cries of outrage began and someone shouted out…
"We can't let them take his body! We can't! No Ongeku bodies for the death lovers! I say we take him down and take him home!"
"Take him home! Take him home! Take him home!" The cry was taken up as the beer flowed freely, tongues wagged and talk escalated.
Jeaph continued to tell his stories until he himself had lost all track of the truth, and complaints continued to escalate with tempers and intoxication.
"So… you really were fighting back, and you really want to fight back some more?" Jeaph heard the voice, but didn't see the source until a thickly muscled man sat at the table with him.
Jeaph bought himself time by plucking out a few splinters from the hand that smacked the table surface earlier and flicked them away while his mind raced… drunkenly, to an answer. With the liquid courage still coursing through him, he bobbed his head slightly.
"Yeah.." Jeaph managed to mutter after a hard swallow and a morose look down into his mug.
"Alright, order coffee next, and nothing but… me an a few more… we're going to get your friend's body back… maybe they can take our lives… but better that, than to make us slaves…" The beefy man groused past lips that centered above a large, squared jaw. Heavy muscles were barely contained by a tight, roughspun green shirt, his dark hair hung down and covered him to the base of his neck. His hazel eyes burned with fury so great that when he extended his hand to Jeaph, even drunk, Jeaph could feel the shaking in the man's fingers when their hands clasped.
"Name is Ormand. Now sober up as fast as you can, we've got a few hours till the deepest dark… then we go." Ormand added, and all Jeaph could do was continue to bob his head up and down and wonder…
'What did I just get myself into…?'