Trigger Warning: The following chapter contains strong content of which involves: slavery, labor camps, death, topics of resurrection; and may be uncomfortable for some readers.
Part II:
T'URIEO
continued
There is one thing to the loss of a child—even one's nonbiological child…but that she loves as if this child is her own—that can unlock a mind…Her heart still provides blood and oxygen to her brain, her body's organs despite her state of numbness…Her systems continue to function without her control over these…Braith—as she travels in the days before they reach the mines at the border of Rakka—operates with vestigial twitches from what remain of her instructions by Cemal, a combination of instincts, muscle memories…Her soul takes over rational thought, as biotic energies begin to seep through fractures in her partition, so well-construct. It is the soul that makes such energy—which guide the heart to pump, ovum to form into Human, or Drellahna, from the same design, the same start, but different purposes…and that may lift, heat, freeze, crush, or reform stone. Cape over her head, furs on her form, bow in hand and swords across her back with a case of bolts, Braith walks and kills—like the beasts themselves. At night, when the group rests, she does not. Braith squats a sentry for them, her shape a monster that waits.
She is silent and does not speak, similar to those days she first joins the Behedins. The borderlands are home to her but this new world—after the loss of Little Behe—makes her a stranger. At a distance from her group of Sereptas and burrells—Cemal and his Morthwyls. One night Cemal approaches her among the group of travelers. Braith raises a hand in a glove to stay the burrells, awake and who notice him close to her as she sits guard over Sereptas asleep.
They hold their weapons ready, but do not attack due to her warning…The morthwyl comes to stand above her, while she sits and gradually Braith rises from her squat by the fire, features under cover of black armor and furs. He sees her anguish despite the mask of bone she wears to hide her face from those who might try to see her Humanness.
He holds out his hand, in which he bears a small black dagger that belongs to Little Behe. Braith recognizes it through the slits in her mask…A part of her mind awakens.
Her hand reaches out from her furs to take it from him as he offers it.
The small black dagger disappears. ( "Thank you," ) her voice slips out, and that is the first others hear her speak.
Cemal's eyes glow wider as he signs to her. She sits, unable to understand. He eventually resigns from his efforts to communicate to her and departs. As she sits she feels the pressure of the dagger against her back, where it hides in her belt.
She allows it to rub against her, no bother by its feel…only memories of the child.
One of the burrells approaches. She feels his presence. He sits down on the ground across from her.
He regards the mask of black ivory with gold and blue eyes of his, ( "…You are the Behedin who leads the morthwyls," ) he looks behind him for Cemal, sees nothing but night, ( "…No wonder they have not attacked, but follow…" ) He offers her something from his waist, ( "….Teresha?" )
As he offers her a bedi—the burrells make these themselves, while they rest—Braith remembers a time in which she and Casnar first meet outside Nurinata Museum of Technology. She extends her hand to the burrell's offer and takes the bedi—as she lifts the ebony mask off her face. The faint outline of a chin and lips she coats in ash, black paint for the journey to the mines, reveals. The burrell's eyes seek these hints of her features by the glow of the fire nearby. Her glove's fingers hold the roll of leaf as the bedi burns in the flames of the fire to light. ( "Thank you for watching over us…If you need anything," ) and he makes a gesture to himself, ( "…do ask." ) Braith draws on the bedi, and he sees the end glow bright red. She makes no release of the smoke as she sits in her black armor, wild furs, hood, and mask over the rest of her face. Under the cover of ivory, her eyes close, as she listens to the night around them, senses the interest of the male in front of her, feels the sweet stimulant in chemical of the teresha leaf…She does not reply to his invitation. She bends her neck and angles her face down. The bedi goes under the hood. The burrell stands and looks down at her in hood and fur. She does not want company.
And so he leaves her alone to smoke. Braith flicks the bedi into the fire as he steps away, his back to her, and a thin stream of smoke blows out from between her ashen lips. The mask comes down over her face to hide her once again. Blue tendrils of light like the roots of a flower, crawl outwards—only to draw back in quickly under the bottom edge of her mask.
Dawn sees them up on their way, and they arrive at the mines of the Bentara-Caratoda house-clan near the borders of Rakka within three hours of travel by foot. It is a terrible place.
The smell of sulfur and toxic chemical in the air.
Braith accompanies the group to checkin at some makeshift shelter that hosts a registration of sorts.
She goes towards the front of the group, passes the burrells of hers, and the administrator—a poin, with burrells inside the shelter, its roof loose of boards and dusty, walls agape with the neediness for cares and repairs—looks up at her hulk as she looms closer. Braith lifts her mask enough to speak clearly, ( "…Mia'tonia Termon-Diascha. Is she here." ) The burrells watch the form of her outfit with some caution—and wonder—in their manner, as they wait for the poin to look up the name in his registrar of parchments and leather-bound covers.
He peers upwards, into the darkness of her hood's interior, at the black mask above her strange mouth with its dark ash color, ( "…Mia'tonia Termon-Diascha…succumbed to infection from the mines. She is buried with others—who died from it as well…Who are you, may I ask? You wear the armor of Aspah's Behedin," ) he answers—as the other burrells look from Braith's figure to the poin and back. She says nothing. She only straightens in her armor and furs. Her weapons make the sounds that draw eyes to where she holds and bears these on her shoulders and back.
( "Tell me of the infection." )
The poin stands from his stool and shifts through two pages' worth of names.
( "It is poison, from underground. There are bad veins of gas—these come from some of the ores we seek. It is an infection because it affects the miners slowly and kills them…One such bad vein was opened. To preserve the rest of the tunnel's Sereptas, we shut off the ventilation shafts with waste, and filled the access tunnel before the gas could reach any higher levels." )
( "You buried them—alive," ) Braith says—her voice low and vehement, ( "…How many…How many did you bury…" )
( "Sixty-two…We saved hundreds more—" )
( "Do you have no means of anticipating where these bad veins are before they are struck open," ) and the poin points to his eyes.
( "The way to know if it is near is when the eyes start to water, and the nose starts to run. By that time—Drell or Drellahna—you are poisoned, and can only shout to save others." )
Her voice remains a hiss, ( "…Where did you seal the bodies…" )
( "What does it matter to you?…The bodies rest—" ) The poin suddenly shuts his mouth as the black dagger from her person lands in his book's pages.
Braith wrenches it back, and it disappears into her furs. ( "You will tell me where," ) she turns and walks towards the portal entrance to the mine that is left of the poin's shelter by a hundred yards…The poin gets himself together, strides after her dark form against the gray landscape: of mine portals, headmines, adit entrances, machines, skips and barrels.
( "We cannot re-open that tunnel!—You cannot threaten me to make the Sereptas pull out the fill…Who do you think you are!—Wait, the mine is sealed!…" ) Braith ignores him as she asks several Sereptas, and burrells, where the recent seal-in exists.
One Serepta points the way to the second portal, east of the first she initially intends to enter.
( "Don't say anything to her!—" ) The burrell grabs the Serepta and throws him down at his boots, and the Serepta fends his face with a forearm as Braith turns to see, ( "—Eight lashes for you, you stupid—" )
The poin staggers back as a nip of pain comes from his chin…His glove pulls away to show blood on his palm and he looks at the black tip of a blade that stands out from Braith's glove.
( "Threaten anyone for helping me locate the dead," ) her blade holds steady at his eyes, ( "…I will run this through your mouth and out the back of your head..." )
Braith leaves.
The burrell from her group, back by the shelter for their registration, who gives her a bedi at night—approaches the poin with some comrades. ( "That is Aspah's Human Behedin. She controls Morthwyls so do not anger her…A knick on your face will be the least of your worries." )
( "She threatened to run me through with that sword of hers," ) the poin stares at the burrell then after Braith—as her figure lurks down the road of ground rock towards the east portal, ( "…She controls Morthwyls?…Surely she cannot speak with them if she is Human!…A human?…" )
The burrell looks after the shadow that moves farther away, ( "…The morthwyls listen to her, and they communicate to her in Silent Tongue. She ignores them…I doubt she understands…One came to her last night—to give her a dagger…I could hear what the morthwyl sang, '…The child lives'…Whatever that means…She did not seem to care." )
He shrugs with a scrape of greaves on his shoulders, and turns to head to the Sereptas they bring, and enter them within the poin's records…
Her hulk makes its way down the slow decline of the shaft, and she passes the sounds of coughs, tools that chip away at stone…Sereptas mindlessly at work on their maintenance of the mine, and its supports, look to her odd appearance, her weapons…Some shrink away and find nowhere to go for the walls of rock around them…Braith stops a Serepta—at work on the load-up of a bin with small green stones of a metallic mineral.
He lowers his bin and pickaxe to stare at her mask under the hood.
( "Where is the sealed access tunnel, the one they buried the infected inside…There is one such tunnel in this mine…" )
( "Kala, that place is no good," ) he says—and at the steadfast gaze of eyes, through the mask's slits, he goes on and wills her to leave, ( "…Follow the tunnel down two levels, and at the hoists are two branches…Take the left. The dead rest at the end of it." ) Braith leaves with his stare at her back, and between others who step from their positions with their picks and bins to watch her continue downwards.
Braith follows the tunnel as it switches under itself in zags, and at each corner is a level she bypasses—until she reaches the hoists, which carry materials up from somewhere below by a vertical shaft...She takes the left branch from the split of tunnels behind these machines…The temperature is warmer, the smells stronger, and she meets dirty unhappy faces—hard at work—wherever she looks. The lights are dim, if any exist at all.
Some tunnels echo with workers who labor in utter darkness.
Adits open into the tunnels to allow in fresh air, but fresh air is nonexistent and the openings serve more for the release of underground fumes.
Braith recognizes no one…They all see her and fear is in their expressions on their grubby pataks, their dull eyes…
She asks another Serepta for direction to the dead shaft and he points her down the tunnel, jerks his fingers left, before he hastens to step back from her as she turns to find the destination ahead…
When she finds the seal of the access tunnel to the rest of the mine she stands quietly before it and looks up at the rubble—that fills to the ceiling…Mia'tonia is on the other side, possibly dead…possibly still alive…
The tunnel spans fifteen meters across, from one wall to the other—The fill fits all of it…There is no way for anyone to enter, neither anything to escape.
Braith removes her hood, and then her mask, which falls to the floor of the tunnel.
The Sereptas at the opposite end from her neck of tunnel look at one and other, when they see her black hair braids and the pale lines of skin that make her scalp.
Braith's face has streaks of black paint and ash…Around her eyes, the makeup runs from tears she continuously cries throughout the journey to the mines…
She pushes back the bow on her shoulder—and reaches for the first rock. One of the Sereptas is bold enough to speak to her—from twenty meters away: ( "Leave the seal…There is bad air beyond. Leave it alone, or you may kill us all with the bad air." )
One stone tumbles down to the floor of the tunnel…then another rolls down—with heavy clops of rock on rock before it comes to a rest among others from the drop of ceiling above the seal-in…The Sereptas that do not stay to watch—run to warn the burrells.
The burrells enter the mine…and find her where these same Sereptas lead them to…
As Braith removes another boulder, the poin takes out his caton claws.
( "Behedin, Human, or madness that controls Morthwyls—You will desist from removing more fill from that entrance…Do you understand me," ) he cracks the caton's claws, which clack together with such force it sounds like a gunshot…Braith pauses from her work to look at him from the wall she attempts to open. ( "I will not let your status prevent me from persuading you with pain…if I have to," ) he adds grudgingly.
Braith does something she has not—since her days of war against Reapers.
She accesses the biotic fabric, that clings and meshes throughout her mind and body, that pulses her blood, moves synapses from neuron to neuron…
Her arms rise to the sides of her as she turns from the poin, and his burrells, to face the seal again...
Tendrils of blue roots lividly spread from her body...
Her eyes begin to shine with the smokey essence of biotic energy—in its final release from the partition…its tatters…that once hold it inside—and restrain it...
( "Clear the mine…If you wish to not be infected, I am unsealing this area…I have come for Mia'tonia Termon-Diascha…and I will leave—when I have found her body…" ) Her voice resonates with an unearthly quality and echoes through rock walls.
It frightens all who have not seen biotic power, such as what exists within Braith Shepard at that moment…
The seal begins to shift and crumble...
The tunnel rumbles and shivers with the power that now pours forth from Braith—without mitigation…
…Or control...
The burrells and poin back up hastily—Arcs of biotic energy flick and weave out at them with malice, ( "…Kala!—" ) the poin cries out as he steps backwards from the burn that results from a thread of violent power—which strikes through the very floor of the tunnel and leaves a fissure of space between where his boots once imprint the ground dust, ( "…She is I'lorie—A human I'lorie! Run!—" )
( "—She is going to open the seal!—The poison—The poison will be—" ) another burrell starts to warn as the tunnel fractures over the walls, and bends the supports, fills with the ripple layers of liquid lightning—The fill of the seal starts to lift and spiral away from the entrance to the end of the mine…
( "—Never mind the poison!—She will be buried—with the rest of them! Move!—Run!—" )
The poin pushes his burrells up the tunnel—away from the chaotic mêlée Braith has in motion around her form…a near-shadow, inside a blue haze of biotic flames that tear recklessly at the walls, bite tempestuously and snatch at the fill, ferociously rips through the solid rock floor and pulls down a ceiling full of meters' worth of stone above their heads…
( "—Get out!—Before she brings it down!—" )
The tunnel moans—It roars with its resculpture…and destruction…as Sereptas run ahead of the poin, his burrells, to flee the mine—and escape the inevitable collapse…
They leave Braith behind them all...Braith, who is not in control of the energy that tumults around her.
The access tunnel molds anew...
A cyst of broken granules of stone, ores—that swells, ebbs, crumbles and begins to cyclone in a chaos of lightning, blue flames, the faint smell of ozone, the freedom of gases—once behind the fill that tumbles and now twists violently about the woman in the midst of it all…
Bodies of dead pull into the abscess of power—and churn into liquid—as the calamity absorbs everything with its sheer spin and destructive temper...
Her eyes see nothing but light and her body wavers in the heat of her power like silhouettes among heat waves above the desert Mier's sands.
The energy coalesces between her ears…And explodes outwards—
—Free!—
The rakhan scatters around her…
Her ears hear silence like in the river Kir when she drowns…The faint thrum is far—yet close at the same time…
It is not Braith anymore—that moves the remains of solid rock as though it were water…It is energy that spins it aside to move through it, this vessel, and find what it seeks…Tears…She still feels on her eyes, like a memory that persists after trauma—so real and dreadful in its intensity…Though nothing remains of Braith's corporeal form as her soul walks through the abyss it creates, once more in direct contact with the tangible realm…
Memories remind the soul that walks—through the pulverization of chaotic wastage that drift through the remains of the tunnel's end…Memories of eyelids that open and close, the desire for death, the smell of wrought-flesh…
…Hell—or Purgatory.…
The mine dissolves and sinks...Aboveground, the surface over the tunnels—many witness to suddenly invert downwards, and into the rakhan as if it empties what remains of its solid putrefaction underneath the ground's level…
Machines and adits fall inwards with the sinkhole that swallows these…and more…
…Distantly, a vague part of the original Braith recalls something occurs…Something like the intense pressure of darkness that falls—and smothers...
…Something wakes, and looks up for the first time into the beginning…All is dark…but a light begins to form…The light—or it—float toward one and other…
The world starts to exist below, and space around it—them—is cold, and silent.
Numerous memories flood in and out—all at once.
Deaths and resurrections—Many times before this one…
It does not realize a morthwyl—Cemal—carries the vessel it rests inside…from the mine in which it both frees, lives, dies—Is reborn by...
He carries its vessel into Rakka, away from the pain, away from everything. Its vessel is bloody, dirty…Its bones and systems all broken in many places...
He brings its vessel to the place…The place that heals.
It sees him, it sees through the fragments of what remain of its vessel's portal's of sight when these open while they travel through poison lands…Other than the memories of death and resurrection—It does not remember this Morthwyl.
Your memories are nonexistent…It hears from some voice, warm and full of life that surrounds it…What remains are to be built anew—written over by the experiences of this new vessel I tend…Musaphat, Ysuphet?…Perhaps Kala…or the An'Kala?…
…attend the vessel as it rests in the place Cemal leaves it…Where it remains for many days as the vessel heals…
Black sky its ceiling...Dirt, ashes its bed…She whimpers once as He heals her body—And at Musaphat's tender hands she falls silent and returns to sleep…
…while He continues to weave her bones and organs back together.