Of Truth and Beasts

“Where?” Ore-Locks asked, his voice too eager. “Where, exactly, did they come from?”

“I do not know,” Vreuvillä answered. “But if it was a seatt that fell in the war ...”

She trailed off.

“Anything might help,” Wynn urged.

“There is a place one of my forebears found in wandering and labeled it ‘the fallen mountain’,” Vreuvillä said quietly. “It was too odd to be called anything else, as if a peak amid the range had been sheared off, crushed, or collapsed. A flat, sunken plain one would never find amid such mountains. I have not seen it for myself. I cannot direct you more than this.”

Wynn’s mind was racing. She had a crude map of the region already in her possession. If they were to trust in Vreuvillä, they simply had to follow the Slip-Tooth Pass between the smaller, northbound ridges all the way to the Sky-Cutter Range. After that, finding this so-called “fallen mountain” was another matter, but it might be closer than she had ever hoped.

A thousand years had passed, even for mountains that ran across an entire continent. Who knew what changes to the landscape had come and gone since the time of war? But at least this was something to go on.

“Thank you,” Wynn said.

“Do not thank me. Chârmun gives me no guidance in this ... as I had wanted in calling up those who birthed it.”

Wynn had little guidance, either. But mention of the tree called Sanctuary raised so many questions as to what had happened here.

“What was that out there?” she asked. “What is this Pain Mother you spoke of?”

“Not pain.” Vreuvillä corrected, scowling again. “The Pained Mother ... though it is a weak meaning in your tongue. It is the manifestation of them—what your kind calls Fay—that represents what first made all of this.”

Vreuvillä swept her arm wide as she turned to the stilled trees all around her. At first Wynn wondered if the priestess meant the clearing or the whole forest surrounding it.

“It is all from them, from ‘she who suffers and mourns,’” the priestess went on. “Like a parent whose child grows, goes its own way, and forgets what birthed it. I am ... the Foirfeahkan were ... all that remain to hold that ever-thinning bond, reminding ‘mother’ and ‘child’ of each other.”

Wynn knew varied creation myths of some cultures, both living and dead. These, in turn, had contributed to the notion of the Fay and the Elements of Existence used metaphorically by her guild. Some sages had even taken on a foundationist’s perspective, combining the core pieces of long forgotten belief systems, believing there was some primary force that had initiated everything, Existence itself. It didn’t often sit well with current formal religions or the guild itself.

Wynn had her doubts about such things, preferring what could be reasoned. Of course, she had no doubt that the Fay were real, whatever they—it, the one and the many—ultimately were. Beyond all this, whatever the Fay or Vreuvillä thought or believed, the core of Wynn’s being told her that what she did was right. It had to be right, no matter the cost, because she couldn’t face the alternative.

She’d turned against the guild, deceived and lied, and even stolen revered cold lamp crystals and used them like currency. She had done—would continue to do—all these wrong things for the right reason.

“I do thank you,” she told Vreuvillä.

But she turned away to find Chane fixated upon Vreuvillä. He was shuddering, and his eyes seemed dead, their irises like circles of crystallized ice upon white marble orbs. He looked nothing like himself ... or perhaps as if there was nothing left of himself inside.

“Chane?”

Only then did Wynn realize something. Whenever questions had been asked of someone unknown or untrustworthy, Chane had stood right behind her. By a whisper or a squeeze upon her shoulder, he’d guided her through the truths or deceptions of those who gave answers.

Wynn had heard nothing from Chane through the entire exchange with Vreuvillä.

Now the priestess watched him alone, her grip tightening on the white, curved blade.

“Chane?” Wynn whispered.

Fear-fed hunger, the screeching beast within, the prodding forest upon him like an army of insects ...

This was all that Chane felt, all that filled his head, until he could do nothing but hold himself in as he stood behind Wynn.

The barkless tree behind him felt like a cold fire on his back, its suspicious chill penetrating his dead flesh. It might not know what he was, but it wanted him gone—not just from this place, but forever. Amid this, all Chane could cling to was what he wanted: Wynn, safe and always within reach.

This was the only clear desire left in place of his reason.

Fear of any threat to him—to her—grew too much. It wrapped around that one desire as the forest prodded him without mercy, trying to uncover what he was. And that wild woman now eyed him, as if some living beast within her sensed the unliving one within him.