Chapter 151. The Fragrant Vale

[ as always, thanks for reading! :D ]

Maria pulls out three blankets from her personal void storage. She drapes two on the ground and keeps the other rolled in her arms. When I stare at her blankly, she gives me an exasperated look. “Do you have any blankets?”

I shake my head.

“Right. Use one of them. Keep it: I have plenty.” She turns to Holiday. “Do you have a bed roll?”

He smiles dryly. “I’m prepared for anything you might imagine, including sleep, though it’s not something I need much of.”

Maria nods and the blanket in her arms disappears.

Holiday regards the two of us. “If you’re both settled and have contented yourselves asking me questions...It’s best I leave.” His words have a finality to them that’s alien compared to his normally whimsical demeanor. “I have a few parting words.” He turns to me. “You’re going to enjoy this world. Forget about the old and live untethered by your past.” He faces Maria and raises an eyebrow. “Be careful.”

The snake hisses loudly. “Best of luck; we’re going. Lonely roads, long travels, sound mind.”

Holiday rolls his eyes and opens his mouth to speak, but disappears into thin air. Maria and I are now alone on this empty, gray barren, the overcast sky mirroring ashy ground.

—

When I wake, I’m sore all over, the blanket an insufficient cushion against the hard terrain. Maria is already up and sitting on her blanket, her eyes closed.

“Morning,” I murmur. The greeting is out of habit: The sun is fixed in the sky, unmoving.

“There’s no such thing as morning here, Dunai.”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “What have you been doing?”

“Thinking.”

I nod and look around. “Not much else to do. You wouldn’t happen to have any soap, would you?”

She finally opens her eyes to shoot me a withering look. “No. I’m not in the habit of carrying shampoo; besides, you don’t have enough water to waste it on washing up.”

I pull out a piece of bread from my void storage and begin eating it plain. My mouth is dry and my teeth in need of a good brushing, but neither of us brought toothpaste into the ascendant world. I tossed mine out to make space for more bones leading into the final fight.

I swallow, then announce, “I’m planning to leave in the next few minutes.”

“Fine.”

“I can mark the space where the veil is weak,” I add.

“Not necessary. I’m not staying in this place.”

I had a feeling she’d say something like that. If she wants to get herself killed, that’s not my problem. “You know the risks; I’m not going to talk you down.”

Maria stands up from her blanket and stretches her arms. “I’m getting out of this place and I’ll interpret the threads of destiny to guide my steps. If I die, I die, but if returning to our old world is a possibility, I’m going to do my best to succeed.”

“Maria...”

“What?” she snaps, fixing me with a cool stare. “Once you identify the veil’s weak point, we’ll proceed, then part ways. Separating is for the best.”

Probably true. But as we linger, a complex swell of emotions churns in my gut. Though Maria has been healed, her vestments are still burnt and torn, her hair in disarray. She looks ragged, a far cry from the majestic sovereign I met at the Fassari Summit.

I know she doesn’t want my pity, and really...I don’t think she deserves it. All the same, I feel oddly guilty for her reduced state.

“I really don’t understand,” Maria exclaims suddenly, grunting as she leans into a leg stretch. “Between what you’ve done to me, what I’ve done to you...how could our conflict not be personal?”

“Excuse me?”

Maria laughs. “Earlier, before we entered the amber and came to Vizier’s Crown, you said that you didn’t consider things between us to be personal. If I killed your Euryphel, I don’t think you’d be able to say those words with a straight conscience.”

“My Euryphel?” What is she trying to say?

“Yesterday–can you believe it’s been just hours?–you risked your life to save him while fighting the most deadly of opponents, heedless of your own survival. Now imagine...if I prevented you from saving him...wouldn’t your grudge with me be personal?”

I fidget with a small soul gem in my palm. “If you did that, it would’ve been out of malice.”

“Or it would’ve been out of cold, calculated, impersonal self-interest. The Crowned Prime is probably claiming my lands as we speak. Without Euryphel, I still don’t think the SPU has a chance of overthrowing Selejo. Tell me, if I want the best future for my son, I’d be correct to sever Euryphel’s head and protect Zilverna’s inheritance, would I not?”

“Funny you try to say that even after what we learned from Crimson Teeth,” I retort. “Euryphel is our only shot against the Infinity Loop. You love your son, Maria, but he doesn't have half the mettle and talent of–”

“Stop.” She holds out her hand. “Just...stop. It’s pointless.”

I shake my head. “It’s convenient to say that, when your actions–your country’s patronage–paved the way for the Infinity Loop experiment.” So much would have been different if I never entered the Infinity Loop, but at this point, thinking about the life I might have led is pointless. “How did you think this whole business would end? With new practitioner soldiers trained at the cost of millions of auris? Y’jeni, how did you think this war over the Ho’ostar Peninsula and my ascension would end, the final conflict with me and the prince?”

Maria arches back to stretch her spine, her expression impassive. “If you didn’t die, I thought the absolute worst case was Euryphel destroying the arrays under the Cuna, only to find that doing so did nothing to free his countrymen. At that point it would’ve been over: You would have ascended, leaving me in power...and the young prince alone to face the consequences of his actions.”

“...What consequences?”

Maria snorts coldly. “Whatever they might have been, it’s irrelevant.”

A moment of silence passes.

Maria stops stretching and stands up straight. “If you’re done talking, please, lead the way.”

—

Maria protests, saying it’s unnecessary, but I stake the spot where the veil is weak with a shard of bone. “Just in case.” Before she can reply, I pull my hand against the sky, my fingers shining blue. Maria assists, tearing on the opposite side. When the tear is a few inches wide, she performs another dropkick, sundering the veil from shoulder height to the ground.

I duck my head and push my way through, my lead foot sinking into rotted leaves. The fecund scent of plants and wet soil assaults me, a high-pitched screech resounding from the canopy.

I feel an immediate sense of familiarity...and I realize that the last–and only–time I was in such a jungle was in the SPU. Before I get too consumed by my thoughts, Maria comes in on my heels, forcing me to get out of the way. She pauses halfway through, her body stuck in between planes.

“Are you just going to stand in the threshold?” I wonder.

“My hair, it’s...caught,” she hisses, pulling at her uncombed hair. A few locks are caught on rough shreds of veil. With a hard tug, the hair comes free, Maria’s head leading the rest of her body forward. She takes in a deep breath, then stands straight. “Well, that’s that. Goodbye, Dunai. May we never meet again.”

I nod. “Best of luck. You’ll need it.”

At least she’s cautious as she slinks off into the trees. She’s moving so slowly that I can feel her vital signature for the next few minutes. When she eventually falls beyond my range, I feel a strange sense of relief, as though a burden has been lifted.

You wouldn’t have just let her die if she encountered trouble where you could intervene. I’d like to think so, at least. But now that she’s out of sight, thinking about her is useless. Dying early won’t change the fact that even if she stays safely in Vizier’s Crown, she’ll be dead in a year.

Any thoughts pertaining to Maria are thus a waste of mental energy, I proclaim inwardly.

Minutes after entering this place, I’m still hovering by the exit, unhurried, absorbing the sights and sounds. A jungle is a place of power for someone like me, a reservoir of energy. Even so, I’m cautious of moving brazenly and withering the environment to strengthen myself.

I’m not necessarily concerned that someone–or something–will kill me in retribution: I’ll come back. But if Eternity is a place where people live but cannot die, I don’t want to make enemies. I’ve already made some from killing Ari and would prefer to avoid making more.

Adversaries may be unable to kill me, but that doesn’t say anything about torture. And if Holiday spoke literally about respawning where you were ten minutes before death...dying won’t necessarily offer a form of escape, but instead create a blank canvas for continued pain.

I shudder involuntarily and walk into the overgrowth. The canopy is dense, but after a few paces I see a large skylight. I pull myself up by my half-shattered bone armor, startling a large-eyed lemur creature on the way. The trees here seem to all be the same species, gray giants with grooved bark and fan-shaped leaves the size of my palms. Most have small white blossoms with frilly petals and stigma, the apparent source of the jungle’s floral fragrance.

Soon I crest the canopy and see above the treetops, noting that the jungle continues as far as I can see in every direction, greenery stretching into far-off mountains that ring the surroundings. I settle down on a wide tree bough and close my eyes, focusing on the vitality around me. The jungle is overflowing with life, but aside from flora and fungi, it’s populated only by mammals: All I can sense are wide-eyed lemurs and predatory weasels. No birds, bugs, reptiles, nor amphibians.

I could have sworn I heard birdsong when we tore the veil previously, I mutter to myself. I wait and observe for minutes more, tracking the actions of hundreds of mammals in my surroundings. It’s a harder task than controlling armies of Death: Unlike my own constructs that respond to my will and can feel like extensions of myself, keeping careful track of living beings requires much more concentration.

I realize that I’m slipping back into the desperate training mindset I’ve had for the past month while preparing for my ascension.

There’s no reason for me to push myself immediately like this. I should find Achemiss, but locating him could take years; taking some time to explore and unwind won’t largely impact how quickly I find him. And while the state of my old world is in critical jeopardy, Holiday’s snake mentioned that it would only collapse in the more distant future. Given the long lives of Life practitioners, I’m going to roughly assume that the apocalypse is over one-hundred years away. I just need to inform Euryphel of the dire state of affairs within the next few years.

I’m jarred from my thoughts by a flood of tiny new vital signatures coming from underground. At first I assume they’re insects, but upon closer inspection, I realize that the cockroach-sized creatures are mammals, like tiny mice without tails and small ears pressed tight against their heads. They scamper over the forest floor, coating it like a fur carpet as they race through the trees.

The lemurs descend upon the torrent of rodents with deft fingers, snatching up unlucky individuals from the horde and dropping them into their mouths raw. The lemurs crunch down and the rodents go limp, then they unhinge their jaws and swallow their prey whole. The tree-climbers may be mammals, but the way they swallow pray is disturbingly serpentine.

I notice the approach of a huge flock in the far distance, barely visible as a dark horizontal smudge above the treetops. As it draws near, I hear the sound of faint birdsong. It sounds like there must be thousands of birds chirping over one another.

But as the flock enters my range, I realize that it isn’t composed of birds, but beaked bats. They’re fuzzy, with beady eyes dwarfed by cup-shaped ears. They have membranous wings, each larger than their central body, with two stubs for legs. Unlike normal bats, they have a rectangular bony tail and a hard, toothy maw. It’s not a proper bird’s beak because of the teeth, but it is composed of a singular hard, beak-like material.

Perhaps there never were any real birds; it was bats all along. I stay put and observe the swarm’s behavior as it nears my location, expecting it to either keep going or dive through the canopy onto the forest floor to snatch up prey. While I recall that most bats eat bugs and fruit, this contingent probably has sharp fangs for a reason.

Instead of doing anything that I expect, the bats fan out and begin to surround me until I’m the epicenter of the swarm. At the very least, the bats’ birdsong is loud, but not inherently unpleasant.

I narrow my eyes, unsure what the bats are doing: The winged creatures in constant motion around me, fluttering past to the right and left. Are they curious? Are they...intelligent?

“Hello,” I murmur softly, extending a hand. The bats dodge around it, continuing their circuits unhindered. Then, muttering sofly to myself more than to them: “What do you want?”

After another thirty seconds of swarming, the bats scatter around me and proceed over the treetops. Having nothing better to do, I follow.

—

After an hour, the bats finally stop their flight, roosting in the trees and hanging from their feet, licking their beaks with pink tongues. Their tails curl protectively over their feet, more flexible than I would have guessed based on their rudder-like form and function.

After keeping a short distance during my pursuit, I sit on a branch beneath no less than ten bats all hanging in a row, close enough to touch them if I stood up. The bats peer down at me curiously, their beady eyes fixed on my form.

How alien must I seem to them? I haven’t seen any ascendants in this jungle aside from myself. And perhaps if I keep going, I’ll never meet another while in this plane.

What were the parting words of Holiday’s snake?

Lonely roads, long travels, sound mind.

Lonely roads, indeed.

[ don't forget to vote on top web fiction! it's anonymous and there's no account; votes refresh every week! :3 http://topwebfiction.com/listings/the-menocht-loop/ ]