Chapter 14: Ugly Untravelled Land
Jealousy is an ugly colour on you, love –
Redder than the blood of your leaves –
When you could have been mine
Unbroken, Upheld
Nyxara
Beyond the great chasm that served to separate the eveward and marward regions stood a horror almost too deep to name. Scorched land, ravaged waters, death and chaos all-consuming. Whatever had happened to the previously beautiful place was utterly complete, leaving nothing to tell the tale of its rage.For miles, there was nothing. No sign of survivors. No hint of resettlement. No clue of a future. Just loss. Every inch was a lonely grave.
Even the grass at our feet cracked and crumbled not under our weight but at the whims of a timekeeper too impartial to save it.
I choked on every inhale, regardless of source. The air didn't smell of death or rain or dust. It burned like loss and smelled of emptiness. Desperation clung tight to my lungs, and pain tore at my sinuses.
After a few hours, I had to lean heavy on Micah's small frame, their strength slowly fading under the oppressive atmosphere but holding up much longer than my own.
"Nyx," they said eventually, "what in all of Lafleur happened here?"
My words were a blood-filled cough as I tried to respond and failed. That was as far as I made it. We stopped. Micah set camp. And I faded into darkness. Not sleep, not dreams, not peace. It was a deep darkness. I don't know how long I was out. I only know what Micah told me after the fact.
Micah
She fell. The red that stained my clothes was hers, but the tears were mine. Setting camp was automatic. I needed to think, and I could do that in my sleep.Goddesses around us, I hoped she was just sleeping.
There was no wood to build a fire, not that we'd need one. More likely, we would need water and a cool breeze, which was also lacking. Lucky Nyx didn't have a fever. And she was breathing if I let myself listen close enough.
Tent. Bed roll. Shallow breaths as the whole place ate away at me. I couldn't let myself give in. If both of us fell, that would be it. She'd be gone, and I'd have lost another person who —
Right. Can't let myself go that route. What would Eliana do? She was a healer, right? Medicine only worked if you could swallow it. And Nyx certainly couldn't.
I dug through the bags and other gear. Surely we had something. Enough of those accursed petals to fill three pillows. That was more than before, but those things were worthless. The journal Eliana had left with us. Poems. Nyx had marked the one for this sun.
Fighting the urge to rip out the page and eat it, I kept looking. A list.
"Perfectly Plain Plans for a Personal Plethora of Prolific Petals". How very Nyxara. Most of it was garbage. Pillow filling. Ink that didn't stick around. Fire that wouldn't burn. Preservative. That was something I wasn't ready to consider.
A useless list unless things came to the worst. I kept looking.
Deep in the depths of Nyxara's bag I found a box. Four flowers. Red, black, gold, silver. I hadn't known she brought any of them from the Aerie. How had she sneaked them into the box or the box into her bag?
Not the time, Micah. Not even remotely the time.
I took the black flower from the box. Voidstem. Dreambringer. Smelling it reminded me of Dee, but it didn't do much for my circumstances.
As I went to put the flower back into the box, I noticed a small piece of paper.
Micah.
If you are reading this, either you're sneaking (how dare you) or else I'm in trouble (hopefully not). If it's the latter, these flowers won't help if I'm still breathing. Sorry if you got your hopes up.
If you don't have any medicine, and if you have no other choices, you should find a list in my bag. Hopefully it's enough. It probably isn't.
Put the flowers away and think of something better, Micah.
I believe in you.
Really helpful, Nyxara.
I put the box away and looked back at the list. Nothing helpful there. Not a single thing I was willing to try.
Hoping and praying to her that she wouldn't get any worse, I lay beside Nyx and tried to get to sleep.
Dreams of indescribable destructive forces flashed through my mind. What seemed like aeons passed as I watched over and over the destruction of a beautiful country at the hands of something just beyond my perception.
A mornward sun woke me, and I was immediately checking Nyx. No change. I sighed deeply. Better than getting worse.
Well, if she wasn't getting up, then I would have to get her up myself.
I struck camp as efficiently as one soul could. Tossing both our bags and both our weapons on my back, I lifted Nyx in some semblance of a bridal carry and started walking.
My cold-flame fought against me at every step, but it was enough to keep my steps light and my hands lighter. I almost didn't even notice I was carrying her for most of the distance.
Both warhammers seemed to hum to each other as I made insignificant progress against the wasteland before me.
How in all of Lafleur had Afina or even Dee managed to traverse this, let alone survive enough to make their ways to Elder Valley? Was Elder Valley even still there? Why hadn't Afina told us that everything was so very
"Bleak," the word escaped me as a whisper. The first word I'd said since Nyx fell, it burned everything it touched.
Water wasn't enough to quench the thirst induced by the emptiness. No. Not emptiness. It was consumption. The land was eating itself, and us with it. If not for the cold-flame, I'd surely have fallen miles back.
Nyx barely stirred as I carried her.
As the sun found its way toward the eveward horizon, I stopped to camp again. What else was there to do? I certainly wasn't going to walk in the —
Cold-flame. Obviously. I could see at night, and Nyx weighed nothing in my arms. And without her slowing down and needing rest, I could go all night, stopping only to eat trail food and trying desperately to come up with a solution to the issue of her not waking up.
So I did. I walked all sun and all night for a moon. I tracked the time by carving notches into the head of Love's Paradox – the name I'd started calling my weapon that reminded me so much of my wife – each time I stopped while the sun was eveward.
After twenty-eight suns, I came across the first thing that wasn't a vast stretch of empty, and it almost made things worse.
It was a town. Was. Long before I arrived, carrying my dearest friend in my arms. By the time I got there, it was barely a group of foundations and bones. A few buildings still had vertical bits of wall alerting me to their former glory.
"Nyx, if you don't mind," I said, knowing she couldn't hear or respond, "I'm going to give this town a small bit of respect. Don't get mad at me if I die out here."
The work of carefully gathering bones, jewellery, anything that seemed to be part of the lost, took me the whole of that sun. Three more suns digging graves for the about twenty bodies I managed to piece together. And another four burying them to the best of my ability.
Nyx continued breathing.
Something good came of the break from walking, though. When I wasn't so focused on putting one foot in front of the other, I noticed there were something akin to mountains just a bit further in the distance.
Not tall enough to compare with the Aerie, but at least enough that they were visible from a few miles off. I could only hope that they were the bounds of Elder Valley. I couldn't take the quiet of continuing without my companion.
Unity Unparalleled
Micah
"Do not die on me, Nyxi," I said as I found myself standing between two tall cliffs only a few miles from the town. One was directly beside what appeared to be the remnants of a road I stumbled upon and nearly dropped Nyxara. The other was still a ways off.Something pulled me toward the farther cliff, and I wasn't about to ignore it. Had I ignored the Aerie's call until I met Nyx? Sure. Had I done my damnedest not to find myself where I was, only to fail and end up with a dying goddess in my arms anyway? Yes.
But I had to save her.
One step at a time. The closer I drew to the cliff, the lighter I felt. I could breathe again by the time I stood at the base of it. Finally, for the first time in almost two moons, I felt like there was some measure of hope. And not a moment too soon.
Nyxara's breathing was getting weaker, if that was even possible, and my desperation was choking me, despite the fresh air I was finally breathing.
At the base of the cliff was a single tree. The only sign of life I'd seen in so long I almost cried. Its trunk was scorched, but around its roots were snowpetal flowers. Somehow. Against all odds.
Something in me said it was time to climb. I laughed at the notion. I'd done enough climbing for three lifetimes already, and there I was having to do more.
I dropped everything except Nyxara, working out a way to strap her to my back, and began the ascent. My cold-flame was still misbehaving, doing me no favours as I fought desperately to make my way up. No handholds, no footholds. Only grit, determination, and fire in my muscles that nearly tore under the effort.
I wasn't giving up.
One hand above the other. One foot above the other. Thirty minutes, maximum, to get to the top. Easy. Or at least it would have been, but the spark within me finally burned out. It was just me. Nyxara on my back, and the rock face above me.
"Is this how you were climbing in that chasm?" I managed to grit out. "Idiot. You really need to learn to use your assets, Nyx."
She didn't answer, of course, but I did what I could to keep moving. I couldn't count on anything except the top.
The only thing I couldn't let myself do was give up. All other bets were off. Getting Nyxara to safety was the only possibility. And if I died the moment her eyes opened, so be it.
It wasn't easy. Obviously I survived. But goddesses around us, I almost didn't.
"What in the queen's name," I said as I stood at the cliff's edge, looking the direction my heart pulled, "is that nightmarish thing?"
Before me was a mass of plants intertwining, growing into each other, choking each other for light. But their presence wasn't the thing that stunned me. They seemed to fill a perfectly delineated shape. A vast five-sided testament to something that once stood in that place.
No raised platforms. No columns. No roof. Just a carpet of desperate plants begging to survive. What remained of the temple at the Crucible. This was the rim of Elder Valley, and we had finally arrived.
I walked into the vast pentagon and worked my way to the centre, thorns and leaves snagging at each step. Grateful that Nyxara was on my back and raised higher than the plants, I ignored the bleeding that started after a while.
At the temple's heart was a small table, similar to the one on Lysandra's altar back in the Aerie, but big enough for me to lay Nyx upon it. With her off my back, I could finally look around and examine everything.
Whoever had done this must have seen us coming. I recognised herbs of all manners surrounding me. "Why didn't I listen to Dee's insistence I study herbology," I groaned at the recognition. I couldn't use a one of the plants around me.
I hated admitting it, but I longed for Afina to show up and give me even a hint at how to fix this. But she wasn't coming. I had to figure it out myself. No cold-flame. No Nyxara. Just my cleverness and longsuffering.
That had to be enough.
She was still breathing. Her fiery hair was beginning to fade to something pale. She'd hate me if I let it go much longer. And we wouldn't match anymore, so I might hate myself a little.
"Fine, damn it," I screamed to no one. "I will climb back down and return with the only thing that might fix this. I hate it. But what choice do I have?"
"You don't really have one, doll," I knew the voice, but there was no way she was there. I looked all around me to confirm, but Dee was nowhere in sight. "Sorry. It's not time yet."
"Where are you?" Why would she answer? She wasn't really there. "Where have you been? What am I supposed to do, lovey?"
"Don't do what you're thinking," their calm voice was infuriating. "It won't fix this. I told you studying healing was important. Should've listened, my doll."
"Then what, Deona?" I hadn't used her full name in so long it felt wrong in my mouth. "If I can't use the snowpetal, and if I don't know any herbs, then how am I supposed to help her, lovey-dove?"
"I'm sorry, doll. The only thing that might save her is goldroot, but the Fiend destroyed Aurelin's garden. It's all gone."
"You don't know, do you?" I was already running back to the edge of the cliff. "Afina saved two of them!" I really wish I had a rope. Something to rappel down with. But it was fine. I would be fine. "Gormlaith watched over all of the flowers. Gifts for when the future came."
My hands bled as I try to grip the rock face, but I was sliding too fast to find purchase. I shouldn't have risked it, but I needed to be fast. She'd brought the box of flowers for the goddesses, not for this. But I couldn't let her die.
I begged my cold-flame to return as the ground rushed to meet me. I'd never had it fight back before. This was new territory. My legs barely held my weight when I hit the rough dirt. It was beyond a miracle that nothing broke.
The bags were, unsurprisingly, still where I left them. I tore through Nyxara's bag to get to the box as quickly as possible. There it was. Her salvation.
I put the golden flower's stem in my mouth to make sure my hands would be free and began the impossible climb back up the mountain. Goddess I wished my cold-flame would come back.
The bitter sap of the flower worked its way into my mouth as I clenched my teeth against pain. It tasted like stagnant water and loss, but spitting it out would risk losing the flower, so I just bore the disgusting flavour as I fought with the second ascent of that stupid cliff face.
I wasn't certain if it was the lack of Nyxara's weight or something else, but the second time was much easier, and I was at her side so quickly I barely knew what had happened.
"Nyx," I cried, no longer tired, "I need you to swallow this. Please."
I didn't know if it was the sap or the petals or some other part of the plant, so I just did everything all at once, trying without much luck to force something to stick.
Closing her mouth and holding her lips together, I prayed for the second time. Once again, to her.
"Nyxara, please. I know it's silly, dreadfully, to pray to a goddess who can't hear me, but I need you to wake up. I need you," I said the words knowing full well she'd hate them. "Lafleur needs you. If you don't wake up, I don't know if I can wait five hundred years for the next you." My face was tear-stained, my hands were blood-stained, and everything hurt. "Please swallow that and wake up for me."