Chapter Four - Lost

Dusk. A warm crimson glow beckoned from behind, and the world was bathed in golden light. Behind the hilltops, the sun was descending, and the sky was turning dark grey in the east. The might of Winter held the land in an icy grip already, and was only going to increase its stranglehold in the next few months. Cold wind tore at the robes of the traveller, and forced him to draw them tightly around his shoulders for a moment, shivering.

He had stormed out of the academy with a scream of fury upon his lips, and left behind the city almost blinded by anger. He had run long indeed on that remote morning that now seemed ages away, though it was not even a day ago yet.

---

Running, stumbling, falling and rising again, into the thickets, between the trees and into the depths of the forest. Reaching open ground, a small clearing, his feet would race swiftly over the even ground without producing a sound - then, as the underbrush began to close in again, he would stumble and lose his balance, scratching his face and arms when he narrowly broke a fall - not for clumsiness but rather for his haste and his anger. He did not see where he was going; he was as if blinded by his disappointment, his anger, his… shame?

Who was he ashamed for? He had no parents left - had never known them, in fact, in his conscious life. He had come out of the crystal coffin to learn that the chambers that had held his parents had been destroyed by rampant hydras that had laid waste to a large part of the hibernation complex his family had slept in. Many had woken that time to find their friends gone, some to find themselves the only survivors of their whole family, like Aidra. His young age had prevented him from being too stricken by it. He had never had parents - first, his family had been the city's wardens and the other orphans from the disaster; later on, his family were the teachers at the academy of Oriath and his fellow students. Teachers like Rabon-Ka. Fellow students like Olidra. The bright flame between his eyes began to burn again as it had in the moment he had stormed out of the great hall. Anger: Anger, shame - shame before himself more than anyone else, and grief. But most of all, disorientation and confusion. Where was he? Where had he come from? Where was he going?

Lost. He was lost, and had lost. He had lost everything, and not merely his way. What remained to him now - a blade, a pouch of crystals and less than two days' worth of rations? And what besides his material possessions - what was he, now that he was no longer a student, but also not a mage? He had lost his place among his people, his life, and his identity. His family, his friends, his guides. He was nobody. He had no name, he had no life, he had nothing save his immediate survival, some food and his feet, which were still plodding along over the forest floor. He was nobody. Nobody.

He ran that way for a long time. Minutes? Hours? He had lost his sense of time as well. It had been morning when he had left by this road for the first time; it had been morning when he had returned from the test, it had been morning when he had been expelled from the academy. The sun was rising before him as he ran away, it was circling around him to the right, and by the time he even noticed time again it was long past midday. His were a lithe and fleet-footed people, and an enduring one. He could run for a long time.

And at length, he slowed down. His speed wore him out, even after having rested for such a long time, and he grew exhausted. His gait changed from a swift run into a slow, but steady plodding, then into a jog, from that into a fast march, and at last into a fatigued walk.

He was calmly walking along, if it could be called calm in any way else than his speed. His heart was beating all the way up to his throat, and his breath was going like a pump - it seemed to him that he had only begun to feel this exhaustion since the moment he had slowed down, but the truth was that he had just been deadened to the feeling of tiredness in his bones. As he walked, his heartbeat seemed to slow down as well, imperceptibly, until at first his breathing no longer came ragged with every step. Then he could breathe every two steps, then every four steps, and finally he was back to normal. With his heart beating more normally, and him walking so slowly he did not need to watch his step any more, and with his anger all boiled away into the physical exertion, he began to think. And as he walked on, he thought for a long time.

---

The rations he had taken with him were already nearing their end, even after a single day. Fortunately, he had instinctively grabbed his pouch of money earlier before rushing from the room. He should have been able to purchase a small supply of food at least prior to his rush into the wilderness. He was a fool, but not a suicidal one - and leaving the city to go ranging cross country at this time of the year, without any rations, was the latter. But these were idle thoughts, and they came long after the fact. He had not bought rations - in fact, he had not even stopped once since he had ran away from the academy, not to shop for additional equipment, nor for food, nor even to reconsider or make up his mind as to where he was going to go. He might not be suicidal just yet, but his foolishness made up for that a few times over.

Unfortunately he had been equally unable to purchase any more crystals. Fire crystals, namely, as well as sapphires, which could be had quite cheaply down at the market square. Like a ghostly echo, the words of Olidra came back to him. You always bring a sapphire. But the fire crystals, too, had their use - he was woefully inexpert in melee combat, and if he came into a hostile situation in the wilderness, the crystals he had still left over from the forachid were not going to last him long. By far not long enough to depend on them, at least - he would instead have to depend on his wave blade, and his lacking skill with it.

At least, he now was no longer disoriented, nor was he without a goal.

He had fashioned a plan. The first phase had succeeded; he had wanted to get out of the academy. He was now out. The second phase had also succeeded: He was out of the town of Avtris, and had left its outskirts behind. The third phase was well in progress - he was travelling through the wilderness, and holding eastward. By a bee's line - diverging from the south-eastern path that led away to the testing grounds, and passing them by on the northern side -, he would arrive in the city of Mehdav in three days' time - four days, if the rations did not last, and he had to hunt for food. The amber berries that this forest was known for would not grow and ripen until spring, and the roots that constituted the staple diet in these parts had just been harvested weeks earlier. If any remained in the ground now, they were foul and rotten. He was now glad that the physical education of Oriath had included the basics of outdoor survival and hunting, as well as recognizing those animals that were edible and distinguishing them from the beasts that were merely dangerous and ferocious.

That was the easy part of the plan. The harder parts were about to start: His rations had not lasted, as expected, and he was about to hunt for his lunch. It was better to start early, now that he still had a few supplies left and was more or less sated. One did not hunt well when one's stomach was already hurting with the pangs of hunger.

The downside of this particular problem was his weaponry. He still had the steel wave blade that he had taken to the forachid caves, but he did not have any of the more common weapons one would use in a forest, and against a beast that was more likely to flee than fight. Razor disks were the weapon of choice of the huntsman, and he did not see how he was going to get close enough to a deer to kill it with a sword. However, there was nothing to be done about this particular problem. He would just have to try his luck with the blade if he did not want to die of starvation.

The other hard part of the plan was one that could be faced later. He had enough money to acquire basic necessities in Mehdav, possibly even stay at the local tavern for a while. He remembered the Stone Serpent, one of the cheaper establishments of the city, from visits lying farther back. If the years had not changed the town and the wealth of the tavern's patrons, then he should be able to afford at least a week's stay there without putting too much of a dent in his funds. And after that?

He quite plainly did not know. He hoped to be able to find some kind of employment or even apprenticeship with a craftsman - an alchemist, perhaps, or a jewel-smith? He had had reservations about that at first, but then remembered the job he had done on that fire barrier stabilizer: He did have the skill, once he practiced and gained the theoretical knowledge. Only the mages were experts at crystal-carving, and no mage would have to apprentice himself to a craftsman: A jewel-smith who wanted an apprentice would be satisfied with some potential and a good effort. He had not yet fully accustomed to the knowledge that he was not a mage and would likely never be. What magic he could do, he could not practice professionally by Vahnatai law, and it was nearly impossible for non-magi to gain further training in the arcane arts.

A career as an alchemist was not to be discarded out of hand, however. He had a good knowledge of herbs and basic alchemical equations, as well as the caution and accuracy in experimenting that distinguished the occasional dabblers from the fools who were likely to blow themselves up at the first opportunity.

He had to grin in a moment of long anticipated self-irony. Here he was, planning out his future career when he had just been thrown out of one of the most prominent institutions in the land far and wide! He would be lucky if he even found any opportunity to get a job - and if he did, he would be lucky if the news of his dishonourable expulsion from the academy - certainly not an everyday event - did not precede him wherever he went, likely disqualifying him in the minds of any employer for any other task than mining iron ore, possibly.

He was lost in thought so deeply that he did not grow aware of the chilly silence that suddenly hung over the forest for a long time. When he finally got the eerie feeling of being observed, it was almost too late: A growl alerted him to the danger, and in the next moment, before he quite knew what was happening, he was in the midst of battle.

In mid stride, he spun around, his wave blade drawn out of its sheath and stretched out before and below him - held low in anticipation of blocking a sudden leap, for which the blade would be quickly raised to the right level to allow the attacking creature to impale itself; it was nearly impossible to block with the blade raised, or - heavens forbid - above one's head. He was still incompetent with the blade, but he was not foolish at least.

The creature was practically on top of him before he could even think of reacting, let alone raise his sword. He identified it as some kind of cat-like being, smaller than the very dangerous tiger that was the most ferocious predator native to these lands, but still extremely vicious and with plenty sharp claws to spare. A hyena, he reflected, recognizing the spotted fur shining in the late evening sun.

Side step. The hyena was unable to change her course in mid-jump and flew narrowly past him, landing a few paces behind him, but on her feet. He had swiftly turned around to follow the predator's movements, but even so he was unprepared for the amazing agility and speed with which she had turned and was charging him again. She must be exceedingly hungry, or else have a litter of cubs too feed: The wild animals of this world had already long learned to avoid beings that walked on two legs, that were able to launch steel, fire and death from their fingertips, and that threw small stones which exploded in fire. Whichever of the two it was, he could not hope to scare this beast off - if he was going to survive, he had to disable her, kill her or escape - where the latter was impossible if it was truly hunger that drove the hyena. She could run far faster than he, even were he not exhausted, which he was. It was entirely possible that the hyena was merely protecting her territory, however, in which case a rapid escape might be effective.

Experimentally, he turned north and ran a few meters. He could hear the hyena padding along behind him, so close he could almost feel her breath on his legs. It did not seem to be going to let him away that easily. In a sudden moment of clarity, he remembered that hyenas were pack hunters. They had no territories to protect. He was an idiot.

He turned - it was going to be him or that beast, and he was not going to evade her much longer. Caught by surprise, the hyena left herself open, and he was able to lightly strike her side as she came to him. This time, a side step did not save him: Carried by her momentum, she was upon him in a moment, and he was thrown to the ground by the weight. The beast's jaws almost immediately snapped at his throat, but was fortunately distracted by the shallow wound in her side, allowing him to make a swift turning motion and wrest the animal off him. He cast his gaze around; the wave blade lay where it had fallen from his hands in his fall, a few paces away. The hyena stood between him and the blade, and was readying for another attack.

Without some kind of blade, he was meat. But as the hyena lunged, he drew a dagger that had still remained in the side of his belt, and was able to fend her off while he tried to move around her in an attempt to regain his main weapon. No such luck: With a ferocious growl, two sleek creatures burst out of the underbrush; apparently the hyena's pack was very close by. Faced on three sides by lethal predators, he was left without an alternative: He had hoped to conserve his few remaining crystals for later, but they were the only means of fighting that remained to him now.

Pulling one of the sparkling red gems from his pocket, he lobbed it at one of the males that had just arrived, hoping that it was indeed a fire bomb and not a barrier-piercing crystal. He was not disappointed: The gem exploded with the brilliant tinkling of shattering glass and a blinding red flash. The two hyenas were struck by the red-hot crystal shards; one of them was killed and the other critically injured. He moved in and dispatched the second hyena with a quick thrust of the dagger. This seemed to be enough for the third animal, who was evidently the pack leader. She turned tail and fled back into the depths of the forest, leaving him standing alone on the overgrown road with the quite singed corpses of the other two animals.

Lunch.

---

As it turned out, the meat of a hyena was only slightly less pleasant to eat than that of a crow. The fact that the beasts had been killed in battle made the meat tough and bitter, and his lack of cooking skills did not help to outbalance this. What resulted from his basic knowledge of hunting was a chewy steak and two haunches - the other animal was too badly burnt to eat - which he was able to half burn, half cook, over an open fire ignited by a heating spell. He put the two haunches in his pack to save them for later. Trying to chew through the leathery steak, he travelled onwards, hoping to reach Mehdav within a few days, before his newfound rations ran out.

By the time he had finished cooking the meat, the sun had gone down and the sky had grown dark. There was a soft golden glow remaining in the west, but that would soon vanish as well. The day was coming to an end, and the air began to grow cold and clear in anticipation of winter.

He could not travel all around the day, and the darkness was as good a time to rest as any. He reached a small clearing that lay close to the road, and after a little searching soon found a tree with branches that were sturdy enough to support his light weight. In this wild area, he would need a place that was safe from predators. He wondered briefly whether hyenas were able to climb trees, but tried to dismiss that thought. He had never seen a hyena climb a tree. If they could, there was always a chance that the pack had moved on.

The pack secured to a branch beneath him, he pulled the sky-blue robes tightly around him and half laid, half sat himself on one of the highest branches, with his back against the trunk. The midnight-blue sky stretched above him clear as a diamond, and cold winds gripped him. Fortunately, the robe was padded with several layers of cloth and was sufficient to keep him warm even in this weather. Yet, he could not sleep for a long while - his mind was wheeling with the overwhelming memories of the past day. And even as he sat there beneath the clear night sky with the brilliant pinpoints of brightness and the softly glowing silver orb dousing the dark forest into a scattered, weak light, he felt more alive than he had in the past twenty years. His mind was etched with the recent events that had changed his entire life so abruptly, and he felt a strange clarity pervading all his thoughts in the same way that the sky above him shone a clear silver light down onto his face. The wind rustled in the leaves, and he felt far too awake to even think of sleeping.

Yet, he knew that this feeling was but an illusion. If he did not sleep now, he would collapse at some time during the next afternoon without a doubt, unable to travel on. And so he forced himself to remain still, and willed himself to grow drowsy, staring at the stars wheeling overhead. At length, he fell asleep, the turbulent images of the past day fading away before a soft grey veil that engulfed his mind and sent it into a soothing, dreamless oblivion.

---

It was two days later, and he was no closer to his goal. He did not know why - he was sure he had been travelling east, then north and east again, past the forachid caves and toward the town of Mehdav, but he had not found the end of the forest. The road ended in a few heaps of ancient rubble only a little distance away from the place where he had slain the hyenas - the forest had long since reclaimed what little remained of the path beyond that point. He had been forced to journey on without a road to guide him, but he was prepared for that: He could orient himself exceedingly well by the sun and the stars. The twin moons of Olm, too, gleamed in a bright chain at this time, the larger one full and the smaller one in a waning crescent, rising just an hour before dawn. In clear skies.

Unfortunately, it was raining. The sky was covered in a dense, hazy gauze that looked like a low grey roof, closing in on the world and covering it. The cloudy cover looked almost threatening, bearing down on the world like a doom full weight. A thunderstorm was grumbling in the distance, like the cantankerous, irritable voice of an annoyed God, thundering through the world and seeming to shake it to the root - it was far-off, but even so one could see distant flashes off toward the west, briefly lighting up the cloud cover from within, making it even more intimidating.

The rain was falling freely, if it could indeed be said to fall, rather than flow: There were no discernable drops; rather, the water came as a ravaging downpour or flood, the very skies were weeping. He had long given up on travelling, and was now seeking shelter under the dense crown of a large euwan, that magnificent tree whose leaves are large enough to wrap around oneself, the tree that is legendary for interlocking with its neighbours to form a dense roof over the forest through which not a glimpse of sunlight could be seen. At the moment, no sunlight would have been visible outside of the shelter of the tree either, but it kept the rain outside at least in some fashion - he was already soaking wet, but at least he was not drowning.

In darkness grows the Euwan high, it withers not this tree, the old verse described the unnatural property of this tree that seemed to shun the sunlight and protect itself from it with its leaves. The truth of the matter, he knew, was of course that the Euwan grew that way to catch the most sunlight with its leaves, not ward it off. But that fact of biology was incompatible with the intentions of the poet, and therefore could be blithely ignored. He smiled briefly as he remembered how the verse continued - likewise shall I, when death is nigh, embrace it fearlessly. A sombre mood, painted with the author's realization of a fading existence, his acceptance of mortality, and the anticipation and acceptance of his own death. Stoic serenity was a sacred value among the people, to be unmoving as the crystal whose image religion had them fashioned in. For where the Euwan proudly stands, there I shall rest as well. He looked around at the massive trunk of the tree. On second thought, perhaps not the right verse for the occasion.

Or was it? He was lost, hopelessly lost. The south looked like the north, the west like the east. He slowly spun around in a circle and pointed at random into the early evening darkness that surrounded the Euwan at all sides. His outstretched finger might indicate the way back to Avtris and the Oriath academy he had so unceremoniously been cast out of. Or it might indicate the path to the forachid caves, the one place he never wanted to visit again in his entire life if he could help it. Then, he might be pointing toward the town of Mehdav, where he was trying to go. He slowly let his outstretched hand sink down, still gazing at the darkness with interest. Perhaps, if he went in this direction, he would end up in the Eastern waste, many leagues upon leagues of empty plains and hills where no living beings dwelt, not even the wild beasts that roamed through the southern wilderness. Legends had it that shadows gathered there by the twin new moon, but there was little to fear from that. Firstly, it was merely a legend, and secondly, the last twin new moon had been less than half a year ago, and the next would not come for nearly seven years. There was more to fear from the wild beasts - hyenas like the ones that had assaulted him, and larger and more ferocious creatures - and from hunger.

He had not even a single day's worth of rations left in his pack, and there was no opportunity to replenish his stock. It was impossible that there was anything within a distance of less than three days of marching from here, not in the midst of the empty lands that had not been travelled since who knew when? Mehdav was not a small town, and nor was Avtris, but they had nothing to offer to each other's travellers, not in the way of sights or trade goods, and they were barely in contact with each other. There was no chance of reaching any place with the rations he had left, and if he were to go anywhere at all, he would have to tighten his belt a lot. A painful rumbling came from his chest as if in response to this, a reminder of the fact that he had not yet eaten since the morning to conserve his food.

Worse, if he chose the wrong direction, two days of travelling would leave him stranded in the wilderness without any clue where he was or in what direction he was travelling, and without any food on top of it. There was no way to improve his situation: Stay and linger, or choose a direction and blindly wander on, he was almost sure to starve. Embrace it fearlessly, he wryly commented. The serenity that the People so valued was kept until death, when the eldest of them, tired of bearing the centuries that weighed upon their bones, each one seeming to pile on more weight than the previous one, chose to leave their lives with a single thought, leaving behind their organic shells to join the great Crystal - except for those whose knowledge and experience was so valuable to the living Vahnatai that they allowed the soul to coalesce and crystallize into a real gem, thus to spend the rest of their immortal lives as guides and scholars. He himself was barely even a century old, far too young to begin to tire of this wondrous miracle of a world that he lived in, let alone wish to leave it behind. Of the huge expanse of this continent that maps depicted as distantly heart-shaped, he had seen barely three or four towns in the vicinity of Avtris - Mehdav was among them. In the long years of the academy, he had vowed to himself that, as soon as he was finished with his education, he would get himself a good sturdy staff and go out to see the world. What cruel irony that, on the day that he should have been finally finished, he was denied the only reward that the years had promised, and left without anything to show for the last decade of his life. And now, that he had left the academy and was for the first time travelling on his own, he had managed to lose himself on the road to the nearest town, and was close to starving in the wilderness due to his own stupidity.

"It matters not to me", he loudly recited the next line of the poem and closed his eyes as he squatted down to lean against the great trunk of the Euwan tree. One would not expect that to make such a great difference in the pitch-black darkness that was already covering his shelter, but the eyes of the Vahnatai are sharp and see far in the night. As his sight dropped from a murky twilight to the utter darkness of his closed eyes, he perceived that the sounds that reached his ears were gaining a new depth and clarity. The howling of the storm that gripped and tore at his robe in spite of the almost enclosed sheltering space of the tree seemed to triple in intensity; the rushing torrent of the rain began to take on the strength of a roaring stream, and the distant grumbling of thunder came much closer, until it was as if he could hear the sizzling cracks and hissing, slashing sounds of the ferocious lightning bolts that were still so far off. Or were they?

With an oath, he opened his eyes and looked around him, half-expecting to see that the storm had closed in by now, the lightning and thunder all around him. There was great danger in that: The Euwan might be a good shelter against the rain, but its great height made it all the more likely to be struck by lightning, and although it was a strong and soaking wet wood that could not catch fire that easily, it would conduct the crackling force of energy like anything, likely leaving him lying beneath it as a dry, smoking piece of charcoal.

But as he looked around him, he sighed in relief. Indeed, it had only been an illusion brought on by his heightened awareness of the sounds around him - the thunderstorm was many leagues in one direction from here, and the wind was blowing at a right angle to it. He was in no danger of being turned into a chunk of charred flesh just yet - at least not compared to the relatively larger danger of starving to death over several weeks in the wilderness, leaving behind only a rotting skeleton and a grinning skull to frighten the more wary and less foolish travellers that would pass him by later.

There was nothing else to do: He closed his eyes again, but remained standing. Keeping his eyes closed and reaching out with a finger, he turned slowly around, circling several times, then stopped and opened his eyes again. The direction was no different from all the others that he could have chosen: Shadows closed in like a dark, impenetrable wall, and the sheets of rain that came down past the crown of the Euwan were like a waterfall. There is always a way to be more foolish than one has been already, he reminded himself as he thought of the incredibly dangerous folly of leaving the relatively safe shelter he already had for the open space, vulnerable to the rushing torrents and the cold storm. Shaking his head, he laid out a branch to point in the direction he had chosen and wrapped himself tightly in his robes. The longer he lingered here, the shorter was the distance he would be able to travel without food. Gripping his pack and slinging it around his back, he regretfully looked around to the tree whose shelter he would have to leave, and then walked out into the night.

 5260 words.