The young man sat in silent horror, a frozen scream plastered across his ashen face. He stares across the camp, the only soul awake, as the foul horror grasps the bloody corpse in its claws. The dark eyes of the tundra bison dart around, panic obvious in the dark pits of death as it doesn’t quite know it is dead yet. Its throat flutters as it opens its mouth and tries to bellow, but no sound comes forth from the ragged and broken vocal cords. It lurches forward to fill a mouth meant for shrubs and grasses with raw flesh and blood, flat teeth savoring marrow, before shambling its broken body into the undergrowth, and out of sight.
A hand roughened by age appears from the brush behind the young man, hanging briefly in the air for an eternity before grabbing him by his long braid, deliberately silencing the metal chimes carefully sewn into his hair behind his left ear.
“Quiet!” The old man who grabbed him rasps into the terrified ear of the younger one, and a shield is brought around, covering both. Covered in loose shrubs strapped to thick layers of rawhide and hammered metal, the shield provides a significant amount of camouflage within the underbrush.
“Tȟaƞké,” he says, as he covers the open mouth of the man he has grabbed, quieting him. He holds up a hand, a set of copper-coloured chimes in his hand, splattered with scarlet. “Taken Alive’s chimes,” he says roughly.
“You… you managed to grab them?!” The struggling man manages to push the older’s hand off his face, gasping quietly as he talks. “Fallen Leaf will want them.”
“Aye,” the older man agrees. “An’ I will take them t’her, Sister. But right now my job is t’get ye t’safety.”
“Where is Seina?” The younger one asks. His eyes are wild as he stares around, looking for his Blotahuƞka Inuƞpi, the One Who Breathes Flames.
“Ha! Am I not good enough for ye?” The older man jokes as he holds the younger tightly, both of them staring with locked eyes at the loud crunching of the spirit-eater, only a few metres away.
“Nay,” the older man says, shaking his head, silently regretting his attempt at humour. “Seina is waking th’tiošpaye teachers, an’ makin’ sure they have a safe route back t’ th’ south gate.”
“Go help her,” the younger one says. His voice trembles as he tries to assert his authority, an action rarely taken by this young leader.
“Nay,” the older man defies the orders given. “I’m here t’make sure ye make it t’safety.”
“And I am telling you, as your Sister of Abundance, to go ensure the safety of the children before me!” His voice flares into an angry whisper, and his cheeks redden with both anger and anxiety as he exerts his authority in a way unfamiliar to him.
“Aye,” the old man says slowly, letting go of the younger and leaning back, his lips tight as he nods slowly. “Are ye sure, Tȟaƞké?”
“Yes,” his voice breaks as he pushes away his only protection. “The tiošpaye are more important, Maȟto Ska. Go.”
Maȟto nods his head slowly. “Keep th’shield, Tȟaƞké, an’ may th’dawn watch over ye.” The older man turns and melts into the underbrush, silent as the shadows that he arrived from.
The young leader turns and looks determinedly at the horrific creature in front of him - but before he can do anything brash, the creature stands up to its full height and opens it maw, letting out a high pitched screech that the carved bones of the young leader understand to a magnitude that the young leader himself does not.
His mouth opens slightly and he falls backwards, crawling away from the creature as quickly and quietly as he is capable of. His breath has been stolen by the horror of what he has learned in that screech, a piece of knowledge that the creature does not even understand.
“Hungry!” is what the creature screeches out, and Ičamna quickly realizes that it is the only word the creatures still know. All around him, more screeching rings out, each echoing to the core of his bones - “Hungry!”
These creatures - once human, once beast - now know only one thing; That they are hungry, and there are thousands of people in this city, ripe to be feasted upon.
The young man’s eyes are wide open in terror, and he struggles to strap the shield to his back before crawling away into the underbrush.
The creature pays him no heed as it continues to devour the corpse in front of it.
Three steps… and nothing.
Two steps… and nothing.
Three more steps… and nothing.
One more step…
crack
The young leader panics for a moment, his quiet advance broken with a snap by a dry branch hidden beneath the sparse undergrowth. He crouches, holding the shield above his head.
But he is lucky - no eaters-of-spirits, no nagyuta, notice his quiet snapping against the foreground of the battle raging around him. Screams are heard in every direction, and the terrible and continual wailing of the creatures as they find more and more corpses to gorge themselves on seems relentless, pounding inwardly against the skull of the young leader as the magic ingrained within him responds to the very creatures the magic was made to oppose ravages the land around him.
He hoists the shield on his back, peering around himself. There isn’t much to see. He’s well hidden behind the low undergrowth, and his naturally small frame makes it easy to hide behind the shield his Blotahuƞka Tȟaƞka- his great war-chief, his right hand, his closest advisor - left him. He takes a deep breath, keeping the shield flat across his back as he slowly walks his way through the ancient forest.
Trees rise around him, and a smile grows slowly on his face as he stumbles across first one root burned to soot, taller than him, then two, then three more and a whole patch of them. He steps carefully, for the flames that spill from his Blotahuƞka Inuƞpa’s mouth - his deputy war-chief, his closest friend, his left-hand - melt the ever-present snow on the forest floor and it refreezes quickly into sheets of ice as she fights. He follows the frosted path - it will lead towards the south gate, and her fiery presence will deter any from following her.
She knows what she’s doing, and she makes a point to help her Čuwé even when not at his side.
He travels slowly through the morning trees, praying to the spirits above that he makes it somewhere safe. He is unsure, lacking the confidence to be the effective leader he knows he should be. Many were against him when he gained the title of Sister of Abundance, granting him control of the city’s coffers. He presses onward nonetheless, despair filling his heart, but logic filling his head.
The trees tower above the young leader as he travels; they are the great dawnwood trees, towering hundreds of metres above the forest floor. These mighty giants are lost amidst the low cloud cover, and even the early sun burning away the breath of the morning spirit, Anpao, is not enough to gain vision of the crowns of the giants. For many of the oldest ones, only Anpao has seen the crowns of these regal giants.
Ičamna leans heavily against a particularly thick-rooted one as he moves slowly, regaining his breath. He is not out of shape, but crouching and walking for any period of time is tiring when one is not used to moving without being seen.
A sudden, sharp, crack behind him causes him to whip around, banging the shield on the tree as he desperately lifts the shield, hoping to stop the defiling claws of the abomination before it reaches him.
But he has nothing to fear.
“Sestryonka Ičamna,” a massive woman, standing nearly three heads above Ičamna and twice as wide, stands amidst the trees, holding a hammer bigger than his torso. Her hair is braided in the traditional style of his people, but her skin is fair as the snow and her hair is as golden as wheat.
“Olga!” Ičamna’s voice is excited as he recognises the warriors. “Sigr! Hildr!” He spots the two women standing slightly behind their leader - Sigr and Hildr.
While Olga is as stout as the great dawnwoods of the city and just as towering, her sisters are slightly shorter and built as fluid and languidly as the weeping willow - both hold spears and a shield, their hair braided the same as Olga’s. Married as they are, Sigr and Hildr share a larger version of the young leader’s own marriage chimes behind their left ears, braided into their hair.
Ičamna notices theirs, and touches his own as he remembers his husband. He hoists the shield and looks towards the three giantesses in front of him.
“We must return to the city,” he speaks with false confidence, his voice shaking as he gives the order.
Olga bows deeply, her deep blue eyes not moving from her leader’s figure as she does. Behind her, her two sisters copy her motions.
Sigr and Hildr’s grey-green eyes remind Ičamna of the flesh of creatures long dead, and he shivers as he stares down three of the mightiest warriors within the city. The dark circles around the eyes of all three speaks to a long journey here.
“Lead way,” Olga’s deep voice rumbles, gesturing for her Čuwé to take charge; An invitation to utilise his power in front of three giantesses who will follow his command, regardless of how sure he was of himself.
Olga’s comforting presence encourages the young leader to move forward, less cautiously into the world. At his behest, she takes up a position behind him while her two sisters flank him.
Surrounded, and feeling safer than he had all morning, Ičamna uses the last of Anpao’s early morning light to guide the small group to the base of the walls of the great city - from here, he can open a door using the magic within him that no other person, save his companion leaders, could enter.
The walls of the city are not made of stone, and nor are they made of earth. They are not made of wooden stakes driven into the ground, and they are not made of anything from the hands of the people who live behind them.
The great walls of this mighty city are grown. The Unči herself sings to the trees, encouraging them into growth. At her behest, the trunks of the mighty dawnwoods and weeping willows and stands of aspens surrounding the city are melded, and grown into each other. Through this continuous wall of living wood, the city is kept safe by a natural barrier that only a few may enter, or even see.
Ičamna approaches, and the three giantesses create a smaller wall of flesh behind him. Their spears bristle outwards as they turn their backs to the young leader, though they know not what he does, nor his intentions, at the wall.
He pulls out a flint dagger from within his heavily furred clothes. With a quick slash and a gasp of pain, the Sister of Abundance carves a shallow gash into his forearm. Blood wells up and dribbles onto the forest floor around him.
Though none take note, a small plant sprouts where his blood pools on the dirt ground, deliberately kept clear near the walls.
“Sestryonka?” Olga’s voice is questioning, but she does not step forward to help him. He holds up no hand, but merely looks at her, nodding tightly. The pain is getting to him. He is not used to pain, nor battle.
He steps forward, inadvertently crushing the young plant that his blood created. Holding his arm out, he dribbles blood onto the great living wall in front of him, and more sprout underfoot.
“Unči Makȟa, wawičaȟya oya’sin kho šni, uƞiyowiƞkiya pi iyopteya yé.”
Grandmother Earth, creator of all and none, please allow us passage through.
He repeats this plea, murmuring quietly to the surrounding trees. For the longest minute, dragging on like an eternity, the trees say nothing. Do nothing.
And then they begin to groan, and they begin to moan, and the trees begin to sway and to rock and to scream and to cry -
And then silence.
Olga and her sisters stare at their young leader, his face almost as pale as theirs. Blood still pools at the roots of the trees in front of him, and he begins to sway slowly from side to side.
Olga sweeps him off his feet as his world goes black, with the last thing he hears is a pop as a squared section of the trees in front of him is pushed forward and tumbles onto the ground in front of them.
The walls of the city are not made of stone, and nor are they made of earth. They are not made of wooden stakes driven into the ground, and they are not made of anything from the hands of the people who live behind them.
The great walls of this mighty city are grown. The Unči herself sings to the trees, encouraging them into growth. At her behest, the trunks of the mighty dawnwoods and weeping willows and stands of aspens surrounding the city are melded, and grown into each other. Through this continuous wall of living wood, the city is kept safe by a natural barrier that only a few may enter, or even see.
Ičamna approaches, and the three giantesses create a smaller wall of flesh behind him. Their spears bristle outwards as they turn their backs to the young leader, though they know not what he does, nor his intentions, at the wall.
He pulls out a flint dagger from within his heavily furred clothes. With a quick slash and a gasp of pain, the Sister of Abundance carves a shallow gash into his forearm. Blood wells up and dribbles onto the forest floor around him.
Though none take note, a small plant sprouts where his blood pools on the dirt ground, deliberately kept clear near the walls.
“Sestryonka?” Olga’s voice is questioning, but she does not step forward to help him. He holds up no hand, but merely looks at her, nodding tightly. The pain is getting to him. He is not used to pain, nor battle.
He steps forward, inadvertently crushing the young plant that his blood created. Holding his arm out, he dribbles blood onto the great living wall in front of him, and more sprout underfoot.
“Unči Makȟa, wawičaȟya oya’sin kho šni, uƞiyowiƞkiya pi iyopteya yé.”
Grandmother Earth, creator of all and none, please allow us passage through.
He repeats this plea, murmuring quietly to the surrounding trees. For the longest minute, dragging on like an eternity, the trees say nothing. Do nothing.
And then they begin to groan, and they begin to moan, and the trees begin to sway and to rock and to scream and to cry -
And then silence.
Olga and her sisters stare at their young leader, his face almost as pale as theirs. Blood still pools at the roots of the trees in front of him, and he begins to sway slowly from side to side.
Olga sweeps him off his feet as his world goes black, with the last thing he hears is a pop as a squared section of the trees in front of him is pushed forward and tumbles onto the ground in front of them.
The unconscious leader is jolted to reality as the massive fist of his guardian pounds relentlessly on the thick, ironwood doors that keep the fortress safe.
“Tuwá hé?” A voice calls from above as the giant continues to pound on the door.
“Komandir Hildr, with Sestryonka Piercing Snow!” Hildr bellows to the guardswoman above.
The woman looks confused with Hildr’s answer, as it is not in the typical tongue of the region, but has all the qualifications required to answer.
“Uh,” the guardswoman’s confusion stalls her.
“Get, er, word is Chew-aye, da?” Hildr shouts instructions at the guardswoman above her, and this instruction the woman seems to understand. She disappears with a nod, and a moment later the gate begins to lift.
Hildr ducks her way under as much of the door as she is capable, though it is not much with her great height.
Waiting for her are two women—Both with skin of midnight and hair that looks to be filled with stars. They both have a commanding presence and a sense of duty about them.
The shorter and older of the two steps forward, a restrained smile on her face. “You have our missing Sister, dearest Hildr.”
Hildr bows deeply, her long braid dragging on the ground in front of her as she shows respect to this woman. “Da. He found us by hidden door, fainted after cutting himself.”
The woman nods thoughtfully, gesturing towards the guardswoman that originally answered Hildr at the gate. The woman quickly rushes forward, grabbing the young man and taking him into the buildings behind them.
“Will he be better, tetya Justinia?” Hildr inquires of the older woman.
Justinia waves her hand dismissively. “You got him here in one piece and he’s still breathing. I have my deputy and his guard here already. He could not be safer.”
She waits for no response, but turns and leaves the conversation.
The second woman speaks as Justinia leaves.
“Tis one is curious – where are you from? Tis one ‘as not ‘eard tat accent before.” Her words are sharp, spoken as though from the tip of her tongue, and an afro the size of a small cloud bobs with each sharp word.
Hildr chooses not to respond, but instead tells the stoic woman, “I must help wife, but when this over, We will tell you everything about motherland.” She holds a hand over her heart and nods to the midnight woman, who smiles in return.
“Tis one will remember tat,” she says. “Come find ta Čuwé and you will find tis one. Tis one is Ixtel, ta Blotahunka Thanka of ‘is lover!”
Both women laugh at this as Hildr hoists her spear and quickly runs out the gatehouse, calling out for her wife.
The woman with a black afro hoists her bow, following her friend to the top of the gatehouse wall.
“Pretty Braid,” the woman says. “Any messages?”
Pretty Braid rolls her shoulders, uncomfortable after having carried the young leader to his resting bed for the Innkeeps to look after, and says nothing. Rather, she pulls a small horn from her belt and lifts it to her lips.
AWOO. AWOO.
“We’ll find out, blotahuƞka Ixtel.”
The pair of women stand at the top of the gate, watching the battlefield below them.
Ixtel, the more experienced of the two, watches as the giant woman Hildr meets up with her wife again, as a third woman who dwarfs even those two, gives them a moment to greet each other before the trio begin to fight again. While she thinks about the duties of the warriors below her, she reaches into her afro and grabs a stick of cinnamon, chewing on it thoughtfully as she thinks of how best to defend the gaping wound that is the fortress from further devastation.
Pretty Braid messes with her braid as she stands, her thoughts trying to make sense of what she sees below her. She grew up in this city, and these are her people and her friends she is watching fight below her. Her hands twitch towards her bow and glaive, but she resists as she remembers her duty–To guard this gate, and to protect her charge, the healer Justinia.
Pretty Braid raises her horn to her lips again and lets out three short blasts.
AWOO. AWOO. AWOO.
Immediately, a flurry of activity overtakes the warriors on the battlefield below. The scattered groups center on the three giantesses as their focal point, forming a U-shaped barricade around the mouth of the path up to the fortress.
After a few minutes of fighting, Olga shouts to a group of warriors and they break off, letting the U close as they leave.
Pretty Braid and Ixtel both note that these are the most wounded of the warriors, as many are helping each other up the path. At least two are dragged on a shield.
Ixtel turns, shouting at a group of warriors that have grouped up behind the gate. “Tere is a shield-wall at ta bottom of ta pat! You are ta join, power, and send runners ta find any survivors tat you can!”
She glares darkly down at the group of warriors below her. Lances, shields, bows, and hammers are all held high, and many warriors are clearly nervous.
“Remember ‘oo you fight for!” Ixtel shouts at the group of warriors, attempting to placate their nerves. “You are fighting to save ta Sisters, to bring tem to ta fortress, to save ta children and bring tem to teir futures! You are fighting to keep ta fire burning!”
Ixtel gives a signal to Pretty Braid, who immediately raises the gate with a quick motion, having been waiting for this signal since the first blasts were set off.
“Go now!” Ixtel shouts out. “Wit ta blessing of ta Burning Woman, save tis ‘ome!”
War cries echo out as the war party meets their injured brethren on the path. A few of Justinia’s helpers had followed the war party out, and they help collect the injured and bring them into the fortress, off into the shadows of Justinia’s care.
Pretty Braid and Ixtel turn to look back upon the battlefield below.
