Chapter 61: Before the Storm Speaks
He chose to bury it.
Chris wasn't entirely sure why. Korr had suggested that they feed it to the vines much like they had been doing to the various other corpses, practical and unsentimental. Chris knew he wasn't wrong but something about the way it had looked up at him at the end sat badly enough that he found himself directing the Critic to open a space in the soil outside the eastern wall before he'd consciously made the decision to have it buried.
Sera watched him do it without comment. That was its own kind of answer to her thoughts on it.
It wasn't amber to preserve him, and there weren't flowers as a marker. Just soil layered over something that had spent its whole existence being used and had tried, at the very end, to be something else that came to him for what he realized was help and protection.
He didn't say anything over it. He just stood there for a moment, the grave having been dug and filled before returning to the village.
"The Voice has been quiet lately hasn't it, having no opinions on what happened or this?" Sera asked when he returned to the village. She was moving better on her leg now, the shadow berry's work showing in the way she'd stopped favoring it, though she hadn't mentioned anything about it.
"It won't stay that way," Chris said with a sigh, feeling how it seemed to lurk at the back of his mind.
He was at the Rootmind that evening, its root connected back into him as he practiced trying to focus 'seeing' out as far as possible well practicing to keep his sense of self and not be swept up into the plants feelings, having been told the better he got at filtering them well connected the easier it would be to do so when not connected, he was also doing what he could to prepare for another attack, reinforcing there weak point that was created when the manifestation appeared at the periphery of his vision.
The old man in the tailored suit looked different tonight. Less composed but with his cane was still planted in front of him, but there was something tight in the set of his jaw, the mismatched eyes fixed on the direction of the dungeon cliffs with an expression that wasn't amusement for once but rather notes of anger mixed with something he couldn't place, possibly disgust but it was hard to tell.
"It's feeding on them," the Voice said without preamble. " Feeding on its own forces. How deplorable, using the dungeon as a closed circuit, consuming the ones that served their purpose and driving the rest at you well inducing a constant and forced increase in numbers to make it possible, using its own boundless essence to achieve it." The thin smile that followed didn't reach either eye. "Even I find that distasteful and a waste."
Chris watched him carefully. This was different from the usual approach. No careful angling toward a point. No soft sympathy wrapped around a hook. Just something that sounded irritated and angry.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because it has somehow begun to consume my connection to you, cutting the ever slight and tenuous connection we shared." The words came out clipped and sharp as if they cost something to admit. "It's begun to feed indiscriminately and its reach through the dungeon has grown considerably beyond what I had originally thought possible. I am telling you all this because it affects me as much as it affects you, whether I like it or not." The mismatched eyes finally moved to Chris. "We have more in common than you prefer to acknowledge."
"Don't," Chris said flatly. "Don't now try to spin things now into how we need to work together or how I must trust you or anything like that."
The Voice tilted his head. "I'm not suggesting trust. I'm simply stating a fact."
Chris held his gaze for a moment longer then looked away. He filed it away in the back of his mind the way he filed the things he didn't have an answer for yet.
The night was uneventful, not a single beasts approached and that had put them all more on edge than he would have liked to admit, with a rather unexpected guest turning up that morning, a centaur, one of the beasts he hadn't seen in a long while but knew they had been watching him, thankful though that they had stopped firing arrows at them.
Sera told him how there was no ill intent felt from it, something that surprised him after their previous interactions but he seemed to move purposeful. Heading directly for the gate rather than circling or approaching from cover.
He was at the gate before Sera was, which was unusual enough that she gave him a look when she arrived and found him already standing there.
The centaur seemed to keep his distance, making him feel unsure due to how different this was from the dungeon waves and its Minotaur's. Its human torso weathered and marked with patterns burnt into the skin in spiraling lines that moved like roots. Its eyes were pale, almost white. He heard Korr mutter softly about them being shaman's markings and how Sera seemed to snap her head to him in clear surprise.
It carried no weapon, simply raising one hand with its palm outward and waited, clearly doing what it could to show it came in peace.
Chris opened the gate slightly, enough to be seen. "You came alone and unarmed?"
"The message I carry requires only one voice, not the many" the centaur said. Its tone was aged and measured, like someone who had rehearsed the shape of the words without knowing the language well enough. "I and my fellow shamans saw the smoke before the fire. An empire's hunger that moves through the dust. Many feet. Many blades. Coming for the green place and what grows in it to take it for their own, unknowingly aiding the hungry dark from beyond."
Chris kept his expression neutral. "How long till they come? And you mean the thing in the dungeon? What even is it?"
"The visions do not speak in days. Only in certainty." The pale eyes held his steadily. "They come and so shall It. Even the dark one shows interest."
"Why warn me?" He asked. "Your kind attacked just like everything else, even firing arrows at my plants and then watching me for ages now."
Something seemed to shift in the centaur's expression. Not guilt, he wasn't sure they could feel something like that. "At the beginning it was not by our own choice. The green place changes what it touches and allowed us to free some of our own from the hungry dark, we shamans see what grows here alongside how it has managed to resist it." A pause. "We see what our future is able to become. Our people's future is tied to this place whether we wish it or not. We hope to see it as the brighter future, with them running free and the ground filled with life rather than the future where it's strained perpetually red and slowly consumed, there future, there life and even freedom stripped away."
Before Chris could ask what any of that even meant or demand some more answers the centaur lowered its hand and turned. No ceremony and no waiting for a response, simply walking away.
"That's it?" Sera asked from behind him as she approached, her gaze scanning the surroundings and looking at its retreating back.
The centaur didn't look back. Within moments the Barrens dust had swallowed it entirely.
Chris stood at the open gate staring at the empty space it had left behind.
Korr appeared at her side, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Shamanic warning tradition," he said quietly. "Among the centaur tribes it means the visions were clear enough that they felt obligated to act on them regardless of the cost to themselves. They don't give those lightly and this one was surprisingly less cryptic than normal." He paused. "They also don't give them to those they see as enemies unless they have no choice or feel they are a future ally."
Chris turned to look at him.
Korr met his gaze evenly. "It came to you as something between an enemy and a future ally. Which is more interesting than either option since it was in interest of their race rather than a single tribe, something that records say is rarely done."
Chris looked back at the empty Barrens and said nothing for a while. At least one of the empires would be coming with Ill intent if the warning was to be believed. He'd known it was the most likely outcome since Lyra left mostly due to the ass of a knight, but he tried to hope for the best well preparing for the worse, the thing he realized was that knowing something will happen and just having a feeling of what might were different things and the centaur's pale eyes had shifted something from the latter to the former.
"We need to grow faster," Chris finally said, the words taking him by surprise. "Whatever we're missing in the defenses, whatever you think we need more of Korr. We start today as our enemies have gone from the dungeon to an empire, from beasts to people, they may seem the same but people are able to react to a situation, think properly and plan unlike the beasts we've been facing."
Korr nodded once, understanding exactly what Chris was really asking.
They were halfway through the morning's work, Chris directing new thorn growth, weaving the various thorny plants into righter, sharper and more versatile forms along the northern approach well Korr walked the perimeter with the critical eye of someone redesigning a fortification, when he felt the plants tell him someone was coming from the south. One person seemingly moving slowly in a similar way Sera had so long ago.
Chris reached through the network to get a clearer sense of it. Human. Exhausted beyond what most people walked through. Their Intent so much harder to read when not connected but he could faintly make out desperation rather than hostility and oddly enough a sense of calculation that threw him for a loop. Even half dead, whatever was coming was still counting things with a calculating feel, he felt like whoever they were had even been calculating their own life.
He found Sera already moving toward the southern wall, her hand on her sword out of habit.
"Leave it," he said softly, causing her to look at him in confusion. "I'll go to the gate as is proper for a host greeting a guest, and he has no ill intent, but I can't say we aren't getting popular, two guests in one day." His attempt at a joke caused her to give him a flat look but she still relented.
The man who appeared from the heat shimmer of the Barrens was not impressive in any physical sense like Korr and Sera had been. He was middle-aged, soft in the way that spoke of a life lived behind tables and ledgers rather than in training yards, though whatever softness had been there when he started his journey had been stripped back considerably by the Barrens. His clothing had clearly been good once, the kind that advertised a certain level of prosperity. Now it seemed to be held together by determination and dried sweat in roughly equal measure. He was limping badly with his ankle visibly swollen.
But his eyes.
Even in his half dead state his eyes moved across the village walls, the Ancient Ent, the visible upper growth of the bamboo and even to the canopy made by his trees. They were sharp and alive in a way that the rest of him wasn't. Even as he staggered the last few paces toward the gate those eyes were working, and Chris could see they were cataloguing, noting and weighing everything with an impassive gaze.
He stopped when he saw Chris, looking over and clearly analyzing every part of him before his gaze moved past him to where Korr stood visible on the wall above, his breath hitching for a moment before turning to find Sera at the edge of his peripheral vision.
Something moved across his face that was equal parts fear and confusion before he seemed to come to a conscious decision to set that fear aside because the alternative was dying in the Barrens dust. He straightened as much as his leg allowed as he returned his focus to Chris.
"I heard," he began, his voice cracked and dry as he licked his lips nervously, "that there was something worth finding out here." He looked at the gate, at the plants moving slowly in the heat, ready to strike him. "But it's clear the rumors didn't do this place any justice."
Chris looked at him for a moment. "What's your name?"
"Oswin." A pause. "I own a rather large trading company spanning multiple cities and even owning a solid trade route." Another pause, shorter as his face flashed with hurt and anger. "Or rather I did before that bitch and her lover took everything from me, so I suppose at the moment I'm mostly just Oswin, the former merchant who would very much like to not die in a desert."
The Ancient Ent made a low sound something between a creak and a word that Chris had come to recognize as an amused laugh.
Chris looked at him, seeing the nervousness before stepping to the side.
"Come in then, Oswin." He finally felt like the village would become what it was originally made for, to take in those who had nowhere else to go.