Artwork by Jin-joon Park.
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“Don’t worry, ma. I’m coming for you. I won’t let anything hur-“
“SHUT UP! Leave me alone, you’re NOT MY SON!”
Aldeena woke screaming, drenched in sweat. It took a few seconds for the light of Hysh in the Ghurian morning to finally get her eyes to react to it.
She frowned, panting, struggling to catch her breath and still trembling. Her mustori, startled awake by her scream, was up on all fours, frowning quizzically at her, and tensing up in wait. Her eyes adjusted, and she was still confused as to where she was. Her eyes darted to her surroundings: shade, enclosed space, surface of dead leaves, dark wood around her. Light streaming through a makeshift fence of thick branches. The sounds of birds chirping from outside. Oh, right. This was the shelter they found last night, a knothole deep in an old yellow mangol tree, one without fangs.
It is not here. They are alone. It’s ok.
Immediately her eyes widen with realization and she held her hands to her mouth, terrified. She starts breathing fast in a panic, but quickly focuses to slow it down. How much noise did she make? She hugged her mustori and calmly put her hand on his snout too. The trained animal understands and they both stay very still. A few moments of silence pass, her ears perked for any sound outside. It took two more minutes for the low growling to be audible, and the sound of a tiny branch cracking. Slowly, she could now feel the faint vibration of a large predator’s paws across the ground, the sound of crunching the undergrowth very low and slow. She could hear it sniffing the air now, brushing against the tree’s bark outside. Her heart is in her throat, her breath very, very slow. Not the mustori’s though, the poor creature is terrified. Aldeena slowly brushes its fur, its habitual constellation patterns fading away due to the stress. “Please, calm down!” she thinks loudly in her head.
She has no idea what the creature outside is, what it can do, nor how big it is. It can fry them inside the tree with lightning, it can set it on fire with its breath, who knows.
Five. Minutes. Pass.
She could no longer hear the predator. But she had not heard it move away.
Ten. More. Minutes.
Finally she hears a huffing outside, followed by a growl, and a quick succession of rustling and sounds of branches breaking. Trees creaking as they are being bent. The sound moves away from her.
Five. More. Minutes.
Aldeena finally allowed herself to breathe more deeply, slowly, relieved that her knowledge of this place had saved her yet one more time. Time to go now.
Before it shows up.
Aldeena moved carefully but quickly through the undergrowth of the Rhondol woods, careful to stay out of the open. Her clothes were dirty but well kept. They were sturdy leather and hide from merataura, and her trained skills in running the wilds of Ghur allowed her to blend in to her surroundings. She carried her mustori guide in her pack: nobody would want its rich blue fur to be spotted from afar by inquisitive eyes waiting for prey.
She had been trekking across the wilds of Rhondol for three days now, across the new realmgate path that opened months ago, chasing her real son. Not the abomination that had lived with her for ten years. She is sure of where he really is, because the old crone told her. They don’t seem to have the slightest fear of what may come for them. The woman just told her when she asked.
Her village is ashes now, burnt down simply to make a point. The point that she wasn’t crazy. They didn’t know. Better to rob the creature of the charade, and force it all to end, than to subject those people to its games. They will rebuild, but this way the creature can’t keep pretending everything is fine. Calling Aldeena crazy and “unwell”. Her! A retired First Sargeant of the Golden Lions, vanguard battalion first division. A veteran of the Reclamation Crusades and a survivor of the Charonhydra’s rampage. From her own so-called teenage son! Better to rob the impostor of its home, and unmask the fake relationship, no matter the social cost and the risk to herself. Seeing a 2 foot longknife plunged into its heart and it not dying was finally enough for her friends and neighbors to start believing her, but by then the marketplace was ablaze.
She only had one place to go. And it was a relief to just leave it all behind. Too many years of broken bonds.
But the creature just did not die then. It’s still pursuing her.
“I’m going to find you, Darmo.” Aldeena thought to herself. “I don’t care if I’m breaking the contract, I already broke it ten times over and hey, I’m still here. There’s no magic in it. We agreed to desperate things in desperate times.”
Aldeena walked alone for three more days, her skills growing up Reclaimed in Izalend granting her the familiarity with the Realm of Beasts needed to survive a trip out here. But Rhondol is not Thondia. The way of life in this continent is more savage, aggressive and mindless, the blooming animal and plant life growing out of bounds and at twice the speed, so they can cannibalize and kill each other and still have enough predators surviving at the end to claim supremacy.
But Aldeena did not notice this. At least not from most of the large predators who should be attacking her every time she turned a corner in these dense woods. They did not make their way to her.
Because she was not alone.
She could see it, from the corner of her eye. The thing that was not her son. It would stay just out of sight, a flash of a smile in the shadows around her… but at night, it came. It talked to her. It would say it would never leave her, no matter what. It would say it would protect her. And its eyes…. Its eyes glinting in the dark, surrounded by swirling mists.
The valley was now in sight. This Furyoth Dell, exactly in the shape as the witch described, in those exact days of travel from the realmgate. It’s a broken land, cliffs jutting in odd directions, ruined buildings showing here and there where the jungle had not yet swallowed them.
Some form of civilization lived here in the Age of Myth most likely, but from the geography she could tell this had been a recent Ghurian upheaval, and the place must’ve been buried under some good feet of rock for the longest time. Exposed for a few decades now, at least?
This place where they, whoever they are, took her son. Chaos worshippers? Daemons? Heck, aelves, for all she knew? She had no idea why they wanted him, and why this doppelganger had taken his place for so many years. And why are they here, in this remote tomb of a place?
She could see some groups of people in the distance. Campfires. Who else is here? She could also see a number of large shapes, moving within the forest, rustling the huge trees as they passed. There are a lot of predators in the valley.
Her mustori was agitated. It was getting restless, and its fur would not show the constellations properly. What is this place?
It had not occurred to her that she was but one of many, being carefully drawn to the Dell… for a purpose.
