A Requiem for Riverswift


Inari had always liked the Zipsum. You could mess with them all day long, and the next day, provided you had candy or a particularly tasty nut on hand, they'd forget all about it. Usually. Well, he thought so, anyways. I'm getting a ways away from the point, here. The point is, he'd always liked the Zipsum, and was therefore horrified by what he saw when he came over the deep, verdant rise and saw the Riverswift encampment off in the distance.

The young Prill's heart was close to the forest; he could sense the wrongness coming from the distant tree-village far more than he could make any details out visually, and what he sensed chilled him to the bone.

What he saw was almost worse.

First dozens, then hundreds of the Riverswift Zipsum, swarming out the front gate of their village, dressed for war. But that wasn't what horrified him.

No, what horrified him was the bloody, empty sockets where their eyes had been. Not all of them were eyeless at this point, but enough that he didn't want to get anywhere near them.

'Well,' he thought absently, his mind oddly detached from the horror of the eyeless Karians racing through the valley below, 'I guess that means I won't be able to ask Speaks-Profound-Always for her insight in my Quest...'

A shift in the behavior of the racing Zipsum. A dozen of them changed course and rushed straight towards his position.

Inari's eyes widened. Not knowing what else to do, he immediately began to sing. His was the song of Wood; the song of vitality; the song of all that was green and growing. In his song could be heard the joy of spring, of nature's first golden green, and the precious, precious illusion that there would be no new winter to come. It resounded over the rise, and all around him the voices of the wind through the trees, of the growing grass, of the birds, of all Karia lifted up in denial of the horror below.

The Zipsum were upon him. None of these were eyeless, but those that he had seen had made such an impression on him that he felt no desire to remain here.

Inari ducked underneath the poisoned blades of the first of his attackers, then the second. The others circled warily, waiting for an opening.

He did not intend to give them one.

Another slash, another frantic dodge. His back collided with a great purple-leaved tree, and he knew that he would not be able to dodge again.

"Sorry, friends," he sang, every word matching a new note in the song of Wood. "But this is one dance I'm just going to have to sit out."

With that, he stepped backwards into the supposedly solid tree, and was gone, leaving the angered Zipsum furiously stabbing at the knotted bark with their poisoned blades.

A moment later, a hundred kilometers south of the Riverswift village, a completely exhausted young Prill staggered out of a huge, cragly old tree and fell to his knees. He took a deep breath, and then another, and another. Damn. He'd seen his whole life flash before his eyes! That had taken more out of him than he'd expected, but he was glad to be alive. Whatever was wrong with those Zipsum, it was bad, bad news.

Bad enough that he might just have to make a little side trip to the Grand Chantry and report directly to the Choir of Elders.

He'd never had much respect for authority figures, but at this point, he wasn't sure what else to do. Hopefully, once he'd made his report, he'd be able to head back out and continue with his Quest. No, scratch that 'hopefully.' 'Definitely.' He didn't want to get stuck with those tradition-bound, terrible old Prill for any longer than he absolutely had to.

But what he had sensed, there... he felt bile creeping up in the back of his throat, and immediately he began to sing once more. The sheer growth and vitality of the song of Wood soon formed a kind of a buffer around his mind, a shield made out of life and joy and the promise of renewal.

Soon, he was back to his old, cheerful self.
Still, best to warn the elders. Besides, maybe one of them would be helpful. Give him a little insight into his Quest. Not like Winter.

Tossing his pack over his shoulder, and almost instinctively hiding his trail with every fox-trick he knew, Inari began the trek back towards the Prill lands.

Meanwhile, a hundred kilometers to the north, the Riverswift made for Ben Hamor.

2 comments:

Aric Clark said...

Inari almost got himself killed there.

Paul Wise said...

Yes, I know.
The only reason I wrote that was that I suddenly had the most bizzare image of Inari as Paul Revere. O_o


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