On the Hills of Eden

The following morning, once they’d gotten a good night’s rest and the treatment they needed from the Naphthalians, they packed their renewed supplies up and made their preparations to set off for the next village. The Naphthalians, alongside all the other generosities they had bestowed upon the group, had agreed to provide them with another horse to allow all four of them to ride together. But in return, they wanted more concrete reassurance that they’d be safe from the beast that ravaged Mesimeos.

And reassure them they did.

“And could you tie that down to the pole? Right about there, yeah, against the jutting-out part.”

The villagers had gathered around the party members, Soleiman trying his best to dictate instructions to Pallas and Qingxi in an effort to replicate the weapons of the ‘lilac flame’ that he had read about.

“Like… this?” Pallas asked, holding up the curious-looking spear that had a large hollow bamboo shoot slapped onto the side of its shaft.

“Er, well… uh,” Soleiman responded, leaning in and squinting his eyes to inspect the handiwork. Admittedly, it had been a while since even he had made the weapons, so whether or not they would be able to craft anything even half functional was still up in the air. “It’s a little… off, Pallas.”

“Really?” She responded, convinced but a little desperate to get the task over with. They’d been tying shoots to poles for the better half of an hour at this point, and she could hardly see a tangible difference between the one in her hand and the several others that lay disappointingly piled up beside her and Qingxi.

“Yeah, look,” Soleiman said, pointing at nothing. “It needs to be… you know, more… locked in.”

Pallas looked unimpressedly at him, eyebrows raised in scepticism.

“More locked in?”

“...Yeah.”

“Are you sure this’ll work?”

“Of course… I think,” he responded. “Look, if there was anything me and Rumi learnt from fighting those two things,” he continued, “Is that fire really scares them away.”

“Mhm,” Rumi hummed, helping to shuffle some of the failures away with her right hand from the two of them so they’d have more space to work.

Pallas sighed. Alright then, she thought to herself.

“Soleiman,” Qingxi said.

“Yeah?”

“How’s this one?”

Soleiman shuffled closer to inspect her weapon.

It looked well balanced, upon first glance. The tube had not been affixed too far to the shaft’s end, nor had it been placed too close to its middle. Further sizing it up with his eyes and roughly using mental rulers to measure the contraption, he confirmed his earlier observations.

Leaning in closer, he could see as the grooves of the bamboo interlinked with the bumps and rough edges of the shaft’s crude wood well and as the centre points of both the shaft and the hollow shoot lined up more or less perfectly.

He poked the shoot gently, and it didn’t budge. Again and again, slightly harder each time. And, yeah. It was pretty darn solid.

“This is great,” he said, taking the spear from Qingxi’s hands.

Qingxi hummed slightly in pleasant surprise.

“Alright, guys!” he then called out, holding the spear above his head as he beckoned the onlooking Naphthalians closer.

Finally liberated from the task at hand, Pallas got to her feet to listen in on what he had to say.

“This is a fire lance!” He lowered the spear, clenching it with both of his hands as he entered a typical spear-wielding stance- though the back end of the lance was lowered further than usual to make the bamboo shoot be further pronounced.

“This, along with the fire arrows we made earlier, will be what’ll keep the beast away.”

There were slight sounds of oohing and aahing from amongst the crowd of elders.

“But to do that we’ll need a special powder to put in the hole here,” he said, gesturing to the hollow bamboo shoot as he did so. “And in the sacks of the fire arrows. A powder called serpentine powder!”

Pallas crossed her arms approvingly.

“Mister Alexandros, do you have that bucket I asked for last night?”

“Of course I do,” he responded without hesitation. “Though you should know we went through great pains to procure it for you.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

The man huffed in acknowledgement as he began leading the others to a nearby shed.

Once they’d gotten there, they waited around slightly, Pallas and Rumi and Qingxi idly looking around while they heard all sorts of commotion from within the shed as Alexandros and Soleiman dug around for the pot.

It was a bright day, Pallas admitted. It had been a bright few days, actually. They’d been incredibly lucky to have gone on such a sunny streak, especially considering that even any miniscule hint of rain would’ve really put a damper on their spirits.

It made her hopeful, in a way.

Not for long, though.

For as the door to the shed creaked back open, a foul smell described only as a hot mess of a myriad of wastes snuck its way into her nostrils, prompting her to recoil in synchrony with Qingxi as Soleiman emerged from the shed with a large wooden bucket. Alexandros followed behind him, carrying a smaller bucket filled with little black and grey pieces of charcoal.

Pallas’ face scrunched up as she reeled against the assault on her naval cavities, stepping back to see Qingxi had already taken several steps backward, her eyes squinted and her hands placed atop the bandages that were where her mouth and nose would’ve been. Rumi didn’t seem too fazed, though, standing more or less stoically amidst the crowd of elderly Naphthalians while Soleiman and Alexandros plonked their buckets down on the ground for all to see.

“Okay! Uh,” Soleiman started, pausing to grab a bit of his undershirt and place it atop his nose as a filter as Alexandros stepped down to join the rest of the audience. “To make the powder we need three ingredients- wood tar, charcoal and saltpetre.”

The Naphthalians nodded along.

“I’m sure you are already well capable of acquiring the first two, but saltpetre, well, it needs a special bit of processing to create,” he said. “First, you’re gonna have to gather up all the manure you have, then pile it up into pots like this one.”

He gestured to the intimidatingly voluminous pot of hot steaming dung.

“Then, in another pot with small holes in the bottom, place a cloth bag with charcoal and wood ash at the bottom. Then, you transfer the manure over to the holed pot, placing a smaller tray beneath it. Finally, you’ll want to water the manure with urine regularly, so you can collect what drips out.”

“And what would we do with that?” one of the old men in the audience asked.

“Hm? Oh, it’s because when the urine travels through all the poo and charcoal at the bottom, it sort of ferments and collects the essence of the wood ash, you know?” he said, gesturing esoterically to try and represent the motion of urine passing through manure. Somehow.

“Uh huh.”

“So once you’ve collected the transformed urine, pour it into another clean pot whose insides are covered with more wood ash and leave it to boil for a few hours- or until little crystals start to form on its surface.”

He made a little finger-wiggling gesture to try and show the formation of crystals on the urine’s surface.

“Those crystals are what we want, and once we harvest them and crush them up, they become the saltpetre used in the powder we’re trying to create.”

The Naphthalians looked on in silence, visibly still processing the instructions he’d relayed to them.

“Is that okay?”

…Silence.

“Well,” Alexandros said, breaking the silence. “At least we’d have another use for all that animal shit.”

“Any questions?”

“How long does it take?”

“How long? Should be around a day or two before the first batch gets done.”

“A day or two?”

“What happens if it comes after us before then?”

“Well, erm.”

“It won’t,” Pallas said. “It was headed west from Mesimeos last time we saw it.”

“And that was two days ago, no? How can you be so sure it isn’t headed this way right now?”

“I mean…”

Alexandros stood with his mouth agape.

“Really?” he asked.

“We- we can help set up some immediate measures if you want,” Soleiman responded. “But we shouldn’t be staying here too long, in case, you know…”

Alexandros looked as though he wanted to say something. Though, nothing ever came out.

“Alright,” he sighed. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

Qingxi gave Pallas a quick glance.

“I’m sorry, Sir, but we’re just not in a state to-”

“Yeah,” he cut in, waving Soleiman aside and avoiding eye contact as best he could with his right arm. “I know.”

The sound of hooves against dirt once again followed them as they made their way out of the aged village. They still had plenty of time left in the day, judging by the sky, and the Naphthalians had said the nearest villages were only another thirty or so kilometres away.

The second mare they’d been given by the villagers now allowed them to ride as a group, Pallas riding along with Qingxi in the front with Soleiman and Rumi behind them. Usually, it’d be a bit strange to have two one-handed people on a horse together, but Qingxi had complained of feeling exceptionally weak that afternoon, so they decided on letting her sleep against Pallas’ back.

Now on they rode towards their next destination, from which they would then depart for the next. Hopping from village to village to put progressively more distance between them and the Hashashiyyin and to win them the support and cooperation they would need to survive and lie in waiting for Rei’s return.

At the same time, though, there was a bad taste in their mouths. Especially in Pallas’. They’d just left the dying village of Naphthalia behind with nothing aside from instructions on how to defend themselves from a threat not one of the villagers had really seen. A threat that they themselves knew nothing about outside of its apparent shared aversion to fire and light.

But they didn’t have a choice. The raven could not always be willing to risk her life.

The two days of waiting they’d spent while Soleiman and Rumi slowly trekked towards Naphthalia had done enough of a mental toll on them and their anxiety, each passing moment making it feel as though the Hashashiyyin were creeping closer. Physically stepping forward with each second, approaching them unceasingly.

They would have to move, lest they were caught. Or so that was what she told herself.

…

No, Pallas resolved.

They would continue riding onwards. They would continue evading the Hashashiyyin. Because she had made a promise to the Naphthalians.

And they would see their children yet again.

“I’m sure they would forgive you,” Pallas heard Rumi say.

“What makes you say that?”

“Because, while we could’ve stayed to help them protect themselves a little better, that would mean that we would leave all the other villages totally unprotected, right?” she continued. “That doesn’t sound very fair to the others.”

“I guess so, yeah,” he said. “I don’t think very many people think so selflessly, though.”

“Didn’t they say their children were out east?”

“Hm,” he hummed. “Alright then. I see your point. Good thinking, Rumi.”

“Hehe.”

So they rode on. Jumping from village to village, proclaiming to each population that Pallas was their Soteira. At each stop they made sure to obtain whatever they needed for the next day or two of travel, giving the villagers the tools and the knowledge they needed to protect themselves from the beast. And with each stop, they breathed a little bit of life back into the Minervan countryside.

At each village they visited, they assigned a few of the youngest members- all of which were above 30, to the role of messenger. Armed with fire lances and ample sachets of the serpentine powder Soleiman instructed them to synthesise, these messengers struck out with a renewed boldness through the forest- no longer frightened by the beasts- the ataphoi, that had haunted him and Rumi and massacred Mesimeos.

They reconquered the paths that cut through the thick of the trees, once more connecting the several disparate settlements and allowing for each to communicate with the other. Balancing out labour and allowing them to support each other and the party, providing them with intel whenever they needed.

No longer were they isolated and besieged, left to wither and rot at the hands of time now they’d been robbed of their youth. Now, they had been reinvigorated, their dying embers rekindled by a sense of community and cooperation empowered by the serpentine powder they made in heaps and the lilac flames it spewed forth.

Sometimes, the four of them would take time to rest and recuperate, camping out in the wilderness while they awaited updates from the rest of the villages.

During these breaks, they learned all sorts of things. Sometimes the messengers would tell them of attempted assaults by the ataphoi on their villages, all of which had been successfully repelled by each one’s nightguard and their lilac weaponry. And other times they would instead tell them of new innovations the villagers themselves had come up with, like learning to press the soaking wet dung to wring out every last bit of fermented urine or employing caged canaries as perimeter alarms.

Occasionally, though, they received personal requests- either written in little letters or simply relayed by mouth. Sometimes the villagers would ask favours of them, telling them of the last known whereabouts of their estranged family members or friends and requesting that they check up on them. Other times they would request assistance with arbitration, appealing to Pallas specifically for her solutions to squabbles between villages over stuff like access to manure and the workload distribution of that week’s transport duties. And, other times still, they received simple thanks, accompanied usually by beautiful local flowers- though sometimes they arrived half-wilted given the distances and time involved in the journey.

Nevertheless, the party took the gifts with gratitude each time. It kept them going, allowing them to push further and further, seeing more faces, meeting more people. Hearing their griefs and their sorrows, celebrating their victories and accomplishments. Living alongside them, even though they never saw any village for longer than a day or two.

This was nothing like their time in Gravitas Minerva, at least for the two siblings. They weren’t just passing through large metropolises anymore, stopping only to do business and try out some of the local area’s specialties. They were truly interacting with each village, talking with their people and getting to know them. Sitting with them, eating with them, living with them. It was like nothing else they’d experienced in their lives.

And so on they continued, further and further east.

Onwards towards Minlos, the birthplace of the 3rd Soteira.