“What is the main issue with white meat?”

“It’s dry?”

“Good job!” Ra’fa pattedher eldest daughter’s head. “You can keep it soft and juicy if it’s good meat and is perfectly cooked, but honestly, it’s hard to be consistent, even for me. So, today, I’ll teach you how to fry poultry, we’ll use the bread crumbs I made with yesterday’s bread.”

“For lunch?” The little girl with cloudy eyes was looking at her mother in surprise. “Isn’t that a bit heavy? I have a training session after this.”

“No no no, we are preparing this evening’s meal. That’s the secret. If you don’t want dry poultry, you need to marinate it. And I’ve never found anything better than simple Mos juice, salt and pepper for that. You don’t need to cut the meat in pieces now, but it is better when you marinate it I found…Nay, pick up a kitchen knife, not your dagger.”

“But I cleaned it!”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

The little girl grumbled but did as she was asked.

“Good, now that we have our cuts, not too big or too small; it needs to be one or two bites, we put in a bowl with our juice, and let it sit there for six hours, covered, of course.”

“That’s like four bites for Liz.”

“And three for you.”

“…Anyway, do we really need to do all of this just to get it a bit more juicy? Who cares, really?”

“Mhhh, Liz cares. Isn’t fried poultry her favourite dish? Do you think she’ll enjoy it as much if I didn’t put so much care into it? Isn’t nice to see her smile like that?”

“…Yes.”

“Isn’t that worth it?”

Moment out of time.

Nay hadn’t eaten anything in hours, and even then, it had only been one of the very sugary exotic fruits that she had peeled with Bubble. Her stomach was protesting audibly, and its plaintive screams were one of the two only things shattering the ambient silence. The Legio was thinking that they would soon need to stop to eat, in the middle of the under-jungle in pitch darkness, just to keep her belly quiet.

The walk in the dark was hypnotic. She had the wandering thought that Green Tree had been eaten a long time ago, and had been replaced with something that mimicked his Rreico. She was being led by a monster straight to its lair. She only had the rhythm of life to calm herself, and she couldn’t imagine how the old man had to be feeling right now. The silence, the dark, the sensations of her body. There was nothing else around them, not even insects. The only other Rreico than Nay’s and Green Tree was the one belonging to the Hymere itself.

“IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII.”

The banshee scream struck her eardrums painfully. Every five minutes, they got used to the silence, before a scream pierced them. The creatures, because they were many considering the frequency of the screams, were still far, but Nay knew they were being guided towards them.

She was trembling. She had been lucky to win a fight against one of them, she didn’t see how she would manage to win repeatedly.

The time seemed infinite. She had lost track of it in the dark. The banshee screams were her only reference point, a morbid tick of a clock, that would ring its bell only at the time of their demise.

“IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!”

“Iiiiiiiiiii”

“iii”

Nay didn’t understand immediately what had changed, but the Rreico of her guide had calmed. He seemed relieved. She couldn’t see what was different though. The dark was still complete.

It was the sensation at her feet that informed her.

They were going down. At first, it was very slight, but soon the slope became very strong, almost to the point where they couldn’t walk anymore. Nay had to put a hand behind her, on the ground, to not fall. At some point, she saw a faint light to their right. It was far away and barely noticeable, but to the Legio in the under-jungle, this was the sun in an ocean of black ink.

“Lynn!” Fortrrrr!” Green Tree shouted.

The light stopped flickering, and Nay felt the rope around her change directions.

They arrived at the light pretty soon, and Nay saw the young Cali woman under the torchlight. Lynn was sitting down on the slope, meaning she was still almost standing, and was looking around anxiously.

Nay saw the contour of Green Tree in front of her come into view, then after a few more steps, she managed to see her own body again, surging from the nothingness of the under-jungle.

As Lynn spotted her grandfather, she clearly refrained from crying, as she ran to catch him in her arms. She almost stumbled and dropped the torch, but Green Tree caught her effortlessly. They didn’t say a thing.

There was something beautiful about their Rreico at that moment.

“IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!”

It was time to leave, and there was no need of any concertation to know that. Green Tree removed the rope linking him to Nay, took Lynn’s torch, and they continued their descent to the heart of the Hymere.

They couldn’t go down fast or they would break their necks, the ground was becoming rocky, and there were enormous boulders two or three times their size that were extruding from the slope as if they had been planted there deliberately. The more they descended, the more the place became strange and unsettling. Everything was unnatural, everything had edges. The rocks were black, the ground and leaves were black and of course, the sky was black.

The Legio quickly forgot to look around though, she looked almost only at the depths beneath them.

Because the Hymere Rreico was originating there, it was an ocean. As if she was looking at Gite’s coastline, but under the aspect of a rhythm of life.

Or maybe it would have been more correct to say it was a lake, because she wasn’t seeing the high waves, the tempestuous weather, only an immense surface of calm water. The torch sometimes revealed runes on the boulders they were passing. Enchantments, without a doubt, but none that the Legio recognized.

Then the slope stopped, but as gradually as it had started. Nay had no idea how deep they were now, but the Rreico of the infinite lake was even deeper. That she could sense it from that far away was a testament of its ridiculous power.

“IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!”

And Nay was now able to sense the Rreico of their pursuers.

“Too late, we have arrived.” Green Tree looked at where the scream had come with a mocking grin.

The ground wasn’t rocky anymore, just covered with orange and brown leaves, just like at the top of this giant well they had descended into. Nay wasn’t reassured by Green Tree’s words though. The banshees were extremely close-by, and she counted at least five.

Despite what he had said, the Cali dean walked fast. Nay and Lynn followed him for ten metres or so before Nay stopped feeling the horror stories animals Rreicos completely.

Lynn sighed in relief. “This wasn’t my most peaceful trip to the temple.”

“Ha! Probably my third worst.” Green Tree had a large smile on his face.

Nay looked at him in disbelief. “You had worse than this!?”

“Oh yeah! I got lost in the under-jungle when I was ten. That was definitely the worst.” He didn’t seem traumatized at all, even looking quite giddy at being able to tell her the story. “And the first time I brought the Imperatrix here, that was definitely the second worst! You can’t even imagine how many spirits wanted her dead! Fortunately she was accompanied by…what was his name again…Oh! Now that I think about it he fought with his eyes closed, just like you.”

Nay hiccuped. “Marke?”

“No no no. That guy accompanied her on her third and fourth trips here. I hated him. The Imperatrix was only looking at him, even though he was so impolite and vulgar. Just because he had a decent face. Ha! I was so much better-looking in my young age and…”

Nay blinked wildly, and raised her hands as she shook her head. “Ok, ok. Stop….Are you certain we’re safe?” Because for the Legio, nothing seemed to have changed much, except she wasn’t hearing or sensing the banshees with her sixth sense anymore.

Lynn and Green Tree nodded in rhythmic unison.

“Look over there, that’s the temple…entrance? If we can see it, it means we have entered the area blessed by Trayx.” The old man pointed to nothing.

No, not nothing. Beyond there, Nay was seeing light.

The two Calis were joyful now, and the dean was telling a story about Vestigio, because it had to be Vestigio, and how he had beaten a banshee and a pride of Hoyyyytttrrr bare-handed. Lynn had translated Hoyyyytttrrr as giant cats, which was an animal Nay had the luck not to have crossed paths with yet.

To beat a banshee barehanded, eyes closed, was absolutely absurd. But Nay had fought Vestigio while he was on his last breaths. She was relatively certain that he would have been able to kill all the banshees currently pursuing them, if he had been fifty years old younger.

Nay eyes stayed fixed on the gigantic pillar of light growing bigger and bigger as they approached. It was a pillar of light, but it was nothing like the ones before. It was a hundred times bigger at least, and also much more blinding, as if there wasn’t any jungle above. A place void of any vegetation above, no upper jungle fake bottom or canopy.

The area was perfectly flat, with short grass and wildflowers all over, as well as sculptures scattered everywhere under the light.

The sculptures were all of people, made of basalt. It was telling a story, that Nay immediately recognized. This was Trayx’ story, how he came to create the calm hell where the dead danced. The Rreico was magnificent, the place was hallowed ground. They walked into the light, and Nay felt peaceful. A man was crying, his dead wife in his arms. Another sculpture and the man was clawing at nothing. Nothing was clawing at his heart.

It was too sad for the Legio. She looked above instead, and for the first time in what had to be a long time, she saw the sky. There was only blue and the sun above them. Not a branch, not even a cloud stopping the light from the star above.

They continued their way through the sacred place.

Nay only looked back down when she sensed the temple.

It was more of a mausoleum, and barely as big as her family’s little stone home in Gite. It seemed to be made of marble, but the stone was too white for it to be that. It was made of four pillars, and between those were four walls. Everything was covered in runes. The roof was pyramidal in shape, and greyer in colour.

From where they stood, Nay wasn’t seeing a door.

“Good. I’ll leave you here now, I have my studies to continue. Lucky us, despite everything that happened, we weren’t delayed much so…”

“Lynn, I lost my bag. We can’t stay here for two days as planned.” Green Tree announced.

The young archaeologist looked quite bummed out. “Oh no…argh…of course…” She wiped at her face, before her expression became more decided. She put down her pack, and got some paper, a flat plank of wood and a crayon out of it. “I don’t have much time, then.”

She moved away from them, going to the other side of the mausoleum. “See you soon honey!” Said Green Tree with the unmistakable tone of a grandfather.

“Mhhh mhhh.”

Nay watched the young Cali go, before turning to face the walls of the mausoleum again. She wasn’t very good at enchantments, but she recognized none of the hundreds there. Which was a bit weird. Maybe Trinne would have known, having studied the runes in much more depth than her, even if she hadn’t received Defin’s lessons like the Legio.

The old man approached the wall.

“Don’t we need to go around?” Nay asked.

“Oh, there is no door to the temple of Trayx. Well, not in that sense. Hyn assured me you would be allowed to enter, but we don’t know how deep you’ll be allowed to go.”

“Is it safe?”

Green Tree smiled warmly. “There is no danger whatsoever. I don’t know any safer place than this one. You will either be allowed, or you won’t. That’s it. Do answer the questions honestly though, or you won’t be allowed for sure.”

“What questions?”

Green Tree edged her to come closer. Nay noticed that the runes were graved in the stone, but that a single spot in the wall was devoid of any enchantment, and was even a bit darker in colours. It more or less had the shape of a hand.

The Cali dean put his hand on the space, then said out loud: “Yes.”

Nay felt the miraculous power of the runes activate, their power completely out of her ability to comprehend, and then the old man went through the wall.

She gulped audibly.

“Your turn.” She barely heard the voice of Green Tree, muffled by the thick stone wall between them.

She was a bit taken aback, but not really scared. She had seen much weirder things coming here, and Green Tree had assured her it was completely safe. She hadn’t felt any lie in his Rreico.

She put her hand on the empty space on the wall, and felt the surface of the stone begin to vibrate.

Then it grew, reaching her whole body, a tingle ran through her, stopping at her eardrums.

“Do you come in peace?” It didn’t sound like a voice, but Nay understood the words nonetheless. It reminded her a bit of how Defin and his chorus had made the Cathedral sing with them.

“Yes?” Nay answered, a bit puzzled.

The wall seemed to stop existing, her hand passing through it as if had never been there. The Legio almost fell forward as the solid surface became intangible in one instant.

The mausoleum’s interior was completely empty. There was a single ray of light coming from the top of the pyramid, and it was bouncing off mirrors encased in the walls and the ground. In the middle of the room, there was an opening on the floor, a staircase leading down. It wasn’t large, Green Tree and her would not have been able to stand side to side taking it. After bouncing a bit everywhere, the ray of light continued down in the staircase. Nay could see that there were runes everywhere except on the mirrors, and it looked that there were even more down there.

The Rreico was almost suffocating. It was that dense, that powerful. The feeling brought another realization. Nay turned around to put a hand on the wall she had just crossed. It was an enchantment, this wall didn’t exist, really, it was a sort of Vanni barrier, but created with runes.

That in itself wasn’t that surprising. What shocked the Legio was that the enchantment had worked for her. She had been unable to cross the wall without answering the question. Her power wasn’t big enough to overcome those enchantments.

She smiled. Maybe this place could contain her.

She turned around again, and saw the Cali down kneeling next to the stairs. He seemed to be praying.

“Green Tree?”

“Mh? Oh, I won’t follow you down. In Cali traditions, that is something you may only do once in your life, to ask the gods for advice when we become adults.” He was smiling, and closed his eyes again to pray.

“Well, I will see you later, then,”

“Of course. Do not worry.”

Nay looked at the stairs with a bit more apprehension than before. She had met those so-called gods a few times now. Jormun had been the one closest to a god, in a way. Vanni had profoundly disturbed her, and Nay hadn’t found anything divine in her. According to Hyn, Adienha was a mixture of her own life stories, and ones that had come from and pre-war goddess. Ja himself had been loosely based on the Conqueror. Lebe had been the one who saved the Leïns, but she hadn’t been godly, just an adventurer who travelled the world. All of those gods, Hyn had demystified. For every lesson on the gods given by Defin, Hyn had later explained why the myths had been written like they had been, and what truth they were hiding. There were two exceptions though. The first was obvious, Hyn had never said anything bad about Jormun. She had often said that she respected him too much for that.

The second was Trayx, and Hyn had never explained why.

And Nay was going to meet him.

Because it was obvious to her. Where she was descending now…

She was going to the calm sea, Trayx’ hell.