The second came from what is now known as the Triut Dreyn and was to become the main reason why the Triut Dreyn is still as isolated and powerful as it is today. Many might believe so, but the Seven were probably not all on friendly terms with each other. The founding of the Triut Dreyn was a direct action against the continuous growth of the Asatori Empire and was perhaps the first fallout between the Seven.

Excerpt from Rise and Fall of the Seven by Maïz the Wise.

The earth they stood on was dry, all moisture evaporated after days of warm weather. The warmth was not as pressing as it was near the Waste, but Samos was nonetheless thankful for the Nakin garbs that kept him cool. There was an old pathway barely visible underneath the rocks and dirt leading west in a straight line, its formation reminded him of the stairs leading to the Waystone east of Pelizar. They must be made from the same material.

The landscape around them was a barren one, brown and desolate with dead trees scattered around occasionally. The only signs of life were birds circling the sky above a forest far to the south. Something gave those trees life, a river Samos supposed. Despite the barren wasteland around them the faint smell of seawater lingered in the air, coming in with the western winds that flapped their clothes around them. The coastline however was nowhere to be seen.

“Seems like we’re closer to the shore than I’d expected from the maps,” Asmund decided as he sniffed the air. “If we get a good pace going we should reach it by the end of today’s evening.”

As if he had made a bet with himself to make it in that timespan, Asmund set off at a steady pace, strapping the water skins on his back tighter to avoid them bouncing around with every step. Samos and Yara shared a short look and shrugged before starting after him.

In a few paces, they caught up with Asmund whose eyes, Samos noticed, flickered to the north every few seconds as if they were looking for something.

“You felt it too?” he asked and Asmund gave him a sharp and questioning look.

“The third one? Yeah, I felt it. Which means you must also sense the others now, no?”

Samos nodded. “One to the west, one to the north and the third one more to the north-east.”

Asmund turned to Yara, who nodded. “I sense them too, it happened when I arrived through the Waystone.”

“Interesting…” Asmund murmured, “I can’t help but feel we’re running behind, as if things are happening that we should be witnessing for ourselves.” He paused for a moment, his eyes contemplating. “Yara, you’ve only very recently started training Enhancement, how do you feel about running for a bit and see how you handle?”

With a glimmer in her eyes, Yara smiled excitingly. Without a word she suddenly crouched a little, held her hands on the straps of her water skins and set off running at an inhuman pace.

Asmund halted with his mouth open and when he gave Samos a look it was all he could do to not laugh. “She’s a natural,” he said with a grin. “I had nearly the same look on my face when she first started using the sword.”

He looked to where Yara was running, small clouds of dust lingering above the ground where her feet had pounded the dirt. She was nearly two hundred feet ahead of them already and not showing signs of slowing down.

“Well,” Asmund grunted as he closed his mouth, “I guess we should show her she has much to learn still.”

With that he launched forward at a pace nearly double that of Yara. With a sigh, Samos tightened his straps as well and enhanced his legs before chasing after his two companions. His hood fell backwards as the wind increased around him, but the heat did not bother him anymore as he realized how good it felt to just be running. There was nobody telling him what form to run in nor was there something to watch out for, he could simply enjoy feeling the power run through him and use it as he saw fit.

Asmund stayed ahead of him easily, his years of experience clearly showing in his control and endurance. The gap with Yara though was closing with every passing second and before long, both he and Asmund had overtaken her. They slowed down though and adjusted themselves to her pace. The look on her face clearly showed she thought they were mocking her a bit.

“Keep it in your legs,” Samos told her in between breaths, “you’re letting it rush all over your body and going to waste, focus it only where you need it.”

Yara’s face changed to one of concentration and after a while, the soft glow that had lingered around her entire body slowly retracted until it only showed near her legs. With a start, Samos realized he had never seen the glow around anyone else.

“I think I got it,” Yara cried out in excitement. “This is just like those first exercises only on a larger scale.”

Samos gave her a thumbs up before concentrating back on the ground ahead, he was not about to stumble over an undetected rock or crevice and make a fool of himself. The further they ran, the more solid the ground became and the few dead trees that had surrounded them began to disappear from sight completely. Truly a wasteland, Samos considered, surely nobody can live here.

They ran for nearly an hour, then walked the next before setting into a run again. The sun had well passed its zenith by the time they spotted the first signs of human activity. A small plume of smoke just over the horizon.

“A village?” Yara speculated. “Or a campfire?”

“The sea scent has been growing stronger,” Asmund remarked. “And I might be wrong but I think I hear the waves rolling down onto the beach.”

Samos enhanced his ears and true to Asmund’s words, he did hear a soft rumbling coming from beyond the horizon.

“Let’s walk the rest of the way,” Asmund suggested. “We don’t know who awaits us there, no need to show them we are Talented from the get-go.”

Both Samos and Yara nodded in agreement and reluctantly, he let the power in his legs dissipate. Walking normally after running for that long felt even slower then usually now and Samos noticed a small itch in his legs as if they were begging him to go run again. Ignoring the feeling, he kept his ears, eyes and nose enhanced as they walked in the direction of the smoke. It was a soft-grey smoke, one you would see coming from campfires or large cooking stoves.

As they rounded the last bump in the landscape, the sea suddenly lay bare before them. A small village had been built at the coastline just ahead, the smoke emerging from one of the houses. It had not been indicated on the maps, but Samos knew the water to be the Strait of Aramos, the unofficial eastern border of the Archipelago. Once you cross over that border, people often said, you enter a place where laws don’t exist.

In truth, Samos was surprised to see a village this close to the home of what were probably tens of thousands of pirates, outlaws and brigands. But then again, it was so small that he doubted anyone could be bothering raiding it.

In a circular line around the village, he noticed, stood about three dozen wide scales, linen cloth draped over them with a small stone on top of it in the middle.

“I wonder what those are for,” Yara spoke his thoughts aloud.

“One way to find out,” Asmund answered as he started down the slow rolling hill and towards the village. As they made their way towards it, Samos counted no more than twenty-one buildings. They were all of them white and flat-roofed no higher than ten feet. Some had additional wooden roofing on the top, providing an extra layer of shelter from the sun for those who had roof access. A small wooden dock had been built into the sea, small fishing vessels moored at its side. There were people as well as animals going about in between the buildings. Samos spotted some thirty goats and sheep in a fenced-off square, a few dogs scurrying in between the buildings and a small stable with two horses.

He was most amazed though by the wheat and corn these people seemed to be able to grow out of the dry dirt and rock. Somehow they must have found a way to get clean water and irrigate their soil.

Suddenly a shout rose from the village as someone spotted them. If the shout had been an alarm, it didn’t seem very effective as only a handful of people reacted and moved to intercept the visitors. They showed no signs of hostility though and only awaited them outside the village’s perimeter, just beyond the strange, linen-draped scales.

“Welcome to our humble village Tarfama,” the youngest of the group said warmly. If Samos didn’t know better, he’d say he and the others were Nakin. Yet the accent was different and they had a slightly lighter skin tone. “We often get Nakin visitors,” the man continued, “but even though you wear their garbs you are not of them, no doubt you have quite the story behind you. Not that it concerns me of course, the less we are involved with the world, the better. I am called Rida.”

“We thank you for your warm welcome, Rida.” Asmund replied. “My name is Asmund, these are Samos and Yara. We are looking for passage westwards and do not mean to keep you long, do you know of someone who would be willing to sail us across the Strait?”

Rida laughed at that, the others of his group chuckling as well. “I doubt you’ll find anyone brave or foolish enough to sail into the Archipelago…” he turned to point at the dock, “with one of those boats. We do not sail further as to where we can still see Tarfama and only for fishing at that. There is a larger town, two days walk south, where you might find some that will take you across.”

Asmund gave a slight nod. “Then we shall go south. You have our thanks for your advice.”

He turned left and made to start walking, but before he could make a step, Rida held up his hands. “You don’t have to go that soon,” he exclaimed. “We might see Nakin pass here often, but rarely do we see others from the outside world. Please, stay. Stay and tell us of what goes on in the world. As peaceful as it is not to be involved in it all, it is still good to at least know what we are sheltered from.”

Asmund turned to Samos and Yara, the question clear in his eyes.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Yara said. “The running has tired me plenty, I’m not as used to it as the two of you. I could use a rest.”

“Great,” Rida exclaimed with a smile and he motioned for them to follow. “Let us seek some shade and talk of the world.”

“I’ve been wondering,” Yara asked as they passed the large scales and reached the first buildings. “What are the scales for? I’ve never seen a construction like it.”

“An ancient method,” one of the woman that had welcomed them with Rida spoke up. “One passed down for many generations. We use it to obtain fresh and usable water from seawater, it’s how we manage to survive here.”

“You get fresh water from the sea?” Asmund asked in astonishment. “I’ve never thought it possible.”

The woman laughed. “Judging from your skin you come a cold place, Asmund. This method only works when the sun shines upon you day after day without mercy. The seawater evaporates from the heat, the condensation gets caught on the cloth and trickles down towards the centre that is held down by the stone. Underneath, there’s another smaller scale that collects the water, now free of salt and other nasty stuff we don’t need.”

“Very clever,” Asmund smiled and he sounded thoroughly impressed, “to use the sun as a way to obtain freshwater. I’ve never heard or seen mention of this method before.”

“Oh it’s used all along the coast here,” the woman answered, “but so few people pass by here that it doesn’t surprise me it remains unknown to the rest of the world. Then again, I doubt it is needed anywhere else.”

They finally walked into the centre of the village, which was to say the part of it where all twenty buildings were focused around. People had gathered around them, asking questions on who they were and where they came from. Rida held up his hands to calm down the crowd of about fifty people which was, Samos considered, probably the entire village’s population. There were a few children among them, but most where middle-aged and older. Rida seemed to be one of the maybe three or four young adults like themselves present.

“These are Asmund, Samos and Yara,” he proclaimed loudly as he stood upon a box in order to be seen by everyone, “they are simply passing through looking for a way across the Strait and won’t be staying long. Anything they can tell us of the happenings of the world, we will share with you.”

With that, he stepped back off the box and led them to one of the bigger houses. Big as it was, it probably would have fitted in the room Samos had occupied in Dadendam. Its interior was remarkably similar to that of the Conclave, cushions spread around on the ground and low tables with glassed, cups and plates on them. A bookshelf even lined the wall, a total of five books adorning its shelves.

“Come, sit,” Rida motioned, “and let us talk while you rest. No doubt there’s much that needs to be told.”

“Samos?” Asmund asked as he sat down. “Perhaps you are more qualified at this than me?”

With a sigh, Samos nodded and sat down as well. “So,” he began, “About three to four months ago, a man called Ethel…”