Renkyk, Galdrehln, and Cetie headed west into the austere steppes of the Herekites. To the south, the peculiar nearly dark cylindrical mountains of the Doranath Range watched over them as eternal sentinels. Or the mountains were standing in silent judgment. Either way, those peaks provided one of the few things to look at while they trudged through brown grass strewn with small stones.

"What's this place we're looking for again, Ren?" Galdrehln asked, brushing up alongside Renkyk's right.

"Forig's Crossin'," Renkyk imitated the barkeep's accent and laughed. Galdrehln looked at him like a frightened rat hearing that voice. "Oh, that's right. You didn't talk much to that man."

"I have no idea what you're talking about! I spent that whole time either in fever dreams or... fever daydreams, I guess?" Galdrehln exasperatedly responded. "Forig's Crossing, though. Any idea what it looks like or how far it even is?"

"We're closer than we were yesterday," Cetie chirped as she trudged along Renkyk's left. "When you know the direction, all steps that way bring you closer. It's only a matter of time."

"Is that a Caylanch saying?" Galdrehln asked, his voice straining a bit.

Cetie laughed and gave a dismissive flick of her hand.

"It's a thing I heard as a child and it stuck with me," she said.

"Of course, are we actually heading toward this Forig's Crossing or not?" Galdrehln sighed.

Renkyk coughed and pointed toward the well-worn path before them and its westward trajectory straight onto the horizon, with its series of rocky hills.

"This is exactly what the gentleman at the tavern described. I didn't ask him how many miles it would be, but it didn't sound terribly near. He just told us to stay as close as we could to the road until we got there."

Cetie grimaced as he said that.

"If he said we should be as close to we can to the road rather than on it, that'd imply..." she started and then stopped talking. She held out her hand, indicating to Renkyk and Galdrehln to stop walking and talking. "Do you hear that?"

Renkyk strained to listen, but after a couple seconds, he heard what sounded like drumbeats off in the distance on the road behind them. And screeching that almost felt familiar. He glanced to either side of the road for any kind of cover. To his right, he saw a red and brown rocky outcropping what must have been a tenth of a mile away.

"I do. This way! Run!" he shouted to the others and began sprinting toward the outcropping. Seeing Galdrehln trail behind him, he motioned to his friend for him to catch up. "Come on!"

"Easy for you to say!" Galdrehln wheezed as he kept his left arm over his heavy reagents satchel to his left and his right arm firmly grasping his staff. "You don't have all this shit to carry!"

Cetie beat both of them, springing over the first layer of rocks as adroitly as a cat would have and scurried behind a larger set of rocks. Renkyk swiftly followed behind her while Galdrehln struggled with his cargo. Once he scraped over one of the larger jagged reddish brown rocks and into the little stony grove of theirs, Cetie hopped back over and went closer to the trail.

"Cetie! What're you..." Renkyk shrieked, hearing the drums and now distinct rumbling and squawking of countless beings thundering toward them.

"Covering our tracks!" she shouted back. Green and brown glowing tendrils sprouted from her right hand as she placed it on the ground.

All along the earth back toward the trail, the small depressions their feet had left were lifted away and the grass and soil were returned to an undisturbed state. Renkyk stared in awe while Cetie unassumingly got back into the covered position. He turned to Galdrehln, who was too busy checking his satchel to ensure his reagents were still all in place to notice what the blue shaman traveling with them had just done.

"That was a neat trick," Renkyk muttered to himself, drawing a laugh from Cetie and a curious glance from Galdrehln.

Meanwhile, the rumbling from the east grew louder and louder, as did the squawks. Now that they were closer, they sounded almost like Kastorian Striders like those Renkyk had known for all of his early life in the Kastor River Valley. But the squawks were far deeper. And far harsher. Curious, he looked through a slit in the outcropping that faced the east and saw the first signs of what approached. It was too far to see much beyond a series of dozens of fast moving silhouettes.

"Can you make the lens thing you showed me?" Renkyk tapped Galdrehln on the shoulder.

"The lens thing," Galdrehln mocked him as he withdrew three reagents from his satchel. As before, they were sandy soil, a dried root, and a vial of water. "Alright, be quiet. I need to focus."

First, he guided the sandy soil into a disc that levitated in the air just in front of the crack in the rock. Then, he ignited the dried root into a bright, nearly white, flame and hit the sand with it. However, that glowing disc wobbled and collapsed before he could introduce the water. Renkyk jolted away from the molten sand as it hissed on the ground.

Galdrehln sighed and took a very deep breath before repeating the process. This time he just did it all much faster. Renkyk could only barely keep track of it and suddenly there was the lens floating before him, just as it had been in the Ancehlt Forest, albeit smaller.

"There. It's all about getting the feel right," Galdrehln sighed in relief. "One of these days I'll just get it all down in one step. Almost did it this time. Anyway, let me know if that's working for you."

Renkyk wasted no time in peering through it and out the crack facing toward the east. He thought about asking Galdrehln to adjust it slightly to improve the clarity of what he viewed, but it was more than enough.

Through the lens, he saw dozens and dozens, possibly well into the hundreds, of giant striders as tall as seven or eight feet with leather and fur-clad riders on their backs. The striders themselves had dark brown and gold feathers all over their bodies, thick legs with ferocious talons on their feet, and enormous heads with elongated hookbill beaks. They squawked again and again and again as they charged forward, far faster than horses. On the flanks of the columns were drummers riding their striders and beating the drums aligned in an arch before them on the striders' backs.

"Shit," Renkyk sighed and motioned to Galdrehln and Cetie. "We need to be as still as we possibly can be. And low to the ground. Just don't do anything."

"Except this," Cetie said and let out a pulse from her hand that created a cloud of fine dust in the air around them. "It'll mask our smell."

"Huh. Good thinking," Galdrehln said with his eyebrows raised.

"Alright, now just... no one do anything," Renkyk muttered, the thunderous stampede of the striders and the beating drums almost drowning him out.

None of them looked to see the oncoming horde. They all kept themselves tight to the most sheltered parts of the outcropping. Renkyk braced himself in the joint of three large rocks. As the horde neared, the rumbling from the ground went through the rocks and into his bones. His whole body shook. The squawks of the striders pierced his ears and rattled in his mind. Beats of the drums punched through the air so clearly that they sounded like they were right around his head.

Even with the horde riding past swiftly, there were so many of them that it took over a minute for them all to pass by the outcropping. Once the rumbles faded, Renkyk took a deep breath and pried himself away from that corner. Galdrehln had taken to lying almost flat on the ground with his face on the rough stone below by the time the column of striders passed.

"Are you alright?" Renkyk asked as he stretched, cracking his neck to realign it. "Why were you on the ground?"

"I got queasy, alright?" Galdrehln protested. "It was more than a little scary!"

"I'll agree with you there," Cetie said, hopping to her feet. She peered her head over the top of the rocks to view the trail and gasped at the sight. "Whatever those things were, they made quite a mess."

Renkyk stuck his head up over the edge as well and immediately saw what she meant. The ground was ripped up in a broad swath headed west and everywhere he looked he saw the copious feces the striders left behind. It smelled a great deal like the leavings of the Kastorian Striders he knew well from his youth, but with an added more putrid tinge.

"So, that's why he suggested we weren't supposed to be right on the trail, huh?" Galdrehln quipped as he joined the other two. "So, uh, those are probably going to Forig's Crossing, right?"

"Well, we knew we weren't going to dodge the Herekites the whole way here, obviously," Renkyk said, dismissively waving his hand toward the west and the now-departed horde. "I think the way we'll be treated in a settlement is very different than how we'll be treated caught out on the road."

Cetie nodded and started walking west before spinning around, a broad smile across her face.

"Are you boys coming?" she laughed. "Looks like there's some better land up ahead for camping for the night."

"I'll take you at your word. You seem to know how to read the land," Galdrehln said with an envious sigh.

Indeed, the ground did get better with more cover from anyone traveling on the road to Forig's Crossing. Instead of just the occasional rocky outcropping, there were now countless such formations as well as thick wiry shrubbery that provided some obstructions from the road. For their camp, they chose an outcropping at least half a mile from the trail tucked into a shallow ravine. While Galdrehln and Cetie started cooking dinner with what few provisions they had left, Renkyk looked off to the western horizon. On the otherwise deeply black night sky, he saw a faint orange glow.

"Ah ha! There it is!" Renkyk exclaimed. "I think it's just one more day, not even a full one, and then we'll be there."

"Always the optimist," Galdrehln laughed and wafted the smoke from the campfire in Renkyk's direction. "Dinner's ready, by the way."

"Smells good enough," he said and walked over to sit down on a smooth stone. "What's in it?"

"The last of our various meats, some cabbage, and some of these berries I found along the road," Galdrehln laughed as he put it onto a crude steel plate for Renkyk. "You better be right about Forig's Crossing being up ahead. We're getting a little short here."

"Sorry I couldn't help more," Cetie said after filling up her own plate with a characteristically small portion. "This isn't the sort of stuff I know how to work with."

"Where you're from," Renkyk started with his mouth full, but then paused to swallow, "it's more grains and the like, right?"

She nodded as she started eating. She smiled at Galdrehln and gave a thumbs up for the meal.

"Noodles and rice, pickled greens, and lots of roasted nuts and seeds. Not nearly as much meat," she said, wiping some of the sauce from her lips. "This is very good, though, Gald."

"I'm always happy to be appreciated," he winked at Renkyk. Renkyk almost choked trying to offer his own seal of approval. "Your people's tastes... I just don't know. Well, if we're lucky enough to find your ingredients when we get to the crossing, I'll let you take the lead. See what that's all about."

She laughed and finished her modest helping.

"Judging by what we've got around here, I'm not holding out much hope," she rolled her eyes. "Either of you know how to conjure anything from the ground? Crops and so on."

"Is... is that a thing that can be done?" Galdrehln chuckled, coughing to clear away some of the food in his throat.

"If it is, that's far beyond me," Renkyk shrugged. "Apparently, my inclinations are more toward dead things than living ones."

"Neither of you spent much time living off the land, so I guess that makes sense," she mumbled. "I keep trying to figure it out. I can see it all in my mind, the plants I'm trying to draw out from the earth, but it just doesn't happen. There must be something I'm missing. And I spent all of my life raising plants and the like."

Renkyk swallowed his own last bite and set his plate aside. The genesis of a thought danced around his head, but he couldn't quite grasp it.

"Hmmm... I know what you are thinking," Nethron's ethereal voice echoed in his head. "Such an ability would be useful for rounding out imperfections in restoration. Mastery over such things was always the domain of Vorlan and Tathyk, especially Tathyk. He can make an entire province sprout up and be overrun with crops if he so wishes."

"Ren, are you alright?" Galdrehln asked, snapping his fingers in front of Renkyk's face. "You looked, I don't know, odd there for a moment."

"I was just thinking... Cetie, what you're talking about has been done. The Harvest Angel, Tathyk, does it regularly. I've never seen him do it, not even when I was in their camp. However, it must be a power of the Auras distinct on its own terms," Renkyk declared with the passion of a peddler. "I think you just have to think about it right, or feel about it right. We can spend some time on it once we get to Forig's Crossing. Gald, I think it's a bit like how we learned about the Silver Aura by being in the presence of the dying. This is being in the presence of new life."

"Plants, Ren. Plants," Galdrehln sighed and picked some of the sinewy meat from the dinner out of his teeth. "I get your point... but, I don't know."

"There's a bigger tapestry at work here and, to get it right, we have to expand our minds a bit more," Renkyk said, rising from his stone and gesturing with his hands as though he were pulling things from the ground. "Life is comprehensive. It involves everything. That's what's becoming clear to me. It's not as though you can just learn one small piece of it and go on. I think where Nethron erred, albeit with good intentions, was in thinking it could be done easily. Oh no. This is a lot of work, more work than anything else there is. Why wouldn't it be? But it can be done."

During a brief pause, he felt the Aura Liberator's voice stir in his mind.

"Erred... That is fair. I obviously did not do everything right. My present condition is a testament to that," Nethron said, his voice turning harsh for a brief moment. "I was almost angry with you for saying it that way. But you are correct. I thought I could somehow make it as simple as Gorondos hurling a flame or Cyrona turning water into ice, but obviously that was mistaken."

Cetie sprang to her feet and jutted her fingers into the air just as Nethron finished speaking in Renkyk's mind.

"You're making all the sense in the world, Ren!" she exclaimed. "No, I get it. The reason we have to master something as basic as plants is that so much of us is dull and dead. Well, not dead as such, but I think you understand what I mean. We force it to move along with us, but that's not really us, is it?" She spat on the ground and then took a knife and cut her left hand slightly to let blood drip out before closing her wound with a pulse of the Ceunan Aura. "I can keep going, but the point is that there are so many things that can leave us without ending our existence, but they're essential when taken together. Blood, spit, tears, bile, all of it."

"She understands a matter I never did," Nethron wheezed in laughter within Renkyk's mind. "So much of what comprises you mortals is an illusion. The great majority of it is nothing, much like my brethren of Ceuna. Their mortal bodies are truly of little consequence... This all makes a great deal more sense."

What you mean to say is that a reason we have been failing to restore bodies to life is that we've been overthinking them? Renkyk asked the Aura Liberator.

"A reason. A reason. One reason among many. Yes, I am glad you put it that way. There is more to all of this than that, but this is progress. To conquer death, you must fully grasp each and every component taken together as a whole and this a vital one," Nethron said, his voice trailing off in thought. "I will ponder this some more on my own. I certainly have the time to do so, after all."

Nethron's presence in his mind dissipated like a passing gust of wind. Renkyk then tapped his chin and looked to the others.

"Gald, I was just thinking... When I spoke with Dastov back in Eynond, I..."

"Dastov? Oh, let's not talk more about him!" Galdrehln interrupted, swiping violently away from himself. "Most evil man I've ever met."

"Be that as it may," Renkyk laughed, "he did as fine a job as anyone in explaining to me about how the link to the Auras is emotional as opposed to intellectual, that you can prime it with your thoughts, but it's what you feel about them that makes us able to wield them. It's something, I'm sorry to say, that came from him observing you and wondering why you were so gifted with the Auras."

"You mean that he thought I was dumb? Well, that may be, it's not because that awful man says so," Galdrehln groaned. "Anyway, we all know that. Where are you going with this?"

"As I was saying earlier, I think when we get to Forig's Crossing, we need to spend all of our time working on this from a more elementary level so that we truly grasp it. We were trying to take the quick path," he said, moving his fingers like running legs. "Because of that, though, we know where we're going. The endpoint is nearly in sight. The problem is we have to build the bridge to get there. But we have the tools now and a plan."

"So many metaphors, Ren," Galdrehln winked.

"It all makes sense," Cetie yawned, stretching. "Hopefully it still makes sense once I get some rest."

"I have faith that it will," Renkyk said. "I can almost taste it."

What he tasted come morning, however, was a musty wind coming from the north that swept down on their position. Galdrehln roused up from the embrace he and Renkyk shared near the campfire and poked his head up over the rocks surrounding their position to investigate.

"Something big died up there overnight, I think..." Galdrehln said.

"Yeah, I already had a look at it," Cetie said, hopping back into their camp. "Already smells."

"Well, that's as good a reason as any to get moving," Renkyk laughed as he rose and straightened his robe, brushing dirt off from his garments before reaching out and helping Galdrehln with the same. "Shall we?"

They continued their discussion about how to approach the issue of growing plants through the Auras and their experiences with crops throughout their own lives. It was a weak spot of Renkyk's, but Galdrehln and Cetie had plenty to say on the matter. Ordinarily, he would've just ignored that sort of discussion, but he knew he had to have a stronger link. Everything depended upon it. He thought of how it would be necessary, in many cases, to call upon material from other sources to restore dead bodies to their former glory. It wasn't as though he would always be there at the moment of death and, even if he was, death was due to damage to the body. Something else needed to be introduced for a full restoration and it had to come from somewhere.

So immersive was their conversation and all of its winding details that Renkyk was almost shocked when they came over one more hill and into view of the variety of tents sprawling out across a flat plain below them. Made from leather as opposed to fabric, the tents were massive and wrapped around frames of what appeared to be large animal bones that stuck out the tops. It was a bustling community of some thousands, many of whom rode their large striders or walked with the striders at their sides.

"That snuck up on us, didn't it?" Cetie quipped. "Forig's Crossing, I presume?"

"That's a safe bet," Renkyk said, pointing to the variety of trails coming in and out of the inhabited areas. "This a land of nomads, but it looks like this is something we can work with."

"Ren, I actually haven't asked, but are Herekites known for accepting strangers?" Galdrehln asked. "They look a touch more like me than either you or Cetie, so I... you know."

"Gald, I keep telling you that I don't believe we've come this far after all we've been through for something that stupid to get in our way. No, this is all going right," Renkyk smiled. "It's a clear path from here for the moment."