Chapter I

A VILLAGE IN THE RUINS.

P. I

When Novak Carter first appeared over the source lands, he was falling, barreling through the sky, and plunging ever more rapidly towards the ground below. He was a skydiver without a parachute, and a man without consciousness; yet, somehow, high up as he was, fate didn’t leave him without recourse. Instead, it moved him into the path of a young woman by the name of Rela Stouthorn, which, is with whom this story begins.

* * *

Within her tribe, Rela kept her eyes up to the heavens, a habit that had long since marked her as strange among her peers and left her eyes hurting. The curious behavior had earned her the nickname stargazer among the tribe’s children, a nickname that, at some point, the older folk had adopted as well. But, in her defense, she would’ve argued that she did a lot more than just gaze at stars.

Rela Stouthorn tended to the lauwi meadows, where the lauwi liked to roam; she built homes and structures of flawless repute, and, when she had to, she stood hoof to hoof with the best of the tribe’s men. She led a busy life marked by hard callouses on every one of her fingers: further proof that she was no slacker; yet, while most days of the week that was true, on this particular morning, it wasn’t.

“There she goes again.”

“Do you ever wonder what she sees?”

“Me? Not at all, but I do wonder how she never trips.”

Early risers took notice of Rela walking, it was mainly the old folk who gossiped and worried that her strangeness was worsening. But, before anyone could approach to express their concerns more precisely, she’d kicked off of wet soil and gone dashing towards the forest of Ulthagar.

* * *

A few minutes outside the village and underneath clusters of crispy, bright yellow maple leaves, something stirred and snaked away. Amid a tangle of deep, gnarled roots, a pair of long red eyes peered out then bolted back into hiding; a patch of sharp, muddy-brown grass trembled, and, above it, in the trees, a small, glowering bird departed post-haste. The world fled as Rela leapt and pranced through lush greenery, brushing past bright orange lantanas and taking their scent on her skin, running until her lungs grew heavy and she slowed to a trot.

Sometime later, she faced a large boulder overrun by mosses. Mushrooms and grass grew in the boulder’s cracks and fissures, some of them bright and colorful, but most of them so dull and so wet with dew that Rela had to watch her footing as she climbed it.

At the top of the boulder there was a portcullis, and an overgrown day lily that stood as still as a wooden carving beneath its frame. It was the flower there, but Rela didn’t pay it much mind, she wasn’t there for the flower, nor cared for it, instead she rested her back against the portcullis and turned a flickering gaze to a speck on the horizon.

* * *

From up where he was, Novak did indeed look small, and the rest of the world looked much more expansive—granted, he’d taken no notice of it until howling winds buffeted against his curly black hair and brought him back to the world of the living; admittedly, though, it was more the clouds that did the brunt of the work. He could’ve slept all the way to the ground otherwise.

At first contact with the clouds, Novak thought he was dreaming, but then the mist was cold, and wet, and entirely unlike the cotton fluff of dream clouds. Droplets of rain rallied against his skin, stinging and pelting him, and his howls were lost in a vacuum.

Past the first layer of clouds, Novak was shivering and clutching at his clothes. The second layer was no better, nor the third. He thought he felt hail in the fourth, and so he guarded his face and legs against it, but, in the end no real harm came to him as he burst out of that final layer and into a world of bright red horizons, and vast landscapes.

He saw snow-covered peaks and high brown mountains, large rivers, and lakes, and great big trees with leaves of varying colors; some were red; some were orange, or yellow, or green—but each neighbored one another until they formed an expansive canopy, stirring, and thrashing about like ocean waves. In some places, he saw patches of open land that were flat and grassy; he saw flowers and hills; he saw valleys, and black dots moving. He saw small wooden huts, then Goliath structures carved from stone. He saw what looked to be the remnants of an old kingdom, worn and broken down; he saw the kingdom’s roads and pathways in disrepair.

Before the awe passed him, he wondered briefly about history. But, then he remember pain, and worries. Then, the cogs of his mind whirred, reminding him that all of the world’s splendors could do nothing to help with the crushing reality of his situation.

It was a sobering though, and before he knew it, he was crying out for help, flailing his arms in a futile attempt to subvert gravity, and screaming with all the enthusiasm of a drowning man. The ground approached him no matter how he willed it stay away; it was small and foreign at first, but then bigger, and more intimate.

The forest canopy transformed from blobs of color, becoming branches and leaves, and the black dots became birds; carpets of grass became blades, petals gave birth to thorns, and stone became chiseled with texture. The world around Novak unfurled in enough splendor to marvel at, but he didn’t. Instead, he hoped dearly beyond hope that perhaps something might soften his fall.

* * *

As the speck became more pronounced in Rela’s vision, she thought that it might have been a wounded bird due to the way it alternated between flapping its arms and covering its face. However, it did gradually dawn on her that the speck wasn’t a bird, and that, more importantly, it had no control of its direction.

The speck was reflected in her eyes, like a comet crashing down towards the day lily in the portcullis. But her heart sped up in her chest and she was leaping off the boulder, and whipping her legs before collision could become a problem. She almost flew for a moment, but then reality pushed her down into a bramble thicket.

The thicket poked and prodded into her sides, and she yelped, hollered, and cursed. She cursed at the speck’s ancestors, and its parents, and on every God or devil it might believe in. Although, after a few moments of silence she tried to turn and see what had become of it, only to she discover that the brambles had wrapped firmly around portions of her head.

* * *

To Novak’s great joy, there was no sickening crunch or thud as he landed. There was no earthshaking, nor shattering, nor the crumbling of his feet against the ground. The howling wind rushing into his ears vanished, and he became light, and unburdened, surrounded only by darkness and a quiet thought echoing through his mind. Primarily, he wondered if he was dead, but he also wondered if in shock, he’d somehow fainted while still falling.

As Novak pondered, a gentle wind came and ruffled his hair. Birds sang and crickets chirped. His skin warmed. And briefly, he thought that maybe he’d somehow ended up as a blind man in heaven—but that was a stupid thought, and it proved fallacious the minute he heard loud rustling and instinctively opened his eyes.

Ahead of him he discovered an antelope struggling in a thicket. It could’ve been a sable antelope for all he knew of antelopes, what with the way its long horns curved backwards, but its head was oddly large, and round, and somehow out of place. He watched it as it struggled, and was only grateful that it wasn’t something else that might’ve eaten him. Part of him celebrated being alive, and inside he hooted and hollered and shouted for joy, but then the thrashing sable suddenly ripped its way out of the thicket and stood onto two feet, revealing a tall human form garbed in leather.

There was a brief pause before the shock of the moment registered, and then Novak tried to reel back in fright but couldn’t. The oddity sent his head swiveling for an answer, and soon he discovered that his body was suspended in midair, floating down slowly towards a single glowing flower.

“Wha—“

The flower’s body shined, shining through its roots and its petals and its stamen, bursting with waves of magic unlike anything he’d had ever seen before, and he was sure it was magic, because there was no other word for it. The magic flowed around his body, caressing at his fingertips and limbs. But it was so warm, so captivating, that he didn’t notice as the not-antelope made its way up to him.

“Nightcry be damned,” The not-antelope suddenly said, its voice deep, yet feminine. Then, slowly, Novak tore his eyes away from the day lily.