Kiruna Maeda Nadir walked in complete darkness but to her eyes, it was as bright as day. She had a notebook and a pencil in hand--not hers--while she walked down the tunnels. Behind her was a source of light, a lantern powered with a jade cartridge, carried by her brother, Lukas.

The light did strange things to her now. It wasn’t as if she was blinded by it. No, if anything, it revealed far more things than it should have. When she looked at the light, whatever was inside looked ethereal and was frighteningly strange.

Take her brother as an example. Lukas had come back from an extended trip in a bid to earn enough Imperial Academy Merits to have a healer take a look at her condition and hopefully cure it. He had been gone from most of the Season of Water and Earth, returning only when it was close to the Season of Fire.

On the surface, he looked as he always did. He looked at her with soft eyes and he stroked her head in such a way that comforted her. Every time he did, she would hug him around his waist and squeeze.

But in the light, his features took on a sinister cast. Not directed at her, no. But whenever he looked at something else she could see fire and lightning in his eyes. Hate and anger. Something she’d never seen in her brother. They had always persevered in their lives. Ever since Mom and Dad died, she had done all she could to help earn coins for their living.

But something changed when Lukas joined Master Mazer’s Emporium. She didn’t have her strange inverse sight then but if she had, she was sure that she wouldn’t see those hate filled eyes back then.

“Kiru, not so fast!” Lukas called out, his voice echoing oddly in the tunnels.

“It’s safe here, there’s nothing around.” Kiruna rolled her eyes, careful to make sure she wasn’t facing him.

“Still. You never know,” he muttered.

Kiruna drew in her notebook, making sure she labeled the map correctly. While she was sure this wasn’t to scale, she made note of every branch she and Lukas entered. If there were plates that named the tunnel, she made a rubbing of it, too. However, there hadn’t been any such plates for a while now. In fact, the tunnels were no longer the stone corridors that were prevalent in the undercity; these had the rough hewn quality of old and unused mining tunnels.

Kiruna continued walking while Lukas followed some distance behind. She stayed at the edge of his lantern’s pool of light. Maybe an hour later, Lukas called her to his side.

“Lunch.”

Kiruna skipped and bounced to him even as he hooded the lantern.

“Wow, what are we having?” she chirped.

The one good thing they got after he joined was the food. Not that she complained about what they used to eat. Bread and milk were delicious. Well, it was actually mostly bread and water.

“Ham and cheese. And bread.” Lukas handed her a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper.

“Thank you!”

Kiruna sat on her heels with her back leaning against the walls. The tunnel wasn’t that clean, actually, but her clothes weren’t pristine either so it hardly mattered. It was warm in the Season of Fire, so they were back to wearing lighter clothing.

“Lukas…” She poked him on the side. He jumped at that, giving her a sidelong glare.

“What?”

“What happened in the north? You look troubled…”

“I…it’s nothing.” He shook his head.

“I heard the barbarian raiders…that there were more of them than usual.”

“Yeah. But don’t worry. See? I came back safe and sound.” He thumped his chest with a fist.

They lapsed into silence. Kiruna nibbled on her food, trying to make it last longer.

“How much farther?” she finally asked.

Lukas looked at her, blinking as his thoughts returned from wherever they’d been since he came back from the North.

“As far south as we can.” He shrugged. “We don’t know how extensive the tunnels are.”

Kiruna shook her head. “You mean we’ll be in the dark for Seasons?”

Lukas smiled softly. “I know. Do you feel better here?”

She returned his smile. “Yes.”

_____

Even inside a river with water so clear that the river bed was in easy view, fish were notoriously difficult to catch if Yuriko didn’t have a fishing pole, or a net.

Yurko splashed in the river, a feeble and largely ineffectual attempt at swimming. She staggered up the banks after a few minutes, wet and slightly miserable. And of course, bereft of fish.

She dried herself off immediately then recovered her backpack and followed the trihorns’ tracks. She kept to a light jog, and by the time dusk arrived, she found a pack of snakewolves busily chewing the meat off their kill. Oh, a couple of them were even eating the corpse of one of their dead. Disgusting.

Shaking her head, she went past them. The pack mostly ignored her, though she saw their hackles rise when she came too near. She kept her Anima retracted, wary of frightening her prey away.

The herd of trihorns had settled next to an oxbow lake. Some of their members clambered down the banks and drank from the waters. She examined the members of the herd, zeroing on one that was limping heavily. She could see a chink of flesh missing from its hind leg.

A quick dash was enough to bring her to striking distance. She smashed her fist into the side of its head, just underneath the base of one of its horns.

Baawww!

The trihorn’s pained moan was short lived as she spun on the other side of its head and backhanded it’s cheek. Both blows staggered the creature and her third strike between the eyes knocked it unconscious, if not dead. Then she flared her Anima, preempting the angry trihorn’s attempt to crush her under their hooves.

Whistling happily, she formed Animus blades and started to dress her kill. The hide should make useful leather. She didn’t really appreciate having a couple inches of her ankles exposed. Hopefully her attempt will succeed this time. That river lizard’s hide just rotted away.

After a while, she dug a smoke house a few hundred paces from the river bank, and started the process. In the meantime, she worked on cleaning the skin. It took her a couple of days working on the skin before she admitted to herself that she’d failed.

“What am I missing?”

The hide was spread over the grass. She’d scraped the flesh off and dried it out in the sun but it had shriveled up. It also had a rotten smell, so clearly she hadn’t cleaned and sterilised it well enough. Understandable, considering she didn’t have the correct reagents for tanning leather. She didn’t have tools either as she didn’t know what else was needed other than a knife and scraper.

Clicking her tongue in annoyance, she tossed the hide to a wary pack of snakewolves. She finished drying the meat and had enough for a couple of weeks worth, at least. Also, there was a redbone on its spine, so that was another day’s worth of provisions. Now, carrying the food was another issue. It was too much to expect it to fit in her backpack, so she built a makeshift sled from tree branches and rope made from vines. That meant she couldn’t go by her initial plan of jumping off cliff tops and gliding, but it wasn’t that much slower.

She found a bunch of bamboo shoots near the river and created another dozen water containers. She carved condensation runes on all of the containers and fed them Animus until they were filled with water.

This time, she didn’t mind how wasteful she’d been of her Animus use. With the density of the ambient Chaos, it only took a couple of hours to fill her reserves up. She also thought her Animus cap had risen, but she didn’t have a way to easily measure her progress. All she knew was that she was still not at the Sollus state. That feeling of fullness was unmistakable, according to Master Alfein.

She followed the river since its source seemed to be near the spire. Where there was water, there was food. She steadily ate through her dried meat in her travels. Everytime she ran low, or had the opportunity to hunt, she took it. For that matter, much of her kills came from carnivores attempting to steal her stash. She tried butchering them, but the stench when she opened the snake-wolves up convinced her otherwise. They didn’t have redbones either, so it was completely useless to kill them.

It took nearly a couple of weeks to get to the spire’s mountain. The slope was so gradual that it wasn't very noticeable, and it wasn’t until she happened upon a mesa and looked to the east did she see the flood plains and desert in the distance. It hadn’t rained in weeks, something she was quite thankful for. The Radiant Sun’s rays were a comfort, as always, though Damien’s blathering was tiresome.

Aside from some nuggets of wisdom, he’d mostly whistled tunelessly, made several crass remarks featuring her friends’ bodies, mostly of Gwendith, Krystal, and Maryn. She tuned him out whenever he rambled on like that.

Her Anima had grown. Now, whenever she flared it, it reached twenty inches from her skin. She also found out that it could now support her body weight by itself as long as she condensed it enough. If she squeezed it to within an inch of her skin, it grew dense enough that she found herself floating an inch above the dirt. It was rather disconcerting. Her Anima transferred the sensation of walking too well. She could feel every pebble, blade of grass, and twigs she trod on as if she touched them with her hands.

She had also unknowingly stepped on wolf turd and the feel of the squishy, slimy, gunk as if it were on her fingers had made her gag. Other than that and a few other incidents, her Anima transmitted sensations quite well now that she paid attention to it. In its normal diffused state, it was easy enough to ignore the extra. She certainly didn’t want to be bothered by every blade of grass that she walked on, or the numerous mosquitoes and flies, and other bugs, that flew in the air as long as they didn’t touch her skin. But when she condensed it, the perception was nearly impossible to ignore.

At the very least, whatever filth her Anima touch was quite easy to expel, merely a matter of Will.

After her dried meat had been consumed, which took a couple of weeks, she hunted and prepared another trihorn. The omnivores were spread all over the valleys. She messed up the tanning process again and she honestly wasn’t sure what she did wrong this time. She could only console herself with the fact that she should be able to reach civilization as soon as she climbed through Polus Coelum. And hopefully, better fitting clothes.

She spent a couple of days smoking the meat. Afterwards she continued her trek. She really should be gathering redbones rather than meat jerky. But she just couldn’t bring herself to waste all of the edible meat. It would be better if she encountered more of those earth swimming beasts. Their meat was inedible and they were the ones to hunt her.

She dragged her provisions sled over a ridge. Huh, that’s interesting. The valley below her had a wide path of beaten down earth where nothing but small weeds grew. It definitely looked like a dirt road but it was at least twenty paces wide. Bushes and trees grew along its borders. The road led directly to the spire’s mountain, or maybe that was the source. On the opposite way, it led straight east, though it meandered around hills and other difficult terrain.

She headed towards the road. Easier travels for her. If she encountered other people then at least part of her troubles would be over.

But it was mostly empty. She followed it all the way towards the spire mountain. That one was a perfect cone. The slope was an even fifteen degrees of elevation until it reached a ridge that was at least two longstrides higher than the base. Then it practically became a rock face. Most of the slope was covered by trees, but even so, the path was there. It carved a straight line up the mountain. Quite convenient.

It took her most of the next day to make the ascent. She went at a much quicker pace, eager to get to her destination. The muscles in her legs and lower back burned from the exertion, but nothing a few minutes of Recovery wouldn’t fix.She actually felt herself at the cusp of her training cap by the time she arrived at the end of the road. She didn’t see it from the base, but the road ended up on a plateau that was several hundred paces wide. The plateau was completely barren, and the rock face she saw was the base of the spire.

The spire was at least a longstride wide, though maybe her eyes were playing tricks. At some moments, it seemed wider than she expected, and at times, far more narrow. A blink and the clouds covered the entire shaft and another, the sheer rock face that soared at the way to the sky limit.

As she came closer to the base, she saw three other roads leading towards the other cardinal directions. The road she was on was too packed for footprints, but at the edges, she thought she saw claw and hoof marks. Ones that were longer than her arm and nearly as wide. Her thought jumped to the bony bear that had disappeared when all the large beasts went berserk. Was this their ultimate direction? They went into the spire, and out of the plane?

That the road led directly to the base and into a large cavern meant it probably did.

“I wonder what I’ll find on the opposite side?”

With a shrug, she pulled the sled along. She certainly wasn’t going to wait around.