Rae. I hope you have made it out unharmed.

I know you wanted to save your friends, but that is not possible. I apologise. I understand the pain you must be feeling.

I do not know what your new goal, your purpose, is now. Included in the pack is another map, this one of the surrounding location. It is an old one, and I did not have time to mark the Temple’s location on it, but if you managed to find this cache with what must have been a not very good or useful map, then you should have no problems orienting yourself with the other one. I am confident that you will figure it out.

Also included are: money, water canteens, some various other items that I believe would be of assistance, and rations for two weeks and a bit. They will undoubtedly be unfamiliar to you, and look like not enough for even one week. You will find another paper with explanations and instructions for the rations. As an assurance that you will not end up in a situation like the one that brought you to the temples, I have added several extra rations. From what I know, the nearest town should be a little under two week’s walking. Things have changed since then, but you should be able to find a place where you can restock your provisions and go wherever it is you wish to go next. You have trusted me this far; I ask that you trust me for a bit longer.

Now. You probably want some answers. I will try my best to explain. I will start with what happened to your crew first: they have become Promems. They are Rememberers now, but they will not remember you. They have wholly given themselves over to us: their memories are now ours to care for, their minds and bodies mere shells. Do not worry. They will be cared for, and will not be punished for your escape. One thing that you must get into your head: they are no longer who they were, and they will never be that version of themselves again. There is simply no point in coming back for them anymore, so for your sake, please do not bother. Better to forget any thoughts of rescue, along with any memories you have of them. They certainly do not have any memories of you.

You are no doubt questioning if you can believe what I have told you, if you can still trust me. ‘Could it be an elaborate ploy to make you forget your diplomatic mission?’ Yes. I am aware of what transpired to you and your crew, and why you are here. All of the Keepers are aware of this; they’re aware of everything your crew knew. I will explain shortly. First, please, you are welcome to take a break to center yourself. This cannot be easy for you. It will not get any easier.

Rae took her suggestion to heart and stopped reading, reeling from everything. He had spent half a day putting distance between himself and the Temple complex. Eventually, he got far enough away -- and tired -- that he took out the map Talon had given him. It had taken the rest of the day, and the better part of the night, to make sense of it and find his way to the cache Talon had hidden. He’d barely slept, Willing himself to stay awake long enough to put one foot in front of the other, again and again and again.

He desperately needed sleep. And yet, Rae struggled to take his eyes off of the paper. He stretched, tried to nap. When it became obvious that sleep wouldn’t come he sat up again and rested against a tree. The paper sat atop the backpack. Rae kept glancing at it, fearful that if he looked away for too long it wouldn’t be there when he turned around. What little amount of rest he got was pitiful, filled with ephialtes. It was hard for him to differentiate between what was real and what was part of a nightmarish delirium. Did the Temple really exist? Or was he feverish, still laying on the beach next to the crashed ship, hoping for rescue? Rae could not tell if he could trust himself, let alone believe what Talon wrote. He tried not to dwell on what he was to do now, as if thinking too hard in that direction would shatter him.

As night passed, the clouds that had obscured the moon and stars while he tried to sleep dissipated. Rae knew that he should get a proper night’s sleep for the day ahead, but he couldn’t rest properly until the restlessness went away, and the restless would not abate until he finished reading Talon’s letter. He got up with a grunt, then set to searching through the pack, pulling out a flint and steel. The sky was clear, and albeit dark, starlight was plenty. However, Rae felt that the occasion demanded more than just simple starlight. He wanted to see every word with clarity, to cast all shadow of doubt from the letter. Rae was anyways going to struggle to comprehend what he was reading; no reason in increasing the struggle by not seeing the words. Once decided that he needed to finish reading, that desire took over all reason. He didn’t even think of the risk the fire posed as he quickly gathered kindling and set to lighting a flame.

About the Promems, Rae read, immersing himself in the letter once the fire was large enough to read by.

You may have noticed that not everything was… ‘normal’ with them. Before you were confined from the hall, they never approached you, even after days of dining with them. I heard that you struck up conversation with one of them, but she didn’t seem to remember you the next day. Did you ever wonder if something was wrong? I do not blame you if your eyes passed over this without any suspicion. We tried our best to hide it from you. There was fighting among us if we should still offer you the choice after you spent time among us as yourself and not a Promem. You could not know about this place until you said yes -- and even then, you never would have known the whole truth before forgetting everything.

I told you before that this Temple was founded upon connectedness. Connectedness with nature, of course, but with each other, too. That connection exists between the different pieces of the Temple. The Promems are the ones that, usually, offer themselves up, forever letting go of themselves, of their lives. The Servlacs take care of their physical needs. We, the Keepers, are in charge of their souls.

You may be thinking, ‘why forever? Can they not leave the Temple if they so wish to?’

There may be times when the Promemrs want to leave, and while not possible to return to who they were before, they can ‘live’ again. The Keepers, however, do not like to let go. The Promems… they’re addictive. Remember the “magic” I showed you? You marveled at its exoticism, but I can tell you now that you are already familiar with it. You have used it, seen it before. Just not in this way. I do not know the extent of your understanding of what you call the Wills and Whims. Your crew’s was rather rudimentary, so I shall start from the beginning:

The Will, as it is commonly called, is your lifeforce. It’s a combination of your abilities and determination; of the mastery of oneself. Most falsely attribute it to be the manifestation of willpower, whence it also gets its name. This ‘power’ (or rather skill, as we Keepers refer to it) only has internal impacts. You can only use it to better -- or worsen, if you so wish -- yourself for a short period. Or so it was thought.

There are legends, of course, of people long ago from long forgotten places that could affect their environment. If that is true, I do not know; I have never met someone that could single-handedly wield their Will to have an external impact. However, if you can combine people’s Wills, and then harness that, then your only limit is the size of the group, your skill the only boundary between external and internal impact.

This is what the Promems are for. Think of them as our endless supply of lifeforce. The Keepers, then, are the ones that can use that lifeforce. This power… it is already addictive for the Servlacs who care for the Promems, and they cannot even use it. For the Keepers? It is become life reborn. That is why the Promems have their every need taken care of -- there is nothing that the Keepers, and by extension the Servlacs, would not do for the Promems.

You can probably sense that I do not wholly agree with what goes on here. You would be correct. Yet, it would be untruthful to claim that I myself am not addicted, and that I would stand by and let someone or something harm the Promems.

I told myself that I was helping you because you remind me of my sister. She was a Promem here, once. I became a Servlac to follow her, to take care of her like she took care of our family -- that is a story for another time. My sister is gone now. It has been many, many years since I followed her and became a Servlac, But I digress. I apologise.

As I said, to claim that I helped you out of the bottom of my heart would be a lie. A Keeper does not have a heart. I helped you because we do not want the politics of the outside world to destroy the sanctum. Your staying here, together with your incessant curiosity, put this precious balance at risk. I had managed to strike a deal with the Keepers; your crew’s souls as payment for your freedom. But I did not act fast enough to prevent you from finding out what you should not have.

One more thing I need to tell you: I lied, when I told you that you would be safe once out of the near vicinity of the Temple. The Keepers and Servlacs will never stop coming for you. You know too much. They see the escaped information as a much greater risk than the others. I did not.

Do not let my gamble be in vain. Go do what you must.

- - - - - - -

After reading the letter Talon left him, Rae spent the remainder of the night awake. Snippets of the letter floated about in his head. Every now and again they bumped against each other, causing brief flashes of pain as he thought of what happened, of the letter, of what to do next. It was a miserable time, too tired to put his mind to use, but too overwhelmed to sleep. Rae finally dozed off towards dawn, and did not wake until midday.

He thought briefly about staying put for a while longer, to put his feelings in order and figure out his next steps, but he eventually decided that it was too risky to stay in the area. He didn’t make any noise or movement -- Rae just sat still, almost catatonic-like. The risk was still there, and he couldn’t deny it any longer, not as he looked over the remains of his fire.

It was a struggle to get up and start walking again. The goal ahead of him was much harder and blurrier than the one before. Escaping was hard, but clear-cut, with Talon to guide him through it. Find the supplies: also difficult, but straight-forward too. What was he supposed to do now? Go forth and do what you must. Did Talon mean his original goal, the reason why he had gone to Ga’ani in the first place? But… to find a way to mend the relationship between two hostile countries, to get to work together and communicate with each other? How was he supposed to go about stopping a war by himself, when even the delegation he had been part of hadn’t had a plan, either?

Rae shook his head to clear those thoughts and hoisted the backpack on his shoulder. There was time later to think for how to do that (if he decided to give it a try). For now, there were more immediate matters. Talon’s letter had mentioned something about a town nearby. That was to be his new goal, then. He could think of the rest later.

- - - - - - -

The many days spent following Talon’s map finally came to fruition when Rae reached the end of the woods. She had been right. This map was much easier to read than the one provided to get to the hidden cache. The only real downside was that it was wildly inaccurate when it came to the size of the forest. Rae was starting to doubt its accuracy when he burst clear of the foliage; according to the map, he should have been clear of it days ago. He didn’t know if the scale was at fault -- other than the woods’ size, it was accurate, as far as he could tell -- or if there was another reason entirely. Whatever the reason, he didn’t mull over it any longer.

He’d already spent enough time fretting over the past days. Rae had noticed all trees large enough to hide a person, the trunks painfully obvious. Whenever he spotted such a tree looming closer and closer he had made a point of changing directions and going around it. He’d also constantly looked over his shoulder, checking to see if anyone was following him -- there never was, but he’d kept up the habit over the course of his trek.

Rae looked over the map as he walked, trying to orient himself. He should have come out westward. If the map (and his directions) was true, then there should have been a road nearby, but there was none. Trying not to think too much about what this meant for the town that was also in the vicinity -- vicinity here being objective, for the forest had messed with his sense of size -- he set to it. The general direction should be close enough, and right now, Rae could settle for that. It made it easier to keep going, when he could focus all of his energy on just walking.

Walking was simple. Monotonous. It was as if he were dreaming. Rae sometimes told himself that it was just a dream. He wasn’t sure why, nor if there was a reason for it in the first place. His stomach rumbled, interrupting the silence. Alone in the hills, he had a brief flash of panic that it had given him away, that a Keeper or Servlac would suddenly rise from behind him and catch up with him. They hadn’t so far, and he’d seen no traces of pursuit while in the forest, but he felt exposed in the open-land, so he looked behind him, just to make sure.

He hadn’t gone too many paces before his stomach rumbled again. Grumbling himself, Rae paused briefly to take out a ration then resumed walking. It wasn’t long before it was gone, and he took out another one, only feeling slightly guilty. When Rae realised that he wasn’t out of the forest when he should have been, according to the map, he made a poor attempt at rationing the rations (he chuckled to himself at the joke). He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten, he thought as he washed down the dry bar with a gulp of water. Then he remembered that he had a hard time remembering much of anything these days, not just the time that passed between meals, and he shrugged, unconcerned.

It seemed like it had been years since he’d left the port in Kijah’dar, saying goodbye to his parents and climbing aboard a ship filled with diplomats on a mission to ease tensions. The Magister and his cronies had ramped up their stirrings of old grudges, dousing fears with oil then stepping back and watching as the hateful blaze sparked into a roaring fire. It would dwindle down eventually, but it would take many with it. Kijah’dar could not keep going like that. Hence the mission to force Ga’ani to reopen communication and rebuild the relationship between the two nations. Rae remembered all this, then immediately wished he hadn’t. He focused on his pace, trying to drive his thoughts away from the larger goal.

“One step at a time,” he whispered, trying to both distract and cheer himself up. “Find the road first. Then the village. Simple. You can worry about solving everything else later. Road, then village. Everything else will follow.” It was doable. He hoped.

- - - - - - -

Rae found an ancient road later that day -- if it could still be called a road -- but it took another couple of days before he noticed any other sign that there was a town nearby. The sign came in the form of a broken post, a simple wooden stake driven into the ground. The plank nailed to the top of the stake had a red arrow painted on it. The colour must have been vibrant, once. Now, however, it was dull, and flaking off. The wood, too, was chipped and weather-marked. It looked old, as old as the map perhaps.

And yet, despite the post’s dilapidated condition, it energised Rae. He no longer dragged his feet when he walked, and there was a new bounce to his step, an earnest desire to arrive at the destination as soon as possible. He relaxed his rationing, eating one of the packs and smiling as he left the wooden sign behind. Despite the old sign, and the surely outdated map, the destination seemed real now. If there was a village nearby, Rae was determined to find it.

Soon enough, another sign popped up, and then another. Rae quickly found himself walking onto an actual stone road, following closely-interspaced markers instead of walking kilometers without any sight of guidance. The transformation was astounding, in what it did to him. Rae took a proper break after the sixth new sign, pausing just long enough to eat, drink, and briefly nap. The rest energised him, but not as much as the need to find the town.

“Road, then village,” Rae said to himself. With a smile, he broke into a run, energy coursing through him. He was focused and efficient as he ran, driven by the newfound hope. The hope was energising, but fragile, and paranoid. What if the town disappeared? It was illogical -- but then, hope often is. Rae sped up, mouthing his mantra, faster and faster, until he was just mouthing ‘village’ over and over again, running in rhythm with it.