Chapter 7

Though plants and worms glowed, it was far too dim to see but a slight distance either way through the tunnel. The senses Yaro would have to rely on were sound, smell, and aura. She grunted, none of those were very acute for her. The closedness of everything would have a milieu of musty smells. To her, it was one dense must, a smell  that was neither pleasant nor unpleasant. A slight breeze came up the way she headed, carrying with it a slightly different must. The lumps of plants were too heavy to be bothered by it.

Her hearing then, that’s what she needed to use. The denseness of vegetation muffled every sound to the point of being almost silent. Memories surfaced of the sounds of a creature stalking in the snow. They would be louder here, at least. Maybe, with concentration, the beast’s breaths would be loud enough to hear. She unfocused her eyes. Plants groaned and the arrhythmic breeze whistled. There was not much sound for creatures, luckily.

She walked further into the tunnels. At each branching path, she took the one that seemed to lead upwards. There were surprisingly few ascending paths. While some had staircases a few steps to a floor up, they would inevitably have a ramp, stairs, or collapsed path that led her back down. Collapsed paths were the worst, which were less prevalent in the darker, greater amount of ancient architecture, and less life conducive areas.

She wished she had a map, though she knew those were rarely made for the uninhabited tunnels. One of the skeletons almost appeared to wink, growing with moss and mushrooms using it as rock rather than food. It was a humi, probably one lost during the war. Many were sent into the tunnels to try and find a new way to the enemy encampment. Both sides employed who they could, any semi-intelligent or intelligent species were bound by where they were born to fight for that side. It just so happened that the humi and drake were the most populous species. 

Next to the humi was a small wyvern drake. The bones curled almost affectionately. If they would have been found, would these treasonous two be given a proper burial?

The darker paths would be much easier to stick to if she had the available energy. Sticking to the overgrowth never seemed to lead upwards. The beings who dug the tunnels, now inhabited by squatters, didn’t care about the sayk band. The city’s tunnels would routinely link the upper and lower portions. So why wasn’t she finding that access? She would have been frustrated, if her eyes weren’t so heavy.

And whose fault is that? she chastised. She plucked another glowing worm as it tried to climb the flat wall. After inspecting it for spines, she put it to the back of her throat and swallowed it whole. She shuddered, the taste still there despite the lack of contact; the slime of the worm lingering on her tongue. It would be enough to keep going.

The darkness, the more it cradled her, the more friendly she became with it. save a few pebbles and roots, the path was mostly free of debris. By picking up her feet in a tall march, she could avoid the worst of the tripping. She refused to create light, her hands still recovering.

She worried further, past the immediate threat of eating and contact. I don’t know where I am or where I’m even going. I’ve got get above ground, there I could at least tell which way is south from the saykzuyg band. For all I know I could be heading back to that city of Yon. I doubt I’ll be able to escape the next time.

It wouldn’t be like a map would help her either. Mapping the surface was hard enough, the underground was too vast, too labyrinthine, and too untraveled for the millennia. Her hands raised as if to hold an invisible map. The map from her mind was legible, since she’d seen so many from her youth. Just buildings were second nature to visualize the three dimensional structure just based on floor plans. Where a bed was likely to be, where a dresser might be used to impede pursuers if knocked over. People were so predictable. Another look at her hands and she felt ill. They were visible.

They were visible? She looked up; there was light! The oppressive darkness, it stepped aside for a ribbon of yellow, like warriors for a general. The general called to command, bringing joyous news. Yaro could feel it, a soft cheer of victory, comradery, a funny joke.

She ducked down, halting her breathing and focusing her eyes. The darkness hushed to her senses. No one. There’s no way no one is around. These feelings, it’s too much, it’s way to strong. But there can’t be anyone, ther’s no sound, no smells, not even movement. It’s just me and the plans, fungi, and worms.

Her mind raced. The light, it was too steady for an arrant fire, too bright for passive bioluminescence, too maintained for a being creating it themselves. Her mind wanted to say it was the light of a tavern, a rich street, a home, the light of a civilized area. But there was no one, no hints of intelligent life was around her. Sure, they could be hiding their aura. But there was no artificial smell, no sound of talking, no warmth of comfort, no movement. As far as she could tell, she was alone.

Keeping quiet, presence closed, and breath limited, she sidled towards the light. It beckoned from around a sharp corner. Her cloak puffed in smoke and solidified, and her mask, her preferential vision became blocked by the cheaper mask –simple eye slits. Standing taller, she readied her voice for diplomacy. Not wanting to sound too dry, spit lined vocal cords. 

The area around her, ancient stone, metal, and white solidity in rounding shapes became visible as she rounded the corner. The light shone from another turn not far ahead, this time to the right. Happiness rang, a happiness greater than she’d had in a season. Imagery of people having food threatened thoughts. If they could be convinced she was a weary traveler, they might give her a bit of hospitality. Or, at least make off with something before being chased. Did she have the energy to fight if there were people? Simply ask for directions, don’t worrying about food. Her stomach didn’t like the idea.

She nearly talked herself out of rounding the next corner. She had to be stealthy, to scout out the area before intruding. The joy began to overtake, such elation that the potential of people slipped her mind. The light overwhelmed her, blocking out any rational thought. It was her instincts, the covering of her dilated eyes that brought sanity back.

“Raised to Tukk,” she breathed, jaw refusing to come back up. No intelligent or even semi-intelligent creature could be around. If they were, they would surely have taken it already. Before her, held in a glass fixture on the ceiling, a mass of golden light shone. Purity. A more distilled light than she’d ever witnessed in her life welcomed her into a closed room. There’s just no way I’m not in another world right now.

She took back just enough of her awareness to realize it wasn’t just any room. In the corner rose a metal frame where a bed might have gone. In another, the wall sunk in where doors might have guarded a closet. The walls bore words in an ancient tongue. THough she could not read them, they were clear in their enchantments: a light sleepiness coated the area. 

Some rooms in the ancient city could have their uses discerned, none so much as this bedroom. Whoever died so long ago, so unimportant was their wealth that they kept just above them jyk, a pure element, a piece of the saykzuyg ring itself.

She didn’t want to believe it. She couldn’t believe it. It was not her fortune to be able to come across something like that. Assiduity needed to be had, proof she hadn’t died. The overwhelming joy, the alertness of her sense, the uplifting and charisma all around, it begged to convince her contrary. A piece of the sky had been plucked to light someone’s sleeping chambers. Impossible. What the ancients were able to accomplish, simply impossible. The relic of thousands and thousands of years waited for her.

Even with the solidity of the walls, she couldn’t be sure she’d be alone. Maybe it was a trap, an illusion set to bait stupid creatures. Senses kept open, her muscles tensed in preparation to bolt. Each step towards the fixture felt like hitting a spring but keeping it from releasing.

She knew she should worry, and she did, a strange kind of worry that straddled excitement. She bound her steps smooth, her eyes constantly turning over her shoulder. She could be startled by any kind of movement to which none reared up.

She stood under the fixture, cheeks throbbing from an unwanted smile. Meaningless wires sprouted from the ceiling, coiling around the light fixture. Some were broken, dangling like vines who’ve yet to grow enough to reach the floor. They reached for her, she responded by grabbing one. Her robe fell in a heap on the ground as she hefted herself up with a beat of the wings. Grabbing the wires ensnaring the fixture, she darted her eyes to look for enemies. 

No one.

She tried to peer in the glass, only greeted with light and phosphates. She raised her fist, claws pushed together to make a sort of drill, muscles wound tighter and tighter. Her teeth gritted, she pulled back, then sent her meteor into the globe.

Fear burst from the bubble, forced away before she had a chance to react to the un-joy. The forces of Yon flew to the walls, vanishing under the thousands of spears of Tukk’s soldiers. Yaro grabbed for those soldiers, taking their reserves in her fist. She ripped them free, her hand shaking from the burning. I can handle this, I can handle my own flames, I can be burned. But this, the pain, the wonderful jubilant pain, it was far more awesome than even the brightest flame.

Letting go would mean defeat, would mean the end of her happiness. Clutching the condensed light, she could not let her happiness go, she would not let it go. Memories of Ellis were forced out, unbidden. Even the time she spent with him, could not induce this amount of happiness in her. 

Delight and awareness consumed. The power coursed through her, the ability to sense even the plants around her, able to feel the aura to the shape of a worm. It was like she’d been under a dull filter her entire life, the grit only now being washed away. The emotions, joy, fear, disgust, surprise, sorrow, anger, all were known to her. The surface waited within range, not nearly as far above her as she thought, lined with grasses and trees. An Alsow ahead of her.

This substance, what she kept in her grasp, it truly was jyk. It was light, it was yellow, it was happiness, it was sense, it was Tukk brought to the mortal realm. And she felt it in her very being, ricochet up her arm and throughout her body. 

It was too much.

Her stupidity, ineptitude, arrogance, fortune, all came together to shatter her. She dropped the light.

She jumped after it, diving for it as it hurtled to the ground. Not fast, it shattered, breaking in a flash that blinded her as she crashed into the hard stone. Everything hurt; nothing was broken.

The light escaped the room, racing down the hallway she’d come. The room returned to how she found it, illuminated but not obscured. Underneath her, between bloodied arms, twinkled the remnant of the light. Magic of the ancients must be keeping it from scattering completely, only slowly decaying.

The effects died away, the perception of aura shrunk and blotted filthy once more. Her happiness dwindled into the true pain her hands grappled with. Her ascension to Tukk had come crashing back down, reminding her she belonged in Yon.

1. Add how she's upset at the light burning her hands. The only thing that's been able to do that before has been her own breath. This is about control. That even though she has more control over senses she still doesn't have full control over self.

The craving to grab it once more, to never be unhappy again, nearly overtook her. One glance at her blackened hand reminded her of the consequences. That must be tended to immediately.

With her teeth, she ripped the charcoal from her palms. The proximity to the joy helped a little, and so did her experience. The pain still had her shriek. The crispy flesh slid down her throat, nothing could go to waste. Then came the licking, the stinging, the tiring growth of new tissue. She couldn’t allow herself to feel tired by the time she’d finished one hand, she had the other one to do.

This, the treasure granted to her unwarranted and illegitimate, she would keep it. With her holder, she formed it into grey smoke. That wasn’t what happened. Grey smoke swirled around it, taking the air into her holder. The jyk itself was too large, too intense, too immense in its purity.

Yaro found her cloak nearby and rolled it over the light. I need to think. It can’t be larger than five fuur worth of flame. But that’s so much for this thing. This treasure would be worth at least… five thousand in some black market. I cannot leave it here, it’s worth too much. She took a breath, trying to allow her other emotions to help judge the situation. Hunger said she could get food, sorrow told her she could pay the greatest farseers, surprise told her she could keep it for herself. Anger told her leaving it was not an option.

Her cloak remained over it, not burning it. Of course light, for its immense heat, did not act like fire. It wasn’t fire. She didn’t know it. It was doubtful most did. Like most, the substance was that of legend, only written about like one would read about the good god that took people to Tukk. But very few living and breathing could claim to have seen the substance, let alone hold it as she did. Not the presidents of the Kexist nations, not the mercantile kingpins of the modern world, not even those found in the Republic of Kexist’s harvesting effort would anyone be exposed to this substance but maybe once in their life. One was more likely to encounter a Tuumon Kova than pure jyk.

She could not tell how, in all the thousands of years, no one had found this yet. The city could not be too far, there even was a semi-intelligent being nearby. How the jyk had gone un-pilfered was a mystery, one that didn’t need to be solved.

I have so much money now. I need to find someone to trade for it. Or, I could just keep it. I’d be ripped off anyway, such was the price to pay for anonymity on such a valuable artifact and no questions asked. It will probably still go for more than I’ll ever have.

Selling it may not be the correct path. The urge to take off her cloak and let herself bask in the unrivaled glee gnawed. Anyone could be sensed, preparation would always be at hand, no attack couldn’t be seen coming. And the energy, the overflowing will to do things, it could keep her moving. The surface didn’t seem so far away without food or water now. Just her treasure.

Yaro closed her eyes and put her cloak on, wrapping the power in the hood behind her head. Her eyes opened to the shadow of her crooked horns in the divot. It could, until she came back to civilization, be used to see. And the energy it gave her, it would be enough to actually get food. Despite it making her feel things and her senses widen, her body still didn’t fully obey, her wings still ached, she still hungered, she was still exhausted. It was like her mind was attached to a battery that sent overpowering pulses through dulled circuitry.

She would have to find food eventually. Something so bright couldn’t be hidden forever. It would only make her a bigger, brighter target.

She moved towards the door, down the corridor, and back to the split. She followed the path lower into the ground, away from the surface. The light was so close to her, she could feel distanced with the layer of grass. It felt wrong to go further down. The life in this tunnel didn’t end.

She’d make it to the next town, she could feel multiple wide auras in the furthest reaches of her strengthened sense. She now held the energy to continue, however fake it was.

Yaro didn’t want to spend time hunting, she rarely did. Sleep was preferable, a way to regain energy while without consciousness of the time she wasted. It wasn’t very often she needed to eat either, but recent stresses forced her hand.

And she did not know the area, it was so unlike the city above ground. In the buildings, walls separated one large structure, dividing it up intelligently. Wild areas of forests had trees grow, deserts were open with chasms or tall structures. It all made a kind of sense and could be surveyed easily. The underground, it was a network, a twisting of tunnels up and down in a structure that had to be intelligent, but not to which Yaro knew. And because she wasn’t familiar, she could not guess what was likely to lead where, where an exit was likely to wait for her.

And the worst part wasn’t that she was kept to hunt underground in the mess, where her need to have lights gave away her presence. It wasn’t that she had to flee yet another city. It wasn’t even that she had to keep moving against the pangs in her leg. It was the loneliness.

Fine, it was how tired she was, how her stomach growled incessantly too. But those were symptoms, byproducts of her own ineptitude. When she had Ellis, she never had to worry about food or shelter, not after the first few seasons that was. When they first met, she still found her own food, always surprised when she came home to a warm cooked meal. She felt foolish bringing him what she did, despite his gratitude for almost rotting food from those who lived their lives in excess. It was a remnant, hard to kick.

It never truly went away, she found as she listened to the darkness. I can always rely on myself to keep me alive. For what divine purpose that could possibly be? I have no idea. Not that any of that is real.

It was so frustrating that she couldn’t rely on her eyes. If she could have made it to the surface before hunger set in, the hunt would have had a rabbit in her hands in a matter of minutes. Instead, she had to expend so much energy to use senses that weren’t so keen. Shapes from the bioluminescent worms or plants guided her through the twisting tunnels. The branching paths that lead upward seemed promising. And if there weren’t enough, some energy had to be used to produce her own light. Her flame sac coughed each time that had to happen.

She thought of using the jyk again. Her hands were not ready to hold it yet, they still were pink and scales tiny.

Another unfortunate outcome of being underground was that whatever she found would not be enough to keep her going for long. The worms kept her moving —she never had to worry if they were too toxic and the ones that were made themselves flamboyant— the plants were inedible —So was bread; she never had to worry about getting actual food. If she found a rat that didn’t scurry away at her light or some mole that didn’t burrow away, she might get enough to carry her to the surface.

Every now and then, she’d let herself be still, taking in the sounds and smells around her. She’d hoped for the echoing of footsteps or the rumbling of something digging close by. Taps came from the distance, she closed her eyes to listen closer. It had some weight, maybe the size of a deer. Her breath burbled helplessly in her throat, hoping to find the direction it was coming. In the path she was walking, maybe a bit to the right. Her feet fell in the muted tune meant for solid stone. Foliage only made her approach all the more silent. She closed in on it, feeling its unwary aura come into focus. Its steps gave the impression it had nothing to worry about. It couldn’t have been aware of her… yet.

Yaro inched closer to the beast, well within range to lunge and tackle it, whatever it was. Its aura became clear, more controlled than a simple beast. The sounds of wet munching and a feeling of hunger hung heavy in her. Similar to most semi-intelligent beasts, it emanated an emotion most came to know as ‘keep away’. A mix of boredom, angst, and fire that only those who were smart enough to mix yet stupid enough to not know to look for others. It stomped, its hoof hitting the floor to let others know not to mess with it.

Yaro knew she should get as close as possible before letting her presence be known. If she could quickly get to its neck, everything would be over without much of a struggle. But where was its neck? With hooves, intelligence, and solitude, it was likely to be a faun or an alsow? Both were semi-intelligent and would not be easy prey. It was also underground, not where either of those made their homes. Creatures underground either had claws to dig with or swam through the dirt, everyone knew that. Maybe it was some other creature, hoofed and able to quarry? She needed to know, to quickly snap its neck. The jyk urged her to use it. But she knew if she did, they would sense her. Aural sense worked both ways, you overlap yours with another’s to get the idea of their emotion. But that overlap meant they were also connected to you. No, best to leave the Jyk in her hood.

Any closer and she would give herself away. With her palms burning, she could not afford to use her flame sac to breath fire on the creature, though that would be easier and more effective.

She pounced at the creature. Light flushed the cavern, along with its memories she’d never wanted to see again. The creature before her; the Alsow; horned, lean, afraid, and enraged; drove its pin feet into her chest. After piercing either side of her stomach, it sent her flying backwards. Her anger screamed, unwilling to come to her palms fully. She watched it bound a way into the darkness.

“Kak, to Yon, Kak Kak.”. The cave returned to absolute darkness. I’ve never in my life been so stupid as to come up behind it. I need to shut these wounds. Not only did it get away, but I now have to deal with so much less energy. I’ll be so slow the next hunt.

Was she slow? She stood, replaying what had happened in her mind. She couldn’t have let it do this to her so easily. In fact, she didn’t come up behind it. In the light, she saw it turn, rear up at her while she looked on, dumbfounded. Did I let my aura grow, maybe? My presence always seems noticeable to some people that have just a bit more aural awareness than most. Maybe, I’m just not as good as I used to be. That self I used to control must have been different than what I remember.

Had she accidentally used the jyk? No, she did not feel the creature’s aura until the attack. At first, it surely did see the jyk as coveting and joy flushed the room. That was when the light of it flashed, memories dropping Yaro’s guard as the creature’s visage brought unbidden images. Unwanted. No, not the jyk, it did not give her away. She did. Her form, as always. THat initial coveting soon, upon recognition, became replaced with fear, fear for its life, nothing else. No curiosity, no greed, no envy. Yaro’s hunger scared it away.

She wasn’t cut out for hunting. The city had reasons it remained better. “It’s so much easier stealing,” She muttered, stepping back into her pace. She might not eat yet, but she could still try to get to the surface. And, if not that, to another town. Preferably both.

While it would be easiest to steal, she instead had to plan. Who would she come across, where were the best places to hide if the town laid underground, what time was it? If she had to hunt, she wouldn’t go after something so large, at least while underground. If she came to the surface, she could look for tracks she might be familiar with, like that of a deer.