Standing at Caer Paniya
MANAD
The quiet comfort of their rooms, the white stone and oyster shell walls, the gauzy sea-green curtains billowing with a salt-slick breeze, was marred now. Everywhere she looked, Manad's heart clenched with the memory of what Nahidi had been. Her clothes stuffed haphazardly in a wardrobe warped from ocean humidity, the drippings of her jewelry scattered among parchment and quills. She felt the ghost of Nahidi's hands on hers as she stared at the vibrant splashes of green paint twisting up the walls in bright gashes of jungle. They'd painted it together, Nahidi guiding the twist of Manad's wrist so she might get the branches just so. Nothing so beautifully lush existed in Metharusone.
"She should never have died like this."
"Come now, child."
A heavy hand fell on Manad's shoulder, claws clutching. Bariel had been so quiet Manad nearly forgot the death needed to be presided over. As if she couldn't respect Vinmirian customs, as if Nahidi hadn't prepared her for the moment.
"The bleed never would have let her reach Vinmir," Bariel rumbled, slurring over the unnatural syllables of Sone. "It's better this way."
Manad expected better from an alfar. How would they feel, dying on the wet shores of Metharusone while their alfkoenig succumbed to the eternal sleep deep in their jungles, immortalized as a tree with all his daughters' saplings sprouted around him like a field of stars? Manad shrugged the hand off of her and would have thrust to her feet were it not for the sprout. Its roots were so tiny they fit in the lines of her fingers. It needed her more than she needed her anger. She turned to face Bariel, frowning at his dispassionate gaze.
"It won't survive out here." Manad closed her fingers carefully over the sprout. "The shore's too cold and our sand is too dry."
"This is true." Bariel dipped his head in a ponderous nod. "Sometimes our soul sprouts are lost to the wind or the hungry jaws of insects. There's nothing to be done."
"Yes, there is." Tension vibrated through her muscles and she willed herself to relax. "I won't let her go like this."
"She's already gone. The sprout is merely an essence, who she was as a person is lost to the arms of Laht."
"Laht," Manad spat. Laht and his ilk were the reason Nahidi died like this. Why could gods not stop the bleed? What use was it for them to bless a handful of dinosaur clutches with immunity to it, scattered across Bytherem, only to have its people fight over the chance to bond? As much blood and bartering spilled across the sands for the cure as it did from the bleed itself.
"Don't disrespect the gods," Bariel growled, flashing a pointed canine. The first genuine emotion he'd shown since they'd laid Nahidi in her deathbed.
Manad's face twisted. She shoved passed Bariel, clutching the sprout tight to her chest. He wouldn't help her, nor would any of the gods, so she'd simply have to help herself.
She would not let Nahidi's sprout die on the cold shores of Metharusone. She would get her home.
---
Magic was a volatile thing, even with a bond as synchronous as Manad's to her own cicring. She didn't control it; she was merely the tool it used to express itself, but they'd been so finely stitched together that their desires - her's and the magic - often aligned. It hummed like lightening beneath her fingertips, lighting her veins with molten energy that threatened to tear her skin apart, pulsing so hard she could feel the shape of her bones through the rhythm. There was pain, sharp as a poison tongue, but there was also the electric flush of pleasure coiling in her lungs, exhaling in puffed breaths of hot mist.
Manad sat cross-legged in the sand, with frigid ocean water licking up the shore to sting her bare legs. It soaked the edges of her robe until the fabric clung to her skin, rough with sand and salt. "[i]Vinmir[/i]," she sighed.
Around her neck, Nahidi's soul plant trembled inside a fist-sized glass bauble. She'd filled the bottom with garden soil and rain water, and now the edges dripped with moisture. It wasn't ideal, but it was the safest solution Manad could produce on short notice. Nahidi would stay there, nestled against Manad's heart until they could bring her home.
The memory of Nahidi's voice wound around her in a golden whisper.
"Thick green jungles and air so hot and humid you drank it rather than breathed," Nahidi laughed against Manad's ear, their bare legs tangled in the sheets, fingers laced together. "The ground is softer than silk."
"Softer than this bed?" Manad asked, her voice honeyed with satisfaction and sleep.
"Not so inviting." Nahidi kissed the back of her hand, her lips cool and dry. "I'll take you there one day when the bleed is gone."
"Does it smell like you?"
Nahidi laughed, rich as bells in a much more literal sense than for a human. "I smell like the ocean now, and like you. Cinnamon and sea salt." She shook her head. "Vinmir smells like too many things all at once, like sticky sweet fruit and a hundred flowers clobbering each other for dominance. It smells like soil, deep, black, and fertile. Like rain and wet bark traveled by a thousand scurrying feet." Manad tried to picture those scents now, letting her magic reach out into the aether, searching for it with silver fingers that split into a hundred tiny nerves. Portal magic was theoretical and Manad wasn't the first to attempt teleportation, especially in the years since the bleed began. So few people bonded with cicring, and fewer bonded well. This was the thought Manad held onto as she let her magic twist her sinew into something new. They were a better match than any other mage of Manad's generation.
And she wanted this, more deeply than she'd wanted anything else in her life, like the want itself was irreplaceable with her own beating heart.
Manad's magic thrummed, reached, and she no longer saw the ocean. Sand beneath her knees grounded her to the shore, but her vision swam to blue-black void. Silver spears of magic cut through the darkness, zagging roads through unknown points Manad could only watch... and feel.
"Vinmir," she breathed again. The void turned lush green, thrumming with life.
"Vinmir," she cried, louder. Tendrils of magic shot out, writhing, searching, reaching...
Something touched back.
Pain lanced through her. Manad's throat burned with a scream, but her ears flooded with a cacophony of silence. Her vision swam hot and green.
Then black.
And nothing.
---
"You were abusing your magic again, Sarandir."
Weight dipped next to Manad and the smell of cool apple wine flooded her nostrils. Her eyes fluttered open to dawn-light and the shadow of someone tall looming over her. It was Farrohd, the fisherman, and the passingly familiar stone walls belonged to his hut.
Farrohd pressed the glass of wine to Manad's hand and turned away to fling the curtains open. "It's morning, by the by, and you very nearly drowned."
Manad pushed herself upright and took a sip of the wine, cloyingly sweet but welcome on her parched tongue. Twinges of pain ticked her arm as she raised it.
"My magic wouldn't let me abuse it."
Farrohd snorted. "Then it was abusing you. I assume whatever you were trying to do, failed?"
"I'll get it right next time."
"You bring in the fish or you starve." Farrohd shrugged. "You should do it away from the shore, next time."
"Thank-you." For the wine and the rescue and for being Farrohd.
He was an older man of indeterminate ethnicity, his hair and beard silver with age, his tanned skin wrinkled from the sun and the ocean. Unmarried with no children and no lovers, as far as Manad knew, but he'd never seemed a lonely man to her. She'd seen him out on the ocean more often than not in a rickety boat that a microraptor could capsize on a windy day.
"Heard there was some messy business with your elf." Farrohd scraped a wooden chair across the floor and pulled tine and feathers from his pocket. He didn't look at Manad as he spoke. "Got some of those Vinmarians upset. They're looking for you."
The word ‘elf' had Manad clutching at her chest. The smooth glass of the bauble chilled her fingers. She breathed relief, fogging its surface.
"Don't have much interesting to say to elves," Farrohd continued, winding twine tight around a fishing lure. His way of letting her know he hadn't let on that he'd found her on the beach, or that she was currently residing in his seaside shanty.
"How long have I been out?"
"Just the night, but your disappearance was," he cleared his throat, turned his voice deep and hoarse in facsimile of an alfar's," noticed and disturbing."
Manad tossed back the scratchy covers and slipped her bare feet to the floor. Her outer robe had been removed and at her confusion, Farrohd inclined his head toward another chair, where the garment was laid out to dry. She dressed quickly while Farrohd hummed and worked on his lure, not plying her for conversation.
It wasn't the first time he'd rescued her from the beach, it likely wouldn't be the last. Manad had a habit of pushing the limits of her magic, seeing how far it would stretch underneath her skin before it split her in two. Before Nahidi, Manad's room had been a clutter of books and parchment so she could absorb as much as possible about the theoretics of magic use, but Nahidi had taught her to let go of that, to embrace the chaotic entity of cicring and let it decide what they would do. Magic came easier that way.
"I need to get to Vinmir," Manad said, lacing the last strap of her sandals. "As quickly as possible."
"My little boat can't take you that far, doesn't do much good in rocky waters."
"With magic."
Farrohd shrugged again, intent on twisting twine around a bright russet dromosaur feather. "Don't know much about magic."
He said as much, but Manad had caught glimpses of the ash black cicring scars crawling up his arms, the withered skin where a bond had tried to form, and failed. Farrohd may not have been a mage, but to even have been permitted to attempt the bonding ritual, he must have studied magic. He knew more than a great deal many mages in the spires.
And Manad loved to learn.
She paused in front of him, quiet and patient, urging her hands to lay still at her sides and not fidget with the edges of her robe like a schoolchild.
Farrohd brought the lure to his mouth and pinched the twine between his teeth. He pulled, and the line snapped at the base of his knot. He held it up for Manad to examine.
It was crude. Brown string around red-brown feathers, held together over a tarnished grey hook with a vicious barbed point.
"Sometimes it's not enough to want something," said Farrohd. "Sometimes it's not enough to need it. Most of the time, you need bait."
---
She did not have months to determine how to make a portal. Each passing day Nahidi's soul plant shed another puff of white, shriveling in size despite Manad's constant, hovering care. She gave it sunlight but no wind, measured the droplets of rainwater she fed to it, sprinkled blood of heterodonts in the soil to feed its roots, but still it curled in on itself. It needed the heat of the jungle. Manad's body ached for sleep, her eyes were heavy with it, but she didn't dare lose a moment. She'd dragged the books o her old library back to her rooms, ignoring Bariel's expression of discontent and angry murmurs. Portal magic had been attempted in the past, but not successfully, and Manad didn't have time to make the same mistakes other mages had. So she read, she learned. She poured herself into the books until her head swam with letters and sigils.
She felt something that day on the beach, reaching at her through the void, but it had thrown her back. Why? Why let her get so close, to smell the fetid heat of the jungle, only to push her away? Farrohd was right. She needed bait.
Manad's rooms were equal parts her own belongings and Nahidi's, a tapestry woven together of the two of them, their brief history together. Manad trailed her fingers over the painted walls, tracing the loops of jungle vines that fed into a burst of thick greenery. Nahidi had very few belongings from Vinmir, apart from old clothes worn at the joints and tarnished armor that had been long retired. Her jewelry, her combs, her vanities were all Sone make. But there was one thing.
Manad slid open their nightstand drawer and pulled out a little wooden figurine. It had been a courtship gift Nahidi had carved herself, from the wood of a Vinmirian tree Manad couldn't pronounce the name of. It was poorly fashioned, Nahidi had no skill with carvery, but looking at it made Manad's heart pang with black loss. It was a therizinosaur, its scythe-like claws tucked against its body and a cowl of feathers spread above its arched, bird-like neck.
"I meant for it to be Laht," Nahidi told her. "But I think it looks more like a broken necked compsognathus." She laughed, chiming and beautiful as dawn after a rainstorm.
Manad's cheeks heated. She clutched the figurine tighter. "I don't keep figures of gods."
"No, but you keep stacks of books enough to make the god of knowledge jealous." Nahidi fell heavy to the cushion next to Manad and tucked her pointed chin in Manad's shoulder. "If you prayed to any god, it would be this one. Oh Laht, please grant me more books, there's still space to walk in my rooms!"
Manad guffawed and shoved her away, sending her tumbling back against the pillows. "It's not that bad!" As she spoke, her heel bumped into a stack of books and sent them scattering across the floor.
Nahidi laughed harder, the golden excellence of it bubbling up inside Manad until she fell into a fit of chortles and leaped at Nahidi in her pile of cushions.
Now, Manad traced the divots of the wood, digging her fingernail in the grooves meant to represent feathers.
Laht was not only the god of knowledge, he was also the god of death, and he'd taken Nahidi in such a terrible way, leaving her in Metharusone to rot and wither. There hadn't been a single whisper of news regarding new blessed clutches in the city. No pairs ready to mate. No visits from the god to bless any other dinosaurs with the much needed immunity to the bleed.
Nahidi tightened her fist around the figure until splinters bit into her flesh.
She had her bait.
---
The water bit at Manad's waist with glacial stabs, but she held firm, clenching her teeth tight so they wouldn't chatter. She held the wooden figurine of Laht just below the surface; her knuckles white and trembling around it. Her magic pulsed, oozing red-blue down her veins until it engulfed her hands.
"Vinmir," she gasped.
Her magic burst from her fingertips, shattering the wooden figure. Manad braced herself for the pain of wooden shards, but none came. She wrenched her eyes open to the sight of the wood spiraling out of the water, glowing red-black with power. It formed an arc in front of her, spraying drops of ice on her face that sliced like daggers.
"Manad!" Bariel's voice thundered from the shore. Her magic sizzled at his approach, crackling spits of angry red. "Manad, you're going to get yourself killed!"
She wouldn't. The cold pain of the ocean was nothing compared to the absolute bliss coursing through her from her magic. They were one entity, reaching into the void together, stitched together with desperation and love. Her chest burned where Nahidi's soul sprout nestled, a bone-boiling warmth that filled her with light, forced her to step forward against the tide toward the whirling mess of wooden splinters.
The air in front of her ripped apart.
Water rushed around her. She lost her grip on the slick rocks beneath her sandals and crashed under the waves. A shock of cold wracked her body. She wanted to gasp. Salt and ice filled her mouth, her eyes, blinding her. She clawed for purchase, but there was nothing to hold on to. No rocks beneath her feet. No more sand. Just water and void. Something sucked her forward, and she stopped flailing to grip Nahidi's bauble instead. Would this cold kill her sprout? Fear gripped her worse than the darkness.
The muffled sound of Bariel's musical baritone droned through the sea, but she couldn't make out his words. Couldn't tell if they were Sone or Vinmirian. The sound dissipated with a clap, and all she could hear was the pounding of her own heart.
She hit something soft. The water splashed and scattered, leaving her sodden and gasping for breath. She grasped for the bauble, yanking it to her eyes. The last glittering remnants of her magic fizzled away, revealing the soft white sprout nestled in its bed of black soil. Her magic had protected it. Relief flooded from her in a sigh and she collapsed back against...
Her fingers gripped something moist and soft.
Moss?
With her breathing ebbed to normalcy and the water no longer a deafening rush, other sounds made themselves present. The chirp of insects, the cry of birds, a rustle of something large breaking through undergrowth. Her chill turned to cold sweat as heat sunk into her skin. All around her lay a rainbow of greens, so deep and vibrant she could feel them.
She was in a jungle.
"We've done it." Manad pressed as kiss to the bauble and forced herself up on shaking legs. "I made it."
Branches cracked to her right.
Manad sank back against the nearest tree as the realization hit her - she was in wilderness. No sign of a city or habitation anywhere, no roads or paths, which meant she was exposed to the bleed. Any sound, expect those insect whirs, was dangerous. And something large was headed her way.
Manad cursed herself. She had no weapons, not even a knife, not that it would have mattered. Her fighting skills were nonexistent, she could barely hold her own in sports when she'd been forced to participate in them. Nahidi had been their fighter, a Vinmirian hunter, adept at taking down dinosaurs infected with the bleed. Manad had nothing. Not even her magic would be of use to her, especially not so soon after asking so much of it. Manad twisted to look at the tree. It was covered in a slippery moss, but thick and tall with sturdy looking branches. The beast approaching her sounded large, but if she could get up high enough to stay out of its reach, she might survive the encounter.
She climbed. Her muscles were already loose from using her magic, cramped from the cold of the ocean. She pulled herself up one agonizing branch at a time, holding her breath, afraid to be heard over the bird calls. She couldn't die before she planted Nahidi's sprout. She'd made it, she'd done portal magic, and she wouldn't have her efforts wasted because of some bleed-infected beast. She was smarter than that. She pulled herself higher, higher, until every muscle screamed for her to stop and her lungs burned. Her sweat poured. The thin fabric of her robes clung to her skin, itching and soaked with the heat. When she estimated herself twenty feet from the ground, she swung her leg over a thick branch and hugged the trunk of the tree, trying to make herself small and inconspicuous. Would the beast smell her? Cold ocean salt must be foreign to it, so far inland.
The surrounding trees quaked. She caught sight of something pale ambling through the foliage, more than twice her height.
And then... a voice.
A human voice, but the language wasn't anything Manad recognized. It wasn't the lilting, musical tones of a Vinmirian elf, for certain, and while Manad knew humans lived out here, they were far and few between.
And none with half a brain's thought would be in the wilderness.
Unless...
This was a bonded pair, and the great cream beast ambling near that voice was god-blessed against the bleed. Manad had only met a few, they were still so rare, especially in Metharusone. Most had bonded herbivores, the ceratopsians previously used for hauling and war or hadrosaurus, which had once been a staple of their diet. The first time she'd looked in the eyes of a god-blessed dinosaur and felt the intelligent staring back at her, she'd had goose shivers for weeks and refused meat for longer than that.
And now one might crash through trees to find her.
Manad hugged the slick trunk of the tree and drew herself upright. If she was wrong, she'd still be well above ground and hopefully out of harm's reach. She could wait here as long as it took for her magic to rest and ready itself. But if she was right, this might be her best chance at getting to safety.
"Stranger!" Manad's fingers dug hard into the tree.
The rustling stopped. The human voice continued, quieter at first, then it shouted something back to her.
"I don't understand you!" Manad could understand a few Vinmirian phrases even if she couldn't speak them with her human vocal cords, but this was no alfar language.
The large thing pushed its way through the trees. Manad's breath stopped. If this was a dinosaur, it wasn't one she'd ever seen before. It had wings! Currently tucked tight against its body to fit through the trees, a plight its massive body already struggled with. Horns twisted from its narrow head and its bright eyes locked onto Manad. It rumbled and lowered its chin as a smaller figure pushed into view. A human! A woman! She wore clothing Manad had never seen before, but Manad was unfamiliar with any human tribe in Vinmir, so this was no surprise. The... dinosaur creature with her was a far more perplexing sight.
The woman spoke.
Manad shook her head. She pressed a hand to her chest, leaning slightly over the branch, and said," I'm Manad."
The creature grumbled.
"Eowelia," said the woman. She pointed to her companion. "Cyta."
Manad cupped the bauble containing Nahidi's soul sprout and lifted it for the strangers to see. "I need to plant this." She mimed digging and setting the bauble down. "I need to find the capitol. Aleyoka." The word was difficult on her tongue, Nahidi had laughed at her pronunciation and tried to help her form the sounds, but alfar words weren't meant for human mouths. "Caer Paniya," Eowelia replied, then a rush of other words to her companion.
The beast stepped toward Manad's tree and her heart thumped, stomach dropped. It raised itself up and planted its forelegs on the wood, arching its slender neck toward her until they were eye to eye. Manad's breath caught. Magic crackled weakly between them.
The beast - Cyta - pressed its nose closer and inhaled long and slow. Manad eased a hand toward it, resting her palm on the blunt edge of her massive snout.
Cyta turned to Eowelia.
Manad understood there was a kind of mind-link between the god-blessed and their bonds, a way of speaking without words. She assumed something of that sort was happening now. Eowelia flashed her a brilliant grin and nodded to her bond. She pointed at Manad, then the beast, and curled her thumbs together, making her hands into wings.
"You'll take me to Aleyoka?"
Eowelia shrugged, nodded, and said something else in rapid fire excitement.
"Alright."
Cyta turned, exposing a riding pad at the back of her neck. Manad took the hint and clambered carefully down.
---
She was not in Vinmir.
The wind tangling her hair was no different from that in Metharusone, but the landscape visible from Cyta's back was wholly alien. Water surrounded her on all sides, and dense forest that stretched across the island. Above her the dwindling light revealed a single moon, rather than Bytherem's three, and the first wink of stars in patterns Manad had never laid eyes upon. Where had her magic taken her? She gripped Eowelia's tunic tighter and squeezed her eyes shut. The smooth glass of Nahidi's bauble pressed cool and terrifying to her breast. How long would that sprout last in a completely different world? Manad wanted to pull it from her robes and stare until she was certain the fluff petals were unharmed, but she didn't dare loosen her grip. A fall from this height would smash the bauble.
Eowelia craned her head back and said something Manad couldn't understand, but a harsh shrug had her lifting her eyes to the woman's pointed finger. Beyond it was a raised crest between the trees, where other massive winged creatures leaped and circled the cooling air, some with riders on their backs, and others flying alone.
"Caer Paniya," Eowelia said, and then something else that had to be some variation of: "Nearly there."
Hopefully, someone at the caer could understand her, but if Manad was correct and she was in a wholly different world, the chances of that were unlikely.
Cyta touched down on one of the jutting outcrops, smooth as silk, and Eowelia helped Manad down to solid ground. The landing area towered above the ground and looking over the edge made Manad's heart stutter and her hair stand on end. Eowelia touched her wrist to grab her attention and pointed to a doorway that led into the caer itself.
Eowelia led her down winding stairs, passed a myriad of humans (or human-like individuals, if they were otherwise Manad couldn't tell the different). Torches lit the walls and the air here was thick and warm, almost choking compared to the cool sea breeze of her home. The lower they climbed, the more suffocated Manad felt, until she loosened the clasps of her robe to leave it hanging open around her throat. She ached to ask where they were going, but they was no point. Eowelia wouldn't understand her, and Manad had no way to know what her answer meant.
Finally, the firelight gave way to the last flickers of sunlight as Eowelia brought Manad into an open courtyard, if one could call such a vast area a yard of any sort. Unlike the entryway, there were no beasts flying overhead, and everything descended into peaceful quiet. Manad stepped out. Her sandals grated over sand. She flexed her toes, gazing at the ground then outward, realizing the entire bowl was filled with sand, and even in the dim light she could feel the heat of it. Eowelia took her elbow and pointed outward through the shadows.
A shape moved, rising off the sand like a great snake. Manad froze, hands flying to Nahidi's bauble, preparing to turn and flee. Eowelia held her fast, smiling brightly and muttering words of encouragement.
Manad refocused her gaze, squinting through the dying light.
The s-curve rose a little higher and a pair of gleaming cyan eyes peered back at her, piercing into her like ice and stealing her breath. It wasn't a serpent; it was another of the flying beasts, almost identical to Cyta in shape, but painted a myriad of twilight purples streaked with white. The beast raised a wing and flashed Manad a glimpse of large, white orbs.
Eggs.
The image of Laht's idol bursting apart to form the portal slammed through Manad's mind, and her fingertips buzzed with the reminder of her magic. Her magic hadn't made a mistake, or if it had, a higher power had guided it. She wasn't here to bury Nahidi in a foreign jungle under alien stars.
She was here to bond. These were not the god-blessed dinosaurs of her home, they were something entirely different, winged flying beasts with horns and eyes as deep as a soul. It meant dragging out her timeline, it meant she needed to tend carefully to Nahidi's soul sprout for that much longer, but it was an answer.
Manad slipped the glass bauble from her robes and held it against her cheek. The great purple beast, the mother of those eggs, rustled her wings and laid them gently over her clutch. Her eyes never once left Manad, but they held no danger. Not at this distance, perhaps, or for some other reason Manad couldn't fathom.
She pressed her lips to the bauble.
"I'll get you home, Nahidi, and I'm going to find an answer for our people, too."