Harbingers p.2: Climb

The sun pierced the deep black sky over the small portion of Skoh that had been unburied in the last shift. The surface population was the smallest it had been in living memory, so the lack of exposed buildings carved from the solid stone floor beneath the dunes wasn’t an issue. The contents of those buildings was another matter: most were homes, which at least had beds and linens, but there was only one uncovered ranch, and the koshers and tailors had to make due with whatever spare tools could be scrounged from the temple beneath the Watcher’s tower, converting unused living quarters into their new workstations.

Mazik, Elise, and the unWarded made their way through the uncovered streets, down the main thoroughfare which headed straight for the tower. They skittered between what few shadows were cast by the midday sun — the unWarded, wearing only a few strands of woven grass, was the only one in danger from exposure, but even Mazik and Elise in their breathable linens didn’t relish the oppressive heat. They walked until the street was consumed by the surrounding dunes, took a short detour down an alley to their right, and arrived at one of the only entrances to Deep Skoh that was actively used.

Elise took the lead, the stone on her staff exuding that color-consuming aura it had when she’d come to retrieve him from the cells. Mazik relaxed his eyes from their usual squint as the aura washed over him, finding the sun and even the heat less of a burden while inside it. Likewise, as they entered the shadows of the deep city, the refreshing, cool dampness of the underground air was alleviated along with the shadows. Even the sounds of their footsteps were strangely muffled — not silenced, but not reverberating down the smooth stone hallways.

The mouths of certain intersections interrupted the colorless aura with wavering shadows that refused to be consumed — they hovered in the passage like a curtain, and approaching it incurred a growing sense of discomfort, like the passage behind you might not be there anymore should you pass through. “Those shadows,” Mazik tapped Elise on the shoulder, “ the ones that resist the aura. Were they always there?” His voice sounded far away, even to himself.

Elise glanced over her shoulder at him. “Since the last shift. The listeners placed them there to help guide the lost to the tower.”

“Placed them?”

She smiled at him, a hazy, dreamlike image without color or shadow. “It’ll make more sense once you’re a Listener.”

They continued in silence, save for their muffled footsteps and click of Elise’ staff. Mazik hadn’t noticed the shadows before, but the feeling they exuded, that foreboding air, was something he recognized from his own explorations of Deep Skoh. Those tunnels hadn’t been anywhere near these, and in fact had often led away from the tower.

They hadn’t needed to walk much farther for the tunnel to intersect a set of stairs climbing up to the left and down to the right; they’d reached the base of the tower.

Elise led them away from the darkness, eventually dimming her staff as they climbed out of the dune engulfing the tower’s base — The tower’s outer wall was interspersed with clear stone which let sunlight guide their way, another technology lost to his people’s history. Some of the stones were colored red or yellow, like worm’s blood or the sands themselves, or blue like water, and some were colors from the forest which Mazik couldn’t name. The colored lights shone through him, somehow more visceral than the sands and stones he’d spent his life in, each of their beams a unique feeling as they cascaded over his bare arms.

They passed stone arches into the tower’s center as they climbed, occasionally seeing Listeners inside; They poured over the carvings in the walls, organized wormhide scrolls, or simply sat with their eyes closed — meditating, Elise had called it. Mazik spend most of the climb staring out the clear stone — the colors alternated frequently enough that he glimpsed both Skoh and the desert through a multitude of spectrums, each drawing different memories as if the colored lights were pointing straight into his head:

Yellow light made the desert seem colorless, not unlike the Aura from a Listener’s staff.

Red felt dark and wet, like the sweat coating his body at sunset.

Forest colors called more specific memories — of group gatherings where they danced to the beat of the great stone drums in the tower which echoed through Deep Skoh and up through the ground, of Elise and him walking the streets of Skoh as it was now, becoming familiar with their newly unburied home — that last one was perhaps his oldest memory, one he hadn’t revisited in a long time. He looked at the back of Elise’s head, much taller than he had been but nonetheless grateful to have her guidance.

The unWarded tripped as they reached the door at the top of the tower, stumbling into Mazik’s back with a muffled cry. Mazik stumbled but managed to brace himself, one arm against the stone wall and the other reaching behind him. He realized with a start that the unWarded’s arms were still bound behind her; if she started tumbling down the stairs, there was no telling when she’d stop.

He caught her awkwardly in his backwards reach, his rough hand landing somewhere on her midsection as she leaned against his back. Her skin was as smooth as the wet stones in Deep Skoh, yet warm to the touch like the streets after sunset. He stood there for a moment while the unWarded got her feet beneath her, then a moment more as he realized he should probably let go of her and give her room to move.

“Are you alright?” Elise asked from a few steps up.

“We’re fine-” Mazik started, but cut off as the unWarded pushed past him. She climbed the few steps between him and Elise until they were both at eye level, but her gaze remained on the door. Mazik followed her gaze, realizing the Watcher’s door was not the heavy stone barrier occasionally found around Skoh, but a grainy substance with odd streaks whirling through it.

Elise looked from the unWarded, to the door, then back again. When the unWarded made no move to interact with her, she turned back to the door, rapping her knuckles on it. The sound that resulted was a dry, hollow knocking that echoed down the stairwell, far louder than Mazik had expected for how light Elise’s rapping had seemed.

The unWarded winced with each knock, resisting her restraints for the first time since Mazik had seen her. She gave up quickly, turning her head away from Elise. Mazik could see her expression, strained and tense as she breathed heavily through her nose.

“We seek the Watcher’s guidance,” Elise called to the barrier. “We seek the Harbinger, Fir’gtach.”

The portal creaked as it swung out over the top of the tower, a gust of hot wind whipping into the stairwell as they stepped onto the wide stone platform. A steepled roof kept the overhead sun off of them, but Mazik still kept his eyes off the horizon: The floor was a seamless stone block, and at its center sat a pile of red rags in a high-backed chair that grew from the floor. The wind whistled and cried, echoing itself in pitches Mazik had never heard the wind reach before; It sounded like wailing, moaning, a low chanting, and in some ways it almost sounded like singing.

They followed Elise to stand an arms-length behind the chair. “Watcher,” she began with her head bowed. “I, Listener Elise, seek to guide Mazik on pilgrimage.”

“Stand beside me, Listener Elise.” The voice was directionless, simply filling the space between the floor and the roof of the tower. It ignored the wind that occasionally whipped at their garb, growling like a hundred wet stones cracking in a fire.

Elise stepped up to the chair’s left side, looking into the same distance as its occupant.

“Pilgrim,” the voice came again, and Mazik knew it was directed at him. He looked to Elise, but her eyes were on the horizon. “Join me.”

Mazik moved to stand next to Elise, but the voice rang out before his first step touched the floor. “Join me, not your sister.”

Mazik’s hair stood on end, his sweat running cold for a moment — the watcher was a stagnant figure, living in the tower through multiple shifts. Though everyone on Skoh’s surface since the last shift knew a little about each other, not even the listeners knew about the Watcher beyond the fact that they existed. He did as he was bid, taking in the watcher as they came into view:

The pile of rags that overflowed the chair continued up to form a vaguely humanoid shape, all skin covered in weathered red rags. The body took form as it rose from the pile at the chair’s base, all loosely wrapped save for a pair of goggles as deep black as the sky. They stared out over the horizon Mazik avoided, unwavering as hot wind ruffled the rags around them.

A particularly strong gust of wind washed across the tower, and the head-shaped rags lolled to aim those deep black goggles in Mazik’s direction. “If you cannot gaze upon it at a distance,” the voice came again, and Mazik got the distinct feeling that only he could hear it this time. “How do you expect to commune with it at arms-length?”

Mazik swallowed, a sudden feeling not unlike dehydration washing through him. He averted his gaze to the tower’s edge, then to the sands between it and the horizon. Finally, he steeled himself and looked up, gazing directly upon the god of the desert, Fir’gtach:

It was like fire, whipping about above them, reaching out towards them. It was like worms, diving and crashing into the sand, writhing and twisting. Most bizarrely, it was like the trees of the Eastern forest, tall, strong, and bearing colors that did not belong in this environment. The tendrils that extended and peeled off from the central whole were made of more tendrils, as were the tendrils that made up the tendrils that peeled off from the whole. Despite the distance, Mazik felt he could have focussed even deeper, discovering more and more tendrils making up the physical form of Fir’gtach.

He tore his eyes away, catching himself on the back of the Watcher’s chair as he briefly lost track of which way was up. He gasped, gulping deep, dry breaths.

The Watcher’s arm rose, a ragged, red curtain ending in a red-wrapped hand. They pointed to their right, extending before Mazik. “Follow the dune’s crest East. The way will become clear from there.” Their arm fell, dropping the curtain to hang unnaturally against the arm of the chair.

“East?” Mazik’s brow knotted, but the Watcher remained silent.

Elise bowed to the pile. “It’s not our place to question their advice,” she said as she straightened. “Come, we must prepare for the journey ahead of us.”