rogue_3

The leader of the tribe understands that the shamans can foresee nothing but eternal battle and fated destruction. For him, there are too many questions that prophecy and divination cannot answer.

So he proclaims thusly: 'Heroes of the past, I obey your wisdom.'

'What divination cannot foresee, we shall witness with our own eyes just as you once did, and go forth with the belief that our ancestors will also see the answer.'

A monarch looks out into the distance from his golden castle. The sun sets at the exact moment the last grain of sand falls from the hourglass, just as his calendar dictates.

The conqueror from afar gradually approaches the royal city. The monarch's ministers continue to advise him against the epochal clash he plans to wage against the Khagan. He has brought unparalleled glory to Sargon, and its people will not accept any possibility of failure, or the tarnishing of the empire's glory.

But the monarch, whose achievements spanned both past and future, simply lets out a hearty laugh.

'I have already uncovered the truth of time itself. What could you, or the generations to come, possibly have to fear?'

'Follow my example, emulate my great works, and move forward as ordained in my calendar. The future is nothing more than this.'

A figure stands before a gargantuan structure gradually eroding in the frigid wind. It is calculating the possibilities of this planet, the possibility of survival for the many lives here, and the possibility of returning here once more after the icefields gradually melt.

Until it starts thinking—pondering—what the point of it all even is.

From what data it already possesses, there is no satisfactory answer to any of these things, so the lifeform known as 'Kal'tsit' steps forward, walking towards the vast expanses of time, towards a land without end.

Using a base established near the megastructure on the icefield as a springboard, a growing team of researchers is trying to explore the Foehn Hotlands to elucidate the new Collapsal phenomenon. Particularly, manifestations of temporal anomalies. Simultaneously, because the expeditioners were able to escape the hotland's influence thanks to the megastructure, people have also turned back to consider what principles the structure they restored operates on, and what potential it holds.

Unprecedented phenomena stimulate ingenious minds. People are constantly proposing and testing new hypotheses that subvert existing thought and shake the very foundations of science.

The team's collaborators include a Sarkaz Cyclops codenamed 'Valarqvin,' who facilitates the exchange of information between the research team and Rhodes Island.

She always remains silent, yet everyone believes that her gaze is fixed on the future, on fate itself.

And the fate of mankind holds infinite possibilities.

She climbs and finds a resting spot among the endless clouds. Not at the peak of the mountain, but at the far end of the snowfield on the other side of the mountain.

Behind her, footprints both deep and shallow are scattered in the snow. She sees every step, remembers every step. It is like the thread of fate: a knot wherever she stopped, stumbled, and picked herself up again.

Magallan can see clearly where she took the first step.

It was an ordinary afternoon. Her mother had the yellow pages open on her lap, and was trying to sell things to whoever was on the other end of the phone in a voice both coarse and kindly.

On the muted TV, a gray flightless fowlbeast hits the screen with its stubby, black wings. The young Magallan seems to hear its call, so she lifts a leg, puts it down, and slowly lifts the other.

She does this over and over again. She hears her mother put the phone and the yellow pages on the ground and call her father, grandmother, neighbors, and even passing Messengers. All to witness her memorable first time crawling.

It was a special moment that was worth the audience. Little Venta crawls backwards towards the TV, then slowly turns around, reaching towards the fowlbeast within.

Backwards? Sounds about right for her. She always finds a way, no matter how winding the path.

As the memories flash through her mind, she lies prone on the sled, sliding from the top of the mountain and through the snowfield on the slope.

Bang!

The snow is like the blanket that covered her when she was a baby.

It takes a while for her to come to her senses, or rather, to wake up from an infant's slumber.

The snow in front and above her is thick and heavy. She crawls slowly backwards, gradually emerging from the snow, and carefully stands up.

Magallan shakes off the past. Ice crystals return to the great snowfield. Her first encounter with Sami reminds her of a saying that she heard while studying at the Exploration Society.

'We are all children before Sami.'

'It is waiting for you to find It.'

Magallan walked along the winding river for days, like walking down the web of fate.

What awaits downstream as she keeps going? Warm shoals, or the cold north?

Go upstream instead? Choose the next distributary? She cannot know the results of these choices, just as she could not have known all that she would see in Sami. Sami's rivers, Sami's branches, Sami's vines wound around her finger... which path would show her the cause and effect of each choice?

Only Magallan knows that once, there was an ordinary leaf that filled her heart.

In the rays of sunlight shining through the leaves, she holds her breath, slowly and repeatedly following the veins of the leaf with her eyes. Everything is clearly visible, from the hairs on the leaf, to the tiny holes, to the procession of ants marching across the surface.

All little Venta remembered was that time seemed to slow down and elongate, like the branches of the leaf veins, like the trail of ants. Physical and ethereal lines that led her to stop in the woods—until she is called out of her eternal observation.

It is the voice of the supervising teacher and her classmates. They had arrived at the river they were going to camp next to, and now return in loose, scattered ranks. No one knew when she got separated. One of her classmates even brought up how he and Venta had put their hands in the river and wondered which distributary the water they were touching would flow into.

Rivers? Distributaries? Magallan no longer remembers all that, but she does remember a river like it, in a corner of that forest. In front of that ordinary leaf, she felt like an explorer for the first time.

What choice should she make now, in front of the river flowing through the wetlands?

Magallan calls up a drone and activates the freeze module, slowing the river's time until it grinds to a halt. She puts her foot on the ice, and slowly walks towards the other side.

Ice, shore, moss, mud. Where should she go, once she has arrived on the opposite shore?

She bends down to pick up a leaf.

In its veins, she seems to see Sami's answer.

When the explorer takes the first step, she feels the earth breathe beneath her feet. Was the voice of the earth always so heavy? It is only when she takes this second to wonder that she realizes everything here is heavier than she remembers.

The explorer sheds unnecessary gear one by one, until all that is left is life support and a video recording module. She has just arrived, and she wants to learn more about her new environment.

Soon, she realizes that the ground beneath her is smooth and slippery, and that she must be careful not to fall. It would be a big problem if she did. The ground is ice as far as the eye can see, and she could not tell where it ended, if ever. If she slipped, she would slide forever, until she slips into eternal slumber.

The explorer knows that this is not the first time she has set foot on cold, barren land.

In Sami's benevolent vision, she has trekked through the folds of snow and forests, and penetrated the endless icefield. She has encountered it countless times in the bedtime stories of her childhood, the books of her youth, and the tales of her journeys.

Then and there, that very endless icefield, the great behemoth that has always watched over her subconsciousness, lies beneath her feet.

She sees the shadow cast by the mountain, the shadow cast by the stars and the aurora, and she sees a great ring, forming infinity out of the cold and nothingness with its reflection. In the shadow foretold to her by Sami, she keeps advancing, answering the gaze in the abyss with her footsteps, responding to the irresistible pull.

Come to think of it, the end she saw was just the beginning.

The explorer had once escaped the gaze, but she never thought she would encounter it again. It all happened so naturally. At the end of the heavy and slippery ice, she sees the shadow again. When their gazes meet, she seems to see the procession of ants, the growth of the leaf veins, the flow of blood in the body, the invisible thread of fate drawing her inexorably towards an old friend in another realm.

'This was your choice. This is your end.'

There is no sound, but the explorer hears Sami's erstwhile answer clearly.

Did you know all this from the shadows, Sami?

She shouts, yells, screams. It is a dream of strife.

She has lost sensation in her legs. Many shards embed themselves in her body. Blood flows. The air is filled with smoke. The southerners left without so much as a glance back, as if they never heard her. Typhon knows the weapon they used to hurt her. The explosives that send Originium shards flying. They had used the same method to blow apart the old entangled tree.

One talks into a communicator, with no hint of joy or guilt. 'We shook the Sami guide. She was very superstitious and kept obstructing our investigation with her arbitrary rules. Our maps are good enough that we don't need a guide anymore. No worries, I'll contact base camp if there is a problem.'

'Maps are no use if you incur Sami's wrath... She will raise the mountains and call the wind and snow upon you...'

Typhon tries to give them a final warning.

Exploration fever has brought survey team after survey team into Sami's icefields, followed by Pioneer Teams and engineering vehicles. Sami has tolerated these visitors, permitted their power plants, camps, bus depots and communication stations, and even abided the occasional fire and lingering smoke. The improved facilities have made exploration much safer for the southerners.

But Sami's environment has not become any more forgiving, nor has the threat of the icefield gone away. Typhon, like many Sami, serves as a guide and a rescuer, teaching the children of the south an important lesson: Respect nature and never cross its boundaries.

'Alright, we'll take samples here.' The southerner who no longer had any patience for her teachings speaks into the communicator. 'We've removed all the superstitious Sami crap.'

But... the clan tree...

Typhon has no more strength to speak. Smoke gets into her eyes, and her tears mix with the blood dripping into them. A tribe's clan tree falls to the roar of a chainsaw, and the sound of it hitting the ground summons the clansmen.

A battle of shame and vengeance, of blood for blood.

The light of Sarkaz Arts flickers in the melee.

Typhon tries to draw someone's attention, be it the explorers or the Sami. She is hoping someone will understand her signal and turn their attention to what she is pointing at.

She sees the shadow of the demon chasing after them.

Finally, a Sami notices her.

He berates her, the Sarkaz outsider who led the way for the explorers, and brings his hammer down.

The dream comes to an abrupt end. The alert hunter leaps up.

Pointing her bow at the shadow emerging from the forest and threatening her sleeping friend from the survey team, she lets the arrow loose without hesitation.

She counts the cracks on her hand. It was a dark dream.

Step by step she stumbles forward, as if the cold wind on the icefield could blow her over at any moment. Barren whiteness and the vast void flash alternately across her eyes. At times she feels like she is being thrown into darkness, surrounded by stars, with the familiar past and the unfamiliar future drifting down like snowflakes. She can no longer tell day from night, nor how far she has walked, but she continues to count. She raises her hand, and counts every tiny little wound on it.

She keeps blinking and tells herself not to think that she cannot see clearly, for she would truly lose her vision if she did. She knows her foe well.

Thirty-nine. Forty. Then?

She loses consciousness for a moment, from both fatigue and hypothermia, but immediately restarts the count. One, two, three... any mistake would cause her perception of numbers to become distorted, and she'd lose understanding of the most basic knowledge.

The boundary between the icefield and Sami still seems so far away. The sun seems to have risen and set again. The distance to the dark mountains faintly visible in the distance has not changed. She knows there is a path to avoid the warriors in the north, and she must go there, or the intolerant mountainfolk will kill her once they see her corrupted appearance. Her legs look blue and gray. It takes all her effort to bend her knees, stretch them, lift them, and put them down. Is she supposed to put them down when walking? She savors the sensation of her boots stepping on ice, even if this itself is likely part of her imagination. The wound penetrating her calf has not healed, nor has the bleeding stopped in the cold. The leg below it has turned black. Typhon tells herself that it is only necrosis due to frostbite, but she keeps going.

Her quiver is empty, with only the heavy bow still on her back. She no longer has the strength to draw it. Her arms are stiff from maintaining the same position in front of her chest. In her bosom she holds a small box.

I won't lose to you, she thinks. I won't throw this bow away. From the first day we met, I told you, I won't be afraid of you. I won't lose.

She will bring this box back to Sami. Through the forests, to the southernmost point. She can still walk.

Until she sees a familiar figure on the unchanging icefield.

Arges gazes at her, and she remembers everything. The box in her bosom holds a flower that they found together. Arges asked her to bring it back to a Columbian in Čappat, while she went to find a group of explorers who lost their way on the icefields.

'Looks like you never found them... but at least... the flower... I...'

Right then, the order of language collapsed, followed by all thought and consciousness.

On the icefields, a body begins to lose its form. The parts not yet covered by shadow fall towards the ground under the influence of gravity, but the rest stay in place, holding the whole up.

The shadow covers more and more bodies, connecting segments of space. It slowly restores the data, resembling a human form standing on the land.

Cyclops Arts fight the demon over the remaining biological tissue, preventing it from fully becoming nourishment for the latter. A black, empty face sits opposite the Cyclops's face.

The box falls to the ground. Typhon wakes from the dream.

Just another dream of being hunted by shadow, she thinks, as she slings her weapon over her shoulder.

The hunter that belongs to the shadow has always been by her side. The day will come, eventually, when she is no longer a hunter, when she is no longer in command of her weapon.

But whatever my fate may be, for now, I am a hunter.

'So, our dreams are actually Sami speaking to us?'

'You could say that,' answers Typhon. 'But it could be a call from long ago. Arges says that fate is like a snowball. The higher up it starts rolling, the longer it takes to hear the sound of it hitting the ground.'

She pauses her conversation with the young researcher. The other members of the survey team are stirring and sitting up in the campsite formed from tree branches, opening cans and discussing in low voices the strange dreams they had last night. Typhon takes an uneasy walk around them. The protections at the entrance have not been damaged, no one tried to start any machines, and no one gives off a demonic scent. How many survey teams has she escorted? Typhon does not remember, only that both Magallan and Arges have gotten closer to their goals in recent years.

As for herself, she needs no goal for the future, only to do her job here and now. She must preserve Sami's order from the creeping shadow that seeks to break the eternal cycle of the hunt.

'I dreamed of a saddled creature, two stories high, charging towards me,' said a researcher when she passed by.