Rapscallions

Prologue

Ja's buffalo grew tired as it carried him into the depths of the forest. He'd been pushing the poor beast past its limits as of late, but he couldn't seem to help himself. No matter how much one could pity an animal, its suffering was insignificant compared to the force driving him deeper within the eerie woods. "Farther, deeper in," he said, patting the side of the beast, as if to motivate it. "It's close. I can feel it."

They'd been travelling for nearly a month, he and the buffalo, and their journey had carried them over mountains, through rivers and across great bodies of water━all of which could have been avoided, had they known their destination. But Ja and his steed were none the wiser. Although they had travelled these lands many times━Ja for thousands of years━Ja had no map to show the way to a place he'd never seen, summoned by something inexplainable. This calling was beyond the physical realm━like something out of a story a parent would tell their child in their birth years.

27 suns ago, Ja received a vision. He saw himself surrounded by a dark void sprinkled with glimmers of light, as if he was standing in the night sky among the stars. There in a realm of endless night he reached out, plucked a star from the void, and placed it in the palm of his left hand. He watched as the star shrunk in size until it disappeared into a centerline of his palm. Suddenly, a light blossomed from under his entire body, as if the flesh beneath his skin had begun to glow. And when the light within him slowly died down, so too did the glimmers of light around him, blinking like fireflies until they were no more.

No one could understand it any more than Ja had, much less explain any better had they received the vision. In all the cycles of suns and moons, nary a being had never experienced anything quite like it. And what was even more peculiar; since that day, something began pulling Ja southwest, far from his homeland and across miles he'd never travelled with such haste before. Ja had been alive for thousands of years and would be for many more to come. The era before The Crystal Age was filled with immortals. There was no need to rush anything in his life. Yet, he sought out the meaning of this dream━the place from which he felt the pulling on his soul━with unparalleled haste.

Unfortunately for Ja's buffalo, Borja, they had made few stops to rest before entering the forest. It was the pulling. It had them both. Even if Ja had tried to stop the gargantuan beast, it would've kept going. They couldn't stop. Their destination was near. This is where it dwells, from which the vision was birthed. Just a little further. But Borja had met his limit hours prior and finally, when he could take no more, yielded and collapsed to the ground.

Ja was thrown from Borja's back and flew through the air. His back met a tree and with it came a snap, like that of a small twig breaking in a child's hand. A large root of the tree had broken the man's spine as he was thrown into it. Ja took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. As the breath left his body, so too did the pain as his bones corrected themselves and his body healed around it. He rose from the forest's dry earth, whole again and looked to his fallen companion as he crossed the small distance between them and then knelt down beside him.

"You have done well, Borja," Ja said, petting the side of the dead animal's face. "You have carried me farther than any other, and have endured great suffering on my behalf. I will finish the rest alone." He stood up. "Your sacrifice will not be in vain." Ja untied his belongings from Borja and slung them over his right shoulder, and marched on deeper into the woods, following the pulling that had killed Borja.

Ja trekked further into the vast forest for hours after Borja's death, discovering a vastness to it that had never been found by any still alive. The pulling was so strong it had begun physically pulling Ja, just as it had dragged Borja far beyond his capabilities. But Ja tried to keep a steady pace, so not to end up like his late companion. No one in history who had travelled this far into the jaws of this forest returned, thus it was aptly named The Forest of Mortality.

          Few had ever died, and so The Forest of Mortality was greatly avoided by those who did not seek answers to the mystery of life beyond what was known. Anyone, including Ja, would be a fool to walk amongst such infamous trees (even with reason to), but the branding of the title fool would've done no more than to inspire Ja further into the eerie woods. You see, Ja was not a member of society, but not by a desire not to be. He had longed to be accepted by his fellow immortals once, but the time when he would try to attain acceptance had passed. Now he followed what called to him, even if it made him a fool. Even if the same pulling was what drew all the others who disappeared into The Forest of Mortality.

Regardless of any suspicions that could've arisen in Ja, he travelled on. One foot, then the next. Again. And Again. It was nearer even so and if he turned back then, Borja's sufferings would haunt him for all of his eternity—given someone else did not take up the mantle of his journey one day. But what could've happened is something we will never know, for he travelled deeper into the endless hall of trees, as each branch grew grayer in the approaching distance and fewer in leaves.

Another hour had passed when Ja finally came to a stop. The trees had been dead for miles, and the earth had begun to sink until when he came upon a chasm, crafted with years of erosion from the river within it, flowing beneath where he stood. The river flowed to the east until it became a waterfall that poured even deeper down into the ground, and into the impossible. The river fell into a large lake that circled the base of a round pit of earth, with nowhere to escape.

Many things had been seen in The Era of Eternity, with many a claim more impossible than the next. Still, the river that flowed into the unfilling river in The Forest of Mortality would be the most important of them all.

Ja jumped into the river and it carried him over the waterfall and to the lake below, but he did not splash into its waters. He would never fell the sensation of it's waters wrapping around his body in the dangerous embrace of deep waters. Ja was elevated above calm waters that weren't moved by the river pouring into it. He found his footing amidst thin air above the lake, his feet walking on the air between himself and still waters.

If there was any wonder for Ja to have, it had to wait, as his eyes caught sight of a dark cave tunneling into the side of the pit just a short distance from where the lake met the shore. He walked on the air above the lake until he came to the shore and then suddenly his feet were on the ground, level with where the lake's waters were, the cave's entrance now only a few steps from where the short man stood. Above it, a great tree stretched down from the top of the chasm, it's roots sticking out of the stone above the cave on each side of it's entrance.

He hadn't noticed it before. No one could and ever would. It was a law of The River Pit that had yet to be discovered by mankind. Had such a law (beyond those of nature) not existed, the tree would be impossible to miss. It was the only living tree within miles, and the largest in the entire Forest of Mortality. Even it's roots, spread out into the ground, had more girth than a buffalo such as Borja. Such a tree blotted out the sun to those in The River Pit, as it's branches webbed across the sky and darkened the day with its multitude of colorful leaves.

The pulling stopped for Ja when he noticed the tree above the cave, but what kind of fool wouldn't be able to deduce that the pulling had been coming from the cave all that time? The mystery behind his vision was within, if only Ja would walk in and make himself vulnerable to its mysteries. But without the pulling, he refused to enter. Ja was no longer chased what didn't want him, so he waited.

Ja sat down before the cave, crossing his legs and folding his arms and gazed into the darkness. "I came here because you pulled me. If you are too afraid to finish the job, we shall remain here, unresolved until time itself stops moving." Ja remained sitting with his legs crossed, waiting for thirty minutes. And when no pull came, thirty minutes turned to an hour, an hour to days, days to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years. Ja had not moved from the place he'd first sat before the cave, awaiting the pulling, yearning for a sign for thirty-seven years when finally, glimmers of light, the same as Ja's vision, sparkled within the blackness of the cave on a night darker than most. Then, it pulled again.

"Looks like you've finally mustered the courage to call upon me again," Ja said, standing up on shaking legs that had forgotten how to walk. "I'll oblige."