Our Little Gods 1: RABATEA, the first World of the Daughters.

Chapter 17.

'The trees were dead, the branches had fallen off many years ago. What was left of them looked like grotesque spikes; limbless, lifeless mutilated corpses. The more you looked at them, the more it seems they were twisted in frozen agony. Writhing with the ghosts of long past pains; each hole in their trunks like a silent mouth stuck in death in the shape of the last moan. Some of them must have been enormous and their vast limbs, as big as trees themselves still hung above our heads, as they threatened to break off and crush us any instant. The spongy layer of rotten wood that covered everything muffled the noise of our horses' hooves. The smell was tart and sweet, the sickening perfume of the decaying corpse of imperial grandeur and even though it was soaked with water we refrained from building campfires in the evenings for fear of setting the wasteland on fire. Our nights were miserable and cold; every day we woke up before sunrise and readied ourselves in silence. On the afternoon of the fifth day we came to a large river flowing downwards. Its waters were crystalline, so clear in fact that one could see the rocks on the bottom, and there, along with the absence of fish or weeds were scores upon scores of bones and skulls, the once proud and thriving wildlife of Rabatea had too fallen, struck down by the inevitable doom of our brothers and sisters and been washed, rain after rain, down the bed of this poisonous river. '

"Do you think the Dead Lands have changed much since that has been written?" Maasil asked.

"That was from Kulba Unugh 'The Silence of Ash,' wasn't it. I thought I recognized the moody evocation. That was almost a hundred and fifteen years ago, I hope much has changed. The black rains have not been seen in my lifetime, at least in the Triadic Lands. I once read something that mentioned them as high as the Flatlands between Baragh Forest and Marsh Woods. The destructions were unprecedented, the testimonies made for an unbearable read, particularly the Healers descriptions of the wounds and mutilations caused by the acid like rains." Limero did shiver but since he was looking straight ahead he failed to notice the look of utter panic on Maasil's face at what his master had just said.

They had left the monastery at day break this very morning and had made good progress on a well maintained road until midday. As they paused for food and allowed the horses to wander in the meadows by the roadside Baalbek had gathered the boys and had taken them to Sar Melek. The general was trying to gauge the skills of the young men with swords, spears and bows. Baalbek had clear pale eyes and he shaved his head completely, he was not much older than his captains but his authority was undeniable. His deep voice conveyed the sensation of perfectly contained strength that could unleash a hurricane of violence in a blink. The bulging muscles, arms thicker than the boys' thighs, the feline fluidity of his movements and the fact that he always looked like he knew more than he was letting on, had impressed the boys durably. And, in the secret of his mind, Limero had to concede that he too, was both impressed and comforted as well.

The afternoon ride wasn't as smooth as the morning's, the road ended soon and they were left with poachers tracks on which they sometime had to walk by their horses. They saw the sun decline in front of them as they entered the Manyfold Hills and started to look for a place to spend the night. The Ignaien mounts were firmly to the Rising side now, tomorrow they were going to enter the infamous Dead Lands. That night Limero had Maasil take out of his bags four of his personal Healing seals. The master set Maasil up by the fireside and walked one by one to each of his companions performing a preventive Heal in order to protect them from some of the dangers of the Dead Lands, like: plague, the coughing sickness and the blue eye blindness. These, along with the black rains had been the gifts the Maharaïa had offered to the world, that and ash storms, nameless towns and warlords and of course the Veviensis. Their elusive enemy had never assaulted them directly. Limero was well aware that most in the Holy Archipelago believed that the feuding warlords of the Nameless Towns were the one thing protecting the Triad from the Veviensis. That the permanent conflict between them and the confusingly fluid system of alliances that prevailed was the reason the monster from the crater had been unable to cross the Dead Lands and unleash both Natabs and Balà upon the Triad. But in truth they knew very little about what was going on below the Ignaiens. Most of the time the ships that sailed from either Limores painstakingly avoided contact with the Maharaïa and the former Rabatea until they reached the disputed territories or the harbors of Gash. And none of the people that had been sent there ever came back.