Part 16

Kole pulled back from his telling of the story. The tree was patient, but his story had stimulated the tree. Never before had it heard of such exciting adventures. The tree had thousands of questions boiling within its sap, but out of respect, the tree was silent.

Kole apologized for his reluctance. "I was the only one to survive the attack that followed."

The tree was again silent. She felt the pain behind Kole's story, and she respected his boundaries. Kole stared off into the full night sky. The band of stars above to him looked like a scar - a wound of light on a perfectly black void.

Kole had often meditated on the void - seeking that ultimate emptiness where the soul's anchors dissolve. The Shinn believed that when one dies in meditation, the void was understood fully. The body was just another anchor. Kole was aware that this frightened him. He was not ready to abandon his flesh. That was another contributing factor to his leaving the Shinn. Still, he tried to find peace within himself by getting close to the void even after he left. Not so much recently, though.

"You blame yourself," suggested the tree.

Kole returned to the present. He apologized for wandering off into thought and affirmed that he did blame himself for the death of the guardians.

"The Shinn, true Shinn warriors are able to refine their mental disciplines, so they can immediately filter out any magas like the one Klalech was using. If I had stayed to finish my Shinn training, the guardians might be alive today. I would have been able to prepare them for that battle."

The tree took only a moment to respond, "...but you didn't, and you couldn't."

Kole looked directly into the face that he envisioned the tree to have - that of a wise old woman, her face formed out of knots of bark and lichen for eyebrows. Jewels of sap formed her deep set eyes.

The tree continued, "How could you do something that you could not do? I am not a bird, I cannot fly or sing. I may wish I could, but I cannot. I am not a star, but sometimes I wish I could look at the worlds from their heights. I wish I could avoid the pain I feel after winter, when my sap begins to flow again, and my tips split and rupture... but I am a tree. That is what I do."

With that, the tree pulled its connection from him. Kole stretched his legs out in front of him and pondered this. "It is what it is." A simple philosophy from a simple being. Kole had heard variations on the same philosophy many times, and rejected them every time, abandoning the thought to rhetoric stated by someone who read or listened to someone else who they thought sounded profound or important.

Trees can't read. Hell, if trees knew what books were made from... a silly thought. A distracting thought. The fact is, that the Truth manifests in many forms, and sometimes in the throats of people who do use the words of other people who they find profound or important. This old tree had nothing to gain from stating this truth. The tree had no secondary gain from trying to sound profound. It was a pure elemental, washed for a thousand years by the wind, rain, and stars. Uncontaminated by others thoughts, the tree was pure being.

He could only do what he could do.

A distant rumbling reached Kole's ears. A storm was churning to the North. Kole grabbed the bonesword and thanked the tree for her wisdom. The tree graciously returned her appreciation for his telling of the story. She then insisted that he return to tell her the end of the story someday.

Kole smiled and agreed, then began his descent.

The mannikins awoke to their physical bodies and sat up. It was night time. When they had left their bodies to speak to Klalech, it had been sometime in early dusk. "I forgot about the time change," said the little one.

"Dammit, I got a headache."

The big one rasped out a funnel of dusty noise, and the little one barked, "Yeah, I KNOW I don't got a brain to ache, but my head hurts, okay?"

They sat in silence for another moment and listened to the crickets. "But neither of us will have any headaches when Big K gets us that wargolem chassis, huh?" Another shot of grated air belched from the big one's mouth hole.

"Toolin' around, causin' all kinds of booms and ha-ha's... Man, will we be the envy of everyone attending the next Mannikin reunion."

The big one turned it head with a sound of crackling wood to look at the little one directly in the face. "What??"

The big one pointed to the moon, which had risen above the mountains to the East.

"Yeah, it's an awfully pretty moonrise. What about it?"

"Grakkktch," the taller one pointed again at the moon.

"You mean we were gone almost a whole month?"

The taller one reached into its worn and stained tunic, and pulled out a slug from under its ribcage.

"Shit! Check me for ants! I hate ants!"

Laastra and Madak left the camp just after breakfast and headed Northwest. Four guards accompanied them, all dressed in white robes. As the sun rose overhead, no words were exchanged.

They walked silently for most of the day. Madak took notice of some herbs along the way, and stopped to pick them. The party marched on. They approached the wooded edge of the mountain range, and saw some rockdogs running parallel to them for a brief time. Predatory beasts, they feed mostly on rabbits and small woodfowl, but in a pack large enough, and hungry enough, they sometimes attack humans and demons. Madak was unconcerned. He read the dogs intentions by their postures and movement. They were more interested in a rotting carcass on the riverbank to the north.

They crossed the river on a natural bridge made by a fallen tree, and soon found the camp of the assassins.

A white-robed, furred man greeted them. He wore the face of an elk. The elk smiled. "Laastra the blessed!" and knelt to take Laastra's hand. "Stand up, Keddar! We are all the same inside," and Laastra pulled him to his feet.

"We have exciting news! Our southern missionaries have returned!" The elk gestured to the group of huts in the clearing.

"Did they return with the package?" Laastra seemed excited.

"Yes, they did."

The group hurriedly walked to the center of the campground, where they were greeted by the other assassins, all dressed in their hooded robes. Madak remembered each one as they had been before they had entered his tent for the ritual of transformation. He looked for any sign of their humanity in their current beast-faces. This was the first time he had seen them all together.

They entered one of the larger huts, and immediately, Madak's focus turned to what stood between he and the fire pit. Its spidery silhouette danced in his eyes. A mechanism made out of metal and bone, roughly the shape of a mantis, but with a human skull hidden beneath an ornate working of iron and gold bands for a head. A headpiece now broken and dented made it appear to be like some ancient deity, scarred from millennia of divine battles. Madak caught himself being romantic, and turned from mystical adventure tales in his head to studying the machine before him.

Laastra approached first with an almost supplicating shuffle... as if his worthiness was being tested by this insectoid god. One of the robed half-men stepped to his side.

"This unit is... sleeping right now. It responds to commands spoken in Khalbantian."

Laastra studied the mechanism as he spoke, "... interesting. Khalbantians were ancient visitors to Earth. They... taught our ancestors much about the ways of the universe."

End Part 16