When they left the racetrack, Root’s pockets were only lighter by the cost of her lunch, which she felt pretty good about, all things considered. Sure, she’d had fantasies of walking away quite a nice margin richer at the expense of the local real estate moguls, insurance CEOs, and those with questionable ties to gemstone mines halfway across the worlds, but they’d never been realistic imaginings.
At least that’s what she’d decided to tell herself.
“You can’t take it all,” Vit had said. They’d leaned over the counter while Root dug around the (surprisingly breakable) locked iron safes bolted to the floor. A bit of smoke in the locks had cracked them nearly as easily as the padlocks on Affodell’s basement.
“Why not?” she’d argued. “The people all ran off. And they don’t need it. I heard one woman complaining about the closing costs on buying her eighth house. Said she’s tired of having only one winter house when she’s got three to summer in, and one just for early-autumn weekends. We can blame Lam, anyway. I mean, look at all this—just left here unattended. Talk about a m—”
“No!”
“Right. Talk about… good luck.”
“But it’s not right. Come on, Beel’s complaining about the horse smell.”
She stood by what she’d said—that it wasn’t really unethical stealing, per se. Any money that someone wasted on sports betting was money they could afford—and quite frankly, deserved—to lose anyhow. But after Vit made her feel bad about it, pretending it’d never been an option at all sat better on her conscience.
The following day, they reached a cedar forest.
The majority of Atnaterran trees were either species native to the world or Setoterran species which had adapted in some capacity to the foreign terrain and its differences in light, soil composition, and the sorts of fauna they had to bunk with. Of the latter, a good many varieties looked so different that they were only identifiable by arborists or particularly honed hobbyists. A smaller but still notable fraction had made some adjustments to their branch configuration or height or foliage shade and then forged ahead stubbornly with the rest. And so upon stumbling into this particular cedar forest and noticing, quite abruptly, that the trees hardly looked changed from their Setoterran counterparts—if at all—Root, Azriah, and Vit all came to a curious pause.
They had no answers, however, and their feet hurt, which generally outweighs even the greatest curiosities, and thus they kept moving.
The reasoning for the unchanged cedars was quite simple, and if the group had had any real understanding of plants as their equals (as was so rare), they’d have realized about the cedars what the cedars realized about them: that they were one and the same, both in richness of life and in purpose.
The cedars, in other words, were there on an adventure.
It was a whole forest of adventures and adventurers, the cedars among them. They’d arrived from Setoterra some (many (many), many) centuries prior in search of grand happenings and heroics, which they had both seen and done in their time since arriving. They moved at their own pace (slowly) and thought of themselves something adjacent to tourists.
And like tourists, they didn’t feel the need to mimic the native culture. Why hold their branches that way? Why dress in those odd shades? They were only visiting, after all. They weren’t there for good. Learning a whole language just for a short vacation was an awful lot of work, and why bother when the locals could probably speak your language anyway, since they were surely running into so many tourists all day. Why adapt to Atnaterran light levels? Really, the locals should’ve just gotten more light around anyway—more welcoming to the out-of-towners.
But that was trees for you—stuck up bastards, more often than not.
The four of them walked through the forest for several days, winding beneath the huge, looming spires along an unkept road. The road carried them along ridges and over tall rocky hills before dumping them at last down a steep north-facing slope into hot, dry weather, neither of which were words often used to describe the climates of Atnaterra, but this was one of those strange, gritty pockets.
Sand and stone stretched far ahead, cut up by hewn plateaus and shifting dunes. They traded the lush trees for stunted bushes and grass so dry it cowered when Root walked past.
One wrong look and the entire slope would go up in a sweeping blaze.
Many more days unfolded along the road as it wormed through the desert, but they were no longer alone.
“You promise it’s not going to attack us?” asked Beel. Root couldn’t remember how many times he’d asked that, but she probably could’ve worked her way to an approximation by dating the striated layers of emphasis on the word “promise.”
“It’s just some kind of spirit equivalent of the desert rats in Setoterra,” said Azriah, looking at the creature that had been hopping along after them all day. “There are some in Akhet north of the Great Edgars, I think. Didn’t travel there often.”
“Isn’t that the desert you spent all your time in?” Root asked Beel accusingly.
“Yes,” said Beel as if he didn’t see any relevance.
“So you’ve probably seen something… similar enough.”
“Sure, but those were tiny.”
“This one is still smaller than you.”
“But not by a lot.”
The spirit bouncing in zigzags along the road behind them was the size of a large house cat and equally threatening. With fur like hot, spiced coffee and limbs so thin they could’ve used them as ear swabs, it seemed to have taken a liking to them and decided to follow along at a timid distance. Ring markings wrapped its long tail, tufted at the end, in bands of navy, silver, and black. Long, nimble feet and legs made it look like a dumpling on stilts with ears that were picking up race results all the way back at the horse track.
Before it had joined them that morning, Beel had been the most tolerable Root had ever seen him—or, more accurately, heard him. Being in a desert had improved his mood dramatically, but it seemed the enjoyment wore off when he had to share it with things that were technically capable of biting him, however unlikely that might be.
“She’s kind of cute,” said Vit. “Maybe she wants us to take her with us.”
“It doesn’t look like it’s waiting for our verdict on that,” said Azriah.
They crested a line of hills and discovered on the other side—to none of their surprise—still more desert as far as they could see. But in the distance, they also spotted lights.
“Is that it?” asked Root.
Azriah consulted a map. “Should be.”
The great city of Urk loomed before them. A heavy facade of coppery sandstone walls stuck up from a sprawl of buildings made tiny in its shadows, a structure nearly rivaling the plateaus in immensity.
“We’ll reach it tomorrow,” said Azriah. “We should make camp—it’s getting late.”
“Even with that thing here?” asked Beel. “What if it’s… I don’t know… with Ajis or something.”
The spirit hopped circles around the crown of the hilltop. It paused to clean its snout with its adorable, tiny front paws.
“Somehow, I doubt it.”
“Yeah,” agreed Vit. “Plus, it’s a lesser spirit. It’s basically just an animal.”
They broke into a routine made seamless in the time they’d spent together. Azriah gathered wood for a fire while Vit sat down and began preparing their supper. Beel cleared a space for them all to sleep—his own insistence, after too many nights spent on rocks none of them could identify the next morning—and Root unloaded their bedding. They’d even purchased a tent in the interest of keeping off the desert sandstorms, a luxury they’d previously foregone out of unneed thanks to the milder Atnaterran weather, the limited reach of their wallets, and (most importantly) the refusal of Azriah to have, in his own words, “joint assets.”
He’d never caved on that last point. Though they split the cost four ways, he insisted it properly belonged to the others and that they would keep it when they eventually parted ways.
Root pitched the tent, ignoring the singed edges where her frustration during early attempts to learn the structure’s quirks had smoldered a bit too warmly. If she avoided looking at them, she could pretend they weren’t there, and thankfully the others either hadn’t noticed, assumed they’d pitched it too close to their campfire one night, or simply hadn’t wanted to mention it.
When they’d laid out the tent and all their bedding, brought the fire to a steady burn, and had their dinner sizzling above the flames, the four of them gathered at the fire and wordlessly exchanged their cargo.
Three bundles circled the flames. From Root to Vit, the flute; from Azriah to Beel, the amulet; from Beel to Root, the mirror. Azriah got his break.
Not that Root saw it as a break—that’s just what the others called it. Root didn’t mind carrying a periapt. Actually, she kind of liked having one on her. It made her feel a little better—a little more equipped to handle whatever came their way if things went south.
Beel, on the other hand, was not so happy he had to be involved now. With three periapts, they still decided it was best to give everyone a break—an off-shift in the rotation, when they didn’t have any of the three. That had been easy to accomplish among the three of them when they’d had only two, but they’d had to add Beel to the roster to keep that system going. They’d fashioned him a little bag of his own from a modified fanny pack, big enough to hold even the larger mirror or longer flute and the several layers of enwrapping fabric. They’d suggested he carry a cut of their supplies, too—some food, some money, his bedding, anything—but that had gone over about as well as a burrowing mole.
With the exchange made and the three periapts stowed back in their bags, the four of them—plus their new guest, who grew ever more daring—situated themselves around the fire.
“I’m glad it’s not too hot,” said Vit, looking up at the perfect, Enyn-bathed twilight. Without a scorching sun, the desert was sandy and certainly warmer than elsewhere in Atnaterra, but it wasn’t beating down on them with air made molten and thick.
It was still hot. Azriah had removed and stashed his gambeson days ago, trading it for shorts and a tank top; Vit—already favoring shirts with ample openness along the sides to accommodate whatever number of arms they had at any given time—had been going shirtless more often than not; and Root had swapped one of her usual shirts for a sleeveless top that only reached the middle of her ribcage. She’d decided to ignore the itchiness and the obnoxious way it pulled along the back only after sweating through three shirts.
Hot, but not nearly as bad as they’d expected. And in general, Root found she usually managed easier than others; the heat, she barely felt, but her body dripped with sweat regardless.
“Urk tomorrow, then,” said Vit. “You think we’ll see Syrus?”
Root shuddered, remembering the maybe-damp man they’d met and temporarily holed up with in Midden. He’d come onto her—all of them—one too many times, which was any number higher than zero. She wasn’t looking forward to a reunion.
“Almost definitely,” said Azriah. “It’s the focal city of the Children of Endkiu—the church, their periapt hunters—and he seemed to be relatively high up in their Order of Seekers. I wouldn’t be surprised if he made it here before us. He’s probably already in the city, unless he’s been sent out on another mission.”
“Which could be good news for us,” said Root. “Since we kind of crossed him.”
“No ‘kind of,’” said Beel. “You could’ve just let him have the flute, but you had to get involved. And now I have to carry it.”
They’d left Midden with a clear next destination: Urk, the city headquarters of the culty Children of Endkiu. The road had taken them halfway across Atnaterra, from Midden in the east to this desert in the left-east, and though part of that travel had been via the nice, easy method of portal teleportation, the rest had been anything but.
Apparently, as Root had recently learned, the part of Atnaterra they’d been tramping through since their arrival—first in pursuit of Affodell’s crypt, then as they’d traveled to and all around Midden and the neighboring woods—was a region generally identified as the “human crescent.” Often regarded as having “mild” landscapes and happenings, it was a region with a notably higher than average population of humans and human-style settlements. Root, who had found Atnaterra to be anything but “mild” so far, had balked when she heard it referred to as such.
But it had proven true. In their travel since leaving Midden, they’d encountered areas far more bizarre, spirits far more frightening, and not nearly as many humans—at least not the sort with any helpful advice to offer, since most had been bones if they were lucky, and more gruesome remains if they weren’t.
Nevertheless, they’d forged ahead towards Urk. And they had Syrus to thank, as he’d been the one to put the church’s city in their sights. He’d told them the Children of Endkiu possessed one of the mote periapts, and with three already, Urk and its periapt was next on their list.
Ajis was also on their list, but they hadn’t the faintest idea how to find him after escaping him in the crowds of Midden. Finding Ajis, however, was not only low on their list of fun afternoon activities, but also not a tremendous concern. If experience had taught them anything, it was that Ajis would find them whether they liked it or not.
“Are you guys worried about bringing these three into Urk?” asked Vit, gesturing to their bag. “I mean, Syrus was pretty clear. It’s his goal—the Seekers’, and the church’s—to gather all of them.”
“For immortality,” said Azriah with a nod. “Immortality for humans.” He huffed and shook his head.
“Well, we can’t leave them out here,” said Root. “What would we do? Bury them under an X and hope the winds don’t blow too hard? It’s too risky, even if we hid them all in different places. We can’t let anyone else get ahold of them. You remember how powerful Ophylla was with one—and Ajis, too.”
“But what if the church finds them on us? We can’t overpower them all. They’ll take them, and then they’ll have four.”
“It’s not ideal,” agreed Azriah, “but Root’s right. They’re safest with us, at least for now.”
Beel whimpered; it mostly went unnoticed as common background noise. “Until we lure in something huge and terrible that wants to take them from us.”
“You nearly described Ajis, minus a key size descriptor,” said Root.
“Beel is also right,” said Azriah. “Sooner or later, we need to think long-term.”
“We find all of them,” said Vit. “Like we planned. And then, maybe, I don’t know… destroy them somehow?”
Root leaned back. “What, not looking for immortality?”
“I—”
“It’s a long shot that we find them all,” interrupted Azriah. “And if we do, count me out of whatever party you guys are planning in three hundred years.”
“You say that,” countered Root, “but, what, you’re not even a little scared of dying?”
“No.”
“I am,” said Beel, eyeing the wild spirit as it hopped two tiny bounds closer to the fire.
Root shrugged. “I mean—fuck, I’m not saying I think it’s the scariest thing in the worlds, but…” She gestured ambiguously.
“And how does eternity sound?”
“Scary as shit, too.”
Beel whimpered again in a pitch that indicated agreement.
Azriah nodded. “All I’m saying… some live, and some die, you know? And not just humans versus spirits, though there’s that. We all have our own lots. I’m not going to let fear consume me over it. Or cling to some belief system that says it won’t be so bad just because I go to church a couple times a year. It won’t be that bad because I’ll be dead, and that’ll be that.”
Beel nodded. “The worst part is when you have to think about how you died after the fact.”
Azriah gestured to Beel and raised his eyebrows. “Look how lucky we are, then.”
“Oh!” said Root. Something wet brushed her arm. She turned as the wild spirit hopped back a pace and watched her, startled, nose quivering. “Do you… oh, are you looking for food? I bet you’re looking for food. Vit, can you give me a bit of that from the pan?”
“Hm?” Vit had been staring out across the desert towards Urk. They looked back, eyes moving from Root to the spirit. “Oh, for Skitter? Yeah, here.”
“You named it?” asked Azriah.
“Sure, she needed a name.” Vit tore a piece of half-cooked dumpling from the pan and passed it to Root. Root pulled strips and tossed them to the creature—Skitter.
The lights atop the Urk walls flickered in the dark as the four of them sat there around their fire, and while Root fed the wildlife, and Beel watched it warily, and Azriah eyed their supper for fear it might burn, Vit stared out across the desert and watched them twinkle.
Bradan Silver knew a good mushroom from a bad one just by the way they looked at him. The good ones waited patiently to be picked and added to his bag. They were helpful in that way, and they delighted in conversation with him, unspoken, sharing knowledge in how they clung to the rotting bark of a log or snapped at the root. The bad ones shied away; others they might’ve wanted to fool, but not Bradan. Bradan had been on that land for many, many years, and he took good care of his neighbors the mushrooms and the trees and the algae and all that lived beneath them.
“Very good, yes—a beautiful thing, you are,” he muttered as he picked a mushroom. “Thank you. Thank you.”
Wet dirt smudged his wrinkled hands, but it fit him. Even more of it caked his feet and spattered up his shins, easily bypassing his simple sandals to start new gardens between his toes. His loose, open shirt and baggy knee-length trousers he kept remarkably clean through frequent dips into the waters of the swamp—when, that is, he swam while maintaining his human form. Bead necklaces clacked against his chest—his skin the color of the humus, the hair there the color of his surname. Or, rather, most of his skin matched the humus.
Bradan paused to count the mushrooms and other goodies—a loose assortment of fruits from the orchard—in his bag. Enough for an evening meal for one. Plenty.
He turned back to the water. A breeze wrapped him in an embrace, but with it it carried a sound. A cry, like that of a newborn baby.
Bradan turned in a slow, contemplative circle. “It wasn’t you, was it?” he asked, addressing a droopy plant with plate-sized leaves.
“Hm. No? I see.”
Another cry met his ear, and this time it didn’t let up so abruptly. Bradan turned to listen and then hurried through the trees.
He hadn’t moved so fast in a good many years, and nearly he jumped into the water to move faster, but beneath the surface he’d have a harder time hearing the cries, so he continued on foot.
It didn’t take long. The crying became louder. He used one arm to gingerly move aside a tall, leafy shrub, and just as he did so, the crying ceased.
What he saw second was a small hammock—barely a foot and a half long and stretched between two bowing saplings. The fibers were thin, yet held tight: a spider’s web, white-silver threads. In it, watching him intently, was a spider—a spirit spider, teal and black and green. They cocked their head and studied Bradan warily with eight forest-green eyes.
What he saw first—and only very, very briefly, a flash so quick he may only have imagined it—was a baby.
The hammock cradle swayed slightly as the spider perched within. It slowed, then stopped.
Bradan bowed his head faintly to the spider. “I see,” he said with a smile. He continued to smile as he watched the spider, and then he continued some more. The spider only watched him.
“You’re doing a very good job taking care of them,” he said after a moment. “I can see that very plainly.” He pointed to the cradle. The spider backed up a step. “But you shouldn’t have to be alone. I can help. Do you see?” Bradan raised a hand—slower this time—and pointed to the right side of his face. He ran a hand down his neck, scaly and pale. Slowly—even slower than before—he reached out his hand towards the spider.
He didn’t remember how long he stood there just like that, whether it was only a minute or a long and silent hour. But after a time, the spider—carefully, and still watching Bradan very closely—drew nearer. They placed their two frontmost legs on Bradan’s hand. Then two more. They climbed Bradan’s arm and nestled into the crook there amongst the wooden beads and folds of his shirt.
A moment later, Bradan held not a spider, but a naked baby. They fussed and reached up a hand where they found the beads, gripping one necklace tightly and pulling it to their mouth. They opened their sole lidded eye—hazel and human. Four more—like green marbles matching those of the spider—sat on a swath of teal skin covering the left side of the baby’s face.
Bradan smiled. He would need to gather a bit more food on his walk back home.