Chapter 40: Færlom

(I painted this in Procreate using the oil paint brush and turpentine brush. - Chaiga T. Cheska)

Drawn in by the strange forest glittering with its impossible crystals, Oren nudged his younger brothers to stand in the doorway with Olis and Nix. Bran stepped forward in wonder, and the moment his foot touched the rustling forest floor, the Chieftain’s vessel vanished, gone in a blink, as though it had never existed at all. Timatticus and Harthos disappeared with it; only the lingering feeling that they had been there remained.

Bran whirled around, panic flaring through him, terrified for a heartbeat that he had been flung into yet another forest alone. Bran breathed with relief when he saw his brothers, his cousin, and Olis standing solidly behind him. He reached out without thinking and gripped Tavik’s arm, silently glad he’d not ended up in a bramble bush in a strange forest again. Once was quite enough.

Oren, Tavik and Nix looked around, startled to find themselves no longer framed by the doorway but fully within the forest, its crystalline light already shifting across their faces. Olis watched them all with a curious expression, as though quietly noting how each of them was processing this new reality.

“We didn’t get to say goodbye properly,” exclaimed Bran, looking up at the scribe and then back at the place where the room had been, now nothing but trees and towering crystals, as if the vessel had been just a dream that dissolved the moment he’d stepped forward.

“The moment you stepped through the threshold, you broke the spell of the Burrowback vessel. I would not worry, Bran,” Olis said, smiling down at him. He made a small show of adjusting his robes, and Bran caught a glimpse of the many pockets sewn into the inner folds. The sight tugged at his curiosity, but he held his tongue.

Oren and Tavik reached for their packs, neatly lined up outside what would have been the wall of the Burrowbacks’ vessel. Now they simply sat in a tidy row on the forest floor, as if patiently waiting for their owners. Oren passed Bran and Nix their packs as they stepped forward, and each of them discovered that their packs had grown extra pockets, filled with items they did not remember packing.

Bran’s eyes widened as he examined his own. In one of the new pockets, he found a strange round object, shaped like a ship’s compass but with a dial marked in a spectrum of glittering crystals. The colours shifted as he tilted it, catching the fractured forest light in a way that made the strange object seem alive.

He held it up to Olis, wonder brightening his face. “What is this? It was in my pack, in a new pocket that wasn’t there before.”

Olis peered at the object in Bran’s hand, reached out to take it, chuckled softly, and replied, “What you have here is a Færlom, and I suspect it has been gifted to you by Timatticus, which is definitely a most generous gift.”

His older brothers and cousin leaned in, drawn by the shimmer of the strange object. None of them had ever seen anything like it. The device caught the fractured crystal light of the forest and scattered it across their faces in shifting flecks of colour. Nix felt a strange tingling along his arms simply from looking at it, the runic patterns on his arms flickering as though the Færlom was stirring something in the air around them.

Olis turned the device over in his hands, studying the shifting crystals with the calm interest of someone who had encountered many strange artefacts in his lifetime. The crystals within the dial slid and rearranged themselves with a soft, glassy whisper, as if responding to his touch. After a moment, he passed it back to Bran, who felt the weight of it settle into his palms like something that had been waiting for him all along. It felt sort of comforting to hold the weight of it, which made Bran peer closer at it, trying to understand.

“The Burrowbacks made it long ago, when they first began travelling between worlds. They do not make many tools, nor do they keep them unless they are needed. This one was meant for learning, not for power.”

He nodded at the crystals as they shifted and caught the light, their colours sliding over one another like thin layers of mineral dust stirred by a breath of wind.

“It listens to the land. Not as you or I might, but as the world holds its own memories. Every place remembers what has happened to it. Trees that once stood. Creatures that passed through. Wounds in the soil. Old paths. Lost settlements. Magic that settled or faded. The Færlom notices those things.”

Bran watched the colours change, puzzled, the dial blooming and dimming in slow pulses, as though it were tasting the air of the Crystalsong Forest.

Olis smiled a little, his expression softening.

“It won’t tell you what to do. It won’t point you anywhere. It simply shows you what the ground already knows. If you pay attention, you’ll begin to see the hidden threads. You’ll understand why one patch of soil cradles life and another refuses it. You’ll sense where the forest is whole and where it carries old scars. You’ll learn how creatures leave their mark on the land without ever stepping into sight.”

He placed a gentle hand on Bran’s shoulder, the gesture steadying.

“The Burrowbacks gave it to you because you notice things. You look at the world properly. Most people don’t. They hurry through it. You don’t. The Færlom answers that kind of attention. It opens itself to those who listen.”

He nodded toward the device again, the crystals within it flickering like trapped starlight.

“Look after it, Bran. It is a rare thing. A treasure. And it will show you far more than you expect, if you allow it.”

Bran looked down at the Færlom again, his eyes wide as he drew a slightly shaky breath. The colours within the dial shimmered and folded over one another like drifting mineral light, and something in the quiet pulse of it struck straight through him. His eyes flooded before he could stop them, and he whispered, “Goodness”, the word catching in his throat. He wiped at his face quickly, embarrassed, as Oren ruffled his hair and Tavik nudged his shoulder. All of them felt the weight of what Olis had revealed, a deeper sense of magic revealing what might yet unfold.

Olis looked at the others, then let his gaze sweep across the forest around them. The indigo trunks rose like pillars of dusk, and the crystal formations scattered the light in restless shards that danced across their boots.

“I expect there will be other surprises you all might find in your packs, gifted from the Burrowbacks, but I suggest you wait until later to look, as we must get on our way.”

Olis reached out and placed a hand on Tavik’s shoulder, then gestured with his other hand toward the open forest. “I understand you are a good navigator, Tavik. Please help me find a little stream near a rocky outcrop where I hope we can camp. I know it is towards the north-west from where we are now, but I am not a tracker, so I hope you can lead us there.”

Tavik nodded at once, grateful for something familiar to anchor himself to. His earlier outburst still gnawed at him, and the tips of his pointed ears were turning pink again. He drew a steadying breath and adjusted his pack, feeling its weight settle across his shoulders. The light filtering through the canopy above shifted in soft, crystalline hues, and he felt in his bones the quiet pull of direction. Left. The forest seemed to breathe it at him.

He turned to look at Oren, as he always did before beginning any hike. Oren gave a brief, reassuring nod, the kind that had always steadied Tavik since they were children.

Tavik stepped forward and led the way, his stride confident despite the strangeness of the forest. Olis walked just behind him, robes whispering against the undergrowth. Nix followed next, alert and curious, and Bran trailed close behind him, carefully tucking the Færlom back into its new pocket, as though it might slip away. Oren brought up the rear, watchful and steady, the quiet guardian of them all.

Oren kept pace with the others and marvelled at the shifting colours of light that danced off the many varieties of crystals tucked between the trees and sometimes growing from the trees themselves. Even the leaves seemed half‑leaf, half‑crystal, their surfaces catching the fractured light and scattering it in dazzling mosaics that shimmered across the forest floor. The whole place moved like a living kaleidoscope, colours sliding and reforming so quickly that Oren found himself blinking, trying to take in the sheer strangeness of it.

This forest felt friendly, but not in any way he recognised. It was nothing like the Eldertree Forest or the Sentinel Forest. There was a vastness here, a sense that the crystals held echoes of other worlds, other ages, as if the forest stretched far beyond what the eye could see. Infinite, layered and deep.

He noticed that Bran was making similar discoveries, though Bran’s curiosity pulled him off the path every few steps. His youngest brother kept stopping to examine plants with crystalline veins, trees with mineral bark, rocks that hummed faintly when touched, and little creatures that darted through the undergrowth without any fear of them. Each time Bran crouched down, Oren sighed, reached back, and hauled him upright again, nudging him forward as the others drifted further ahead.

“Bran, come on, I know this forest is exciting and different, but we can’t lose the others,” complained Oren, watching his younger brother hurriedly stuff leaves and thin curling vines from a small plant into his pack. Bran waved an irritated hand at him, more focused on the delicate fronds than on his brother’s exasperation.

“Oren, stop worrying and go on ahead if you like, as I can catch up,” Bran said, wrestling with the problem of how to fit the plant into an already overstuffed pack. He barely had time to splutter in indignation before his older brother, patience finally worn thin, snagged him around the waist, lifted him clean off the ground, and strode forward to catch up with the others. Bran dangled at Oren’s side like a sack of potatoes, his legs kicking uselessly as the crystal‑lit forest shimmered around them.

Up ahead, Tavik stopped and looked back as he heard his younger brothers’ frustrated shouts. He chuckled as he watched Oren half‑carry, half‑drag Bran along, then release him once they were caught up. Bran staggered away from Oren, glowering as he straightened his tunic and shoved his brother, only to bounce off him and tumble backwards into a hedge. Oren stood unmoved, smiling mildly as Bran scrambled out of the bushes, twigs in his hair and indignation blazing.

“Oren! That was so unnecessary! You make me look so unprofessional!”

Oren and Tavik snorted with laughter, their amusement echoing lightly through the crystal‑lit trees. Nix grinned, unable to help himself, and Olis smiled as he said reassuringly to Bran, “I suspect there are many scholars of MirMarnia who are less dignified than you, Bran, when in the midst of scientific study. I will not hold it against you.”

The forest light shimmered across them as he spoke, scattering soft colours over Bran’s flushed face, the crushed leaves still clinging to his tunic.

“If I ever make any great discoveries, you two had better behave!” declared Bran, attempting menace but sounding more like an indignant scholar defending his honour. His older brothers only laughed and rolled their eyes, long accustomed to this sort of threat.

Tavik turned around and continued guiding them through the forest, the light speckled with crystals flickering on his shoulders as he called back, “Can’t wait for those discoveries, little brother!”

Bran opened his mouth to retort, but Oren nudged him forward before he could get a word out. Olis and Nix were already following Tavik, their figures weaving between trunks that glimmered like dusk‑lit glass.

“Come on, Bran,” Oren said with a smile. “Let’s try to keep up this time.”

The forest around them shimmered in layered colours as they moved, the air humming faintly with the crystalline breath of the place.

For perhaps an hour, they made their way carefully through the strange forest as Tavik led them, judging the light overhead, the growths on the trees, and the quiet, persistent pull in his bones that told him where water lay. The forest thickened around them, the trees growing closer together, their trunks encrusted with dazzling indigo and violet crystals. Some of the crystals jutted like mineral ribs from the bark; others clustered in delicate, sparkling formations that caught the shifting light and scattered it in shards across the undergrowth.

Intricately detailed blossoms appeared here and there, petals veined with glints of colour that seemed almost too precise to be natural. Bran was transfixed by them, stopping whenever the others tolerated it to crouch and examine a bloom or a crystalline growth, his fingers hovering reverently before he dared to touch.

They were descending into a dense valley, and the trees acted like anchors as the group found their footing on the steep slope. Tavik and Olis walked side by side, speaking in low tones that Oren could not make out from where he trailed behind Nix and Bran.

Nix was almost as bad as Bran. Every so often, he would stop abruptly, his head turning toward some unseen corner of the forest. Oren watched him with fascination. His cousin’s ears twitched and shifted, rising or flattening with each new sound. Once or twice, Oren saw Nix’s fangs lengthen, a low growl rumbling in his chest as he stood utterly still, staring into the depths of the forest at something Oren could not sense no matter how hard he tried.

Before Oren could ask what he had noticed, Nix’s fangs receded again, and his posture eased. He continued down the slope after Olis and Tavik as though nothing had happened. Oren let it go, making a quiet mental note to ask him about it later when they made camp.

Oren practised patience each time his youngest brother, Bran, stopped to examine something, and only occasionally did he find it necessary to move Bran along when the others drifted too far ahead. As they made their way gingerly down the steep slope, Oren felt a sudden prickle of alertness, a tightening in his chest that he couldn’t explain. He steadied himself against a tree, its bark cool and faintly crystalline beneath his palm, and looked ahead to Nix.

His heart hammered as he saw Nix’s ears were flat to his head, his eyes wide and searching the forest with a sharp, animal intensity. Tavik and Olis, walking ahead, seemed completely untroubled, unaware of any shift in the air.

Then Nix whipped around, gaze locking onto Bran.

Bran was in the middle of letting go of one branch and reaching for another, looking perfectly ordinary to Oren’s eyes. But the unease in Oren’s chest grew heavier, colder. He focused on his youngest brother, trying to sense what Nix had sensed.

All at once, Bran staggered. His hand slipped from the branch, and he lurched forward with a cry, whipping his head around as though struck by something unseen. Oren saw his eyes cloud over, a pale film sliding across them like frost. Bran sank to the ground, reaching blindly for the tree he had been gripping.

Suddenly, he was shouting incoherently, panic twisting his features. His gaze darted wildly, but his eyes were not seeing. They were unfocused, distant, as though he were staring into a world none of them could reach.

Oren and Nix reached Bran and dropped to the forest floor with him, Oren throwing a heavy arm around Bran’s shoulders and jostling him in alarm. “Bran, what’s happening? Your eyes!”

Tavik and Olis were with them in an instant. Tavik knelt beside his brothers and cousin, trying to make sense of the sudden collapse, while Olis crouched lower, studying Bran with a sharp, searching intensity. Something in Bran’s posture, or perhaps in the strange clouding of his eyes, seemed to confirm a suspicion in the scribe’s mind.

Without hesitation, Olis reached past the boys and into Bran’s pack. His hand closed around the Færlom, which he pulled free and pressed firmly into Bran’s other hand. The device was humming now, a deep, resonant vibration that seemed to thrum through the very air. Nix clamped his hands over his flattened ears with a wince, the sound clearly piercing to him, and the runes on his skin were flickering frantically.

Oren looked sharply at Nix, then back at the device now glowing faintly in Bran’s grip.

“Use it, Bran,” whispered Olis urgently. “The Færlom is calling to you. You have to listen to it.”

The crystals within the dial shivered and shifted, casting fractured light across Bran’s pale, unfocused face.

“I can’t see… I… can’t…” Bran turned his head this way and that, panic sharpening every breath. He clutched the device in one hand and the tree in the other as though the two were the only things keeping him tethered to the world. Somewhere inside him, or perhaps outside him, he couldn’t tell, a roaring sound surged like a vast storm breaking open. It grew louder and louder, filling his ears, filling his eyes, filling everything.

Oren and Tavik crouched beside him, helpless, and reaching out to keep him steady, and with them, somehow, both looked to Olis.

Olis leaned in, calm in a way that cut through the chaos. He placed one steady hand on Bran’s head, his fingers gentle, and spoke with a quiet authority that seemed to settle the air around them.

“Your blindness is temporary, little wizard. You must open your Portalsight in another way to allow the Færlom to speak to you. Take a deep breath, let your fear go, and look internally for your answers.”

The storm inside Bran roared on, but Olis’s voice threaded through it like a single clear note, something he could reach for in the dark.

Nix sat watching his cousin, his hands clamped over his ears, and saw a shimmer gather around Bran. It rippled outward in faint, uneven waves, as if Bran were sending out pulses of power that smelled different to Nix, sharp and edged with the scent of destruction, a strange storm quality to it that he didn’t understand. Nix’s senses had always been strong, but this was beyond anything he could interpret, and all he could do was sit there and fight against the pain building behind his eyes. He already saw the strain of it in Tavik, who was grimacing yet trying to keep his focus on his younger brother.

Bran took a shuddering, deep breath and tried to ignore the fact that he could not see. Slowly, the rising panic began to ebb as the fog behind his eyes thinned. The roaring inside him softened at the edges. Then he felt the device he held so tightly in his hand begin to speak to him in a language he did not know, a language that seeped into him like water soaking through cloth, filling him with meaning he could not yet shape into words.

The more he breathed, the more Bran felt he understood what the Færlom was saying to him. A quiet recognition stirred in him, and he realised for a fleeting moment that this was the language of MirMarnia, the Way of Lon, the same language his cousin had spoken with the dragon. The thought amazed him and pulled at his attention, but only for an instant. The device suddenly gave a heavy thump against his palm, and he yelped, flinching as the shock travelled up his arm. He heard his brothers’ voices somewhere beyond the fog, asking what was happening, but their words felt distant.

He was submerged in the sensation of communicating with the device, as if he were sinking into something vast and luminous. He could only turn his head toward the place where he sensed something forming in his vision. It was not in the forest around him. It was as if the Færlom were projecting a sight directly into his eyes, overlaying the world he sat in.

He saw the same forest. The same slope beneath him. The same valley below. Yet everything was altered. The valley appeared broken, the trees splintered, and the beautiful crystals shattered. Fire raged through the valley in sweeping arcs, and great swathes of trees lay fallen as if crushed by something immense. The crystal formations were fractured into blackened ruins.

The roaring in Bran’s head grew so loud that he cried out and ducked his head, releasing his grip on the tree and raising both hands to his ears, still clutching the device in his left hand as the vision blazed behind his eyes.

Bran was dimly aware of his name being called and tried to rise out of the visual and auditory chaos that wrapped around him like a storm. Oren gripped his shoulders, shaking him, urging him to speak, his voice tight with fear. Tavik was pressed close on Bran’s other side, adding his own urgent encouragement, his breath quick and uneven. But it was Nix whom Bran finally heard, even with his head bowed and the roaring still crashing through him.

“He is seeing an event that happened here or is about to happen here,” murmured Nix. “Hearing it too, by the looks of it.” He winced again, the sound around Bran clearly striking him like a physical blow, and he glanced toward Tavik. “Sorry, Tavik, for the pain.”

Tavik glowered at him, irritation flickering across his face that Nix would apologise for something he could not possibly control. “It’s fine. Just breathe through it.”

Oren looked between his brother and Nix, keeping one arm firmly around Bran as if anchoring him against the unseen forces. “What are you sensing, Nix?” asked Oren.

Nix was concentrating on his breathing, but the pain of whatever was happening to Bran still had him struggling. The strain showed in the tightness of his jaw and the way his shoulders hunched as if bracing against a force pressing inward. Tavik felt it through the tether that linked them, a faint echo of the same pain that made him wince too, and he answered for his cousin.

“Whatever Bran is experiencing is affecting the threads connecting Bran to us, and it is hurting you, isn’t it, Nix?”

Nix gave Tavik a look of relief, grateful that someone had put words to what he could not speak while he focused on the shimmering threads he saw spilling from Bran. They trembled and twisted in the air, stretched thin between moments. The pain came from the way two points in time were overlapping, both of them happening at once, and that was what Bran was caught inside.

Eventually, Bran lifted his head and stared into the valley, and the vision struck him with such force that his whole body tightened. He saw the complete and total destruction of the forest they were in. His jaw clenched as he tried to force words out, each one dragged through the shock that held him rigid. The device thrummed almost painfully in his hand, the vibration so strong that his fingers were going numb from gripping it.

“Th… there’s fire,” Bran gulped, fighting to focus. “Fire in the valley ahead. I… I see… hear… feel… the… the heat, flames, fire all around. Everywhere fire. Trees… they’re down, j… just down… broken, crystals popping sounds in fire… blackening them.”

His voice thinned and faltered. His clouded eyes darted back and forth, trying to follow the shifting images the device was forcing into him. The vision poured through him in jagged bursts, each one sharper than the last.

Olis leaned close, his voice low and steady. “When does this occur, Bran?”

Oren and Tavik watched as Bran frowned and turned his head, his pointed ears twitching in sharp, restless movements. The air around him felt charged, a faint tremor running through the crystalline bark of the trees. Oren reached out with his free hand, acting by instinct, feeling a pull inside himself that urged him to help.

When he let his eyes soften and drift out of focus, he saw Bran’s life threads. They flickered in the air like candle flames caught in a cold draught, thin and wavering, threatening to gutter out. Oren lifted his hand, palm open, and let strength pour from him into those trembling strands. They brightened, steadied, and thickened, taking on a more solid glow as if they were weaving themselves back together.

Bran straightened with a sudden, sharp breath as Oren’s magic steadied him. Oren let his magic ease and waited, his hand still hovering in the air.

“Thank you, Oren,” murmured Bran in a calmer voice, and Oren blinked, startled that this brother had sensed what he had done. Bran sat straighter, staring into the valley with an intensity that made the air feel taut. Then he turned his clouded eyes toward Olis. The movement startled Oren and Tavik, who realised Bran was seeing past his temporary blindness.

“Olis, this destruction will happen in fifty days.” Bran tried to push himself upright, but his legs wobbled, and he let Oren pull him to his feet as Tavik stood and brushed leaves from his britches. Olis slowly rose and lifted a hand, and Bran stilled, watching him through those clouded eyes while Oren and Tavik stared, transfixed by the strange clarity on Bran’s face.

“Good, Bran. Now we know when this will take place,” said Olis. “Now look deeper and tell me who has created this destruction.”

Oren frowned and looked sharply at the old scribe. Something in Olis’s tone carried the faintest echo of intention, as if this moment had been arranged long before any of them arrived. A prickle of unease threaded through Oren’s chest, and he suddenly felt as though he had missed something important. He exchanged a look with Tavik, a silent question passing between them, before both turned to Bran.

Bran had pushed Oren’s arm from his shoulders and was standing on his own, steady and strangely assured, his clouded eyes fixed on Olis with an intensity his brothers had never seen. The forest light caught in the pale film over his eyes, lending him an otherworldly stillness.

Nix rose to his feet beside Tavik, and a ripple of wariness moved through him, sharp and instinctive. He did not understand it. His senses detected no danger, yet something inside him recoiled as if a shadow had passed over the treetops. The old instinct surged up in him, urging him to climb, to get high into the branches where the wind could warn him of what approached. His fingers twitched with the urge to leap, to flee, to vanish into the canopy.

He watched Bran and Olis, a tension coiling low in his stomach. Bran was concentrating, his breath slow and deliberate, and then he turned his clouded eyes towards Nix.

The moment Bran’s gaze fell on him, every warning bell inside Nix went off at once. His ears flattened against his skull. His muscles locked. The urge to run was so strong it felt like a physical force pressing against his ribs.

Bran spoke, his voice filled with strange wonder.

“Caelvarae, they come to seek vengeance for the prince’s betrayal, led astray by a being from Tioria… a Lightweaver named Lisera.”