Chapter 43: Liv
(I first sketched this in my sketchbook with a pencil, then uploaded it to Procreate on my iPad to paint with oil paint and Eaglehawk brushes. - Chaiga T. Cheska)
Tavik only realised he was staring open-mouthed at Olis when his older brother nudged him, urging him to close his mouth, straighten, and gather himself. He tried to refocus on the scribe, as though looking more intently might help him comprehend what Olis had just revealed, as though seeing him more clearly might unlock the meaning of those impossible words.
Silence settled over the four boys. They could only stare back at Olis, struggling to grasp the sheer magnitude of what he had said: that he, Olis, was somehow older than MirMarnia itself, and would somehow be the last scribe, whatever such a fate might mean.
The fire crackled as the sticks shifted and crumbled to ash, sparks leaping upward and snapping Tavik out of his thoughts. By habit alone, he reached forward and stirred the embers until the flames rose with renewed life. Oren shifted beside him, and Tavik felt the low rumble of his brother’s voice as he gazed into the glowing heart of the fire.
“What do you mean by you will be the last scribe? What does this mean?” asked Oren, his eyes fixed on Olis as though he might read the truth straight from the man’s face.
Bran glanced sidelong at his older brother, studying the line of Oren’s profile and wondering at the strange, weighted quality in his voice.
Olis drew in a deep breath, his gaze travelling slowly over each of them before settling upon the fire Tavik was coaxing back to life. When he spoke, his words emerged in a slow, uneven rhythm, as though his thoughts were drifting somewhere beyond their camp while his eyes unfocused on the sparking embers.
“I am half-brother to the creature known as Faolin, who at this time is spending his many lives in a realm called Earth, as he waits for another who will lead him back to finish his story here in MirMarnia.”
His voice faded as the crackling fire overtook the silence, which now seemed to pulse with its own faint heartbeat, the words he had spoken settling like heavy stones lodged in a riverbed. Four pairs of eyes stared back at him, wide and scarcely breathing.
They all knew the story of Faolin, the first child of the sentient being known as Time, and how he had left a trail through the newly forming heavens as he searched for a world where he might learn the meaning of love, having known nothing but rejection. They knew how this creature, Faolin, had waited millennia for a being who had yet to emerge, and how the Earth Vikings told of him taking the form of a great wolf that watched from the shadows. Oren, Tavik and Bran had grown up with these tales from the Evolved Viking clans of the Sentinel Forest where they’d grown up, and had felt the collective fear of that creature who lived only in story, whom they had always believed to be a myth and nothing more.
Nix felt the fear reverberating through his cousins and swallowed uncomfortably, his ears flattening against his head as the runes along his arms and neck began to flicker in erratic patterns. Tavik sensed the wariness through the tether from Nix, glanced quickly at him, and forced himself to sit straighter, drawing in a deep breath as he tried to steady himself, realising that he had already begun preparing to run.
Oren, Tavik and Bran shifted, and the three brothers looked at one another before turning back to Olis, who watched them with careful attention beneath the crystalline glow of the Crystalsong Forest.
“Why do you not look like a wolf, then, if Faolin is your half-brother?” said Bran, hearing how small and thin his voice sounded in the gathering darkness. He drew a steadying breath, trying to quiet the old memories of those childhood tales, the ones that had once filled his nights with visions of a great shadowed wolf prowling just beyond the firelight.
“What are you really?” whispered Tavik when Olis remained silent.
Around them, the forest breathed in slow, shimmering rhythms. Pale motes drifted between the trees like wandering sparks, and the fire cast long, wavering shapes across the crystal-flecked trunks. The air felt taut, as though the forest itself were listening, waiting for whatever truth Olis might choose to release into the night.
Another few moments passed, and then, as though remembering himself, the scribe blinked and straightened, a faint shimmer catching in his eyes as he gave a small shake of his shoulders. A warm, unhurried smile softened his face, lit by the fire’s glow and the drifting motes that wandered between the trunks.
“A scribe,” he said. “I told you. I record the histories of MirMarnia on crystals. I move through its times. I have been doing this since there were histories to record.” He tilted his head slightly, the crystal veined branches above him glinting like distant stars. “Some things are simply what they are, Tavik, however large they might seem when you first look directly at them.”
Tavik sat with this, the firelight flickering across his hands. The stick he had been holding had gone cold. He set it down among the embers, watching the sparks curl upward into the forest’s shimmering hush.
“The towers below the Burrowbacks,” Oren said quietly, recalling what they had seen, the memory rising like a shape forming in mist. “Where the scribes work. Are the others as old as you?”
The forest breathed around them, its crystalline trunks catching the fire’s glow in muted flashes, as though listening to every word.
The fire shifted, a log settling deeper into its own ash, and the glow steadied to something softer. In the valley, above the stream, the forest glittered in the dark, thousands of crystals catching the faint warmth of the embers and holding it for a heartbeat before releasing it back into the night. The boys sat within that quiet shimmer, the forest breathing around them in slow, luminous pulses.
Oren looked towards the back of the cave mouth, then up at the dark arc of the overhang above them. “We should set watches,” he said, the familiar shape of routine feeling suddenly necessary. As he spoke, he saw the tension ease from his brothers and cousin, as though the simple act of naming a task steadied the ground beneath them.
“I’ll take the first,” Nix said, without turning, his silhouette outlined by the soft glint of crystal light drifting through the trees.
“I shall join you, if you do not mind, Nix,” Olis said from his corner, his voice carrying the serenity of someone for whom sleep was little more than an optional curiosity. The firelight caught the folds of his robes, turning them to muted gold.
Tavik looked at him. “Do you sleep?”
“Occasionally,” Olis said, adjusting his robes with a small, thoughtful movement. “When I find it interesting.”
The forest murmured around them, its branches stirring in a faint breeze, as though listening to every word.
Tavik decided not to pursue this. He lay back, folding his arms beneath his head, and looked up at the stone ceiling of the overhang. Fractured light drifted across it in slow patterns, colours shifting like quiet currents. Those same hues had moved over everything since they had stepped through the Burrowback’s portal into this ancient place, glimmering and wordless and very old, as though the forest carried its own silent memory of ages long before them.
In the shadows beneath the treeline, the elf shifted without taking her eyes from the strange blue boy who watched her every movement. Pale light slid across her skin in shifting colours as she eased herself into a crouch, careful not to make a sound. The change in posture loosened the tension in her shoulders, and she let her hands fall to her sides, willing her magic to settle. It intrigued her that this boy seemed drawn to the pulse of her power, though she remained wary of revealing her true nature too soon.
The other boys were peculiar as well, carrying a perplexing elvish manner about them, unmistakably Crystalsong in its cadence. Yet it made no sense. Her kingdom had enforced a blanket ban on children for the last century. She was the youngest of her kind, a fact her sister reminded her of far too often. But these half-elven boys were so much younger. She could see that the eldest had not yet come into his full power, and all of them were small, almost fragile beneath the forest’s shimmering canopy.
The smallest half-elf, the one who had spoken earlier about her use of magic toward the blue boy, gave off a sharp stench of portal magic, raw and unanchored. He clearly had not yet learned how to bind it properly. She studied his height, his slightness, and suspected his inexperience with his magic had half consumed him already. A pitiful state to be in, though she reflected dryly that no full-blooded Crystalsong elf would ever have been so careless.
The forest around her breathed in slow, crystalline rhythms, its branches whispering with faint colour as she watched the boys and kept her magic close.
The elf found that as she watched the camp of the blue boy, the half-elves, and the scribe, she felt an unexpected thread of connection to them, though she could not fathom why. She wanted to scorn them for being half-elves, for whoever had birthed them and broken the ban, yet as she studied their faces in the shifting light, she sensed something in them that reminded her of her mother. Her mother, who had long since died in the illness that had taken half her kingdom and had been the very reason for the ban in the first place. The resemblance was strange and uncanny, maddening in its persistence, keeping her fixed upon their camp as the night deepened.
The nightly creatures began to loom across the valley, their echoing, mournful cries rolling through the dark like distant horns. The elf watched the blue boy sit straighter, knowing he was listening to those creatures, though he showed no fear. The crystal flecked branches above her shivered with moonlight as she crouched lower, feeling the shadows reach for her. She swept the nearest one over herself like a cloak, and at once she vanished from the sight of the first Gloming.
The creature slunk on wide, silent paws into the valley, its great eye sweeping over the shadows where she hid. Its four fangs within its jaw slid into view as it sniffed deeply, tasting the air. Its gaze drifted across the valley to the blue boy and the tall scribe, who watched it watching them. The darkness around them felt brittle, fractured by the moonlit crystal glow, as the elf stilled her hearts and quieted their beating. She threaded her silver vein magic into the well of one palm, rotating her hand to hide the glint of power from the moonlight.
She waited and watched. And as she had anticipated, the Gloming, a territorial beast, let out its mournful cry. The sound tore through the valley and woke the three half-elves instantly, their heads lifting in unison as she remained hidden in the shadows, observing every movement.
Bran scrambled up beside his brothers as they looked around wildly, their eyes darting through the darkened valley where the Gloming’s cry still echoed. Nix and Olis were already standing, both fixed on the shadows below, where the faint trickling of the stream continued its quiet course. To Bran, that gentle sound jarred horribly with the cry that had torn him awake only moments before.
“What was that?!” hissed Bran, feeling the hair rise along the back of his neck. For the first time in a long while, he had no objection to his older brothers shoving him behind them. Fractured light flickered across their faces, sharpening their silhouettes against the brittle darkness as the valley held its breath.
Oren could barely make out anything in the complete darkness of the valley beyond their camp. The glow drifting through the trees had thinned to faint glimmers, leaving only a suggestion of shapes shifting in the valley below. Yet he could just discern a large form he did not remember being there before, something hunched and waiting in the brittle dark.
Tavik, standing beside him, was rigid, every muscle drawn tight as he strained for any sound. His eyes flicked constantly to Nix, who stood with the tall scribe, both of them fixed on whatever moved in the valley. What unsettled Tavik most was that his cousin was not behaving as he usually did when faced with a threat. Through the tether, Tavik felt a sharp spike of trepidation. Nix was suppressing his predator instincts, holding them down with deliberate force, and Tavik could not understand why. This, of all moments, was the time to be larger, stronger, more fearsome than whatever prowled out there in the dark, watching them so easily while they could see little more than indistinct shadows.
“Nix, what’s happening?” Tavik growled, feeling the strain of his cousin’s suppressed abilities clawing at him through the tether. “Why aren’t you using your magic? Transforming? We don’t have weapons anymore!”
Nix did not respond. Instead, Tavik felt through the tether from his cousin, a firm shushing that pressed against his thoughts as though Tavik had interrupted something delicate. Frustration flared, and he began to reach for Nix, but Oren caught his arm and nodded towards the scribe. Tavik followed the gesture, and both boys turned their attention to Olis.
Olis, standing seven feet tall and towering beside Nix, had begun to shimmer. Light caught on him strangely, as though the threads of his robes were giving off the early glow of distant stars. The scribe and Nix were watching something the other three boys could not see, no matter how hard they strained. And Olis seemed to be growing taller still.
Tavik blinked hard, wondering if his eyes were failing him. He rubbed them, looked again, and saw that every individual thread of the scribe’s robes was becoming illuminated by blues, reds, and greens. The colours gathered themselves into shapes that began to resemble letters, though none that Tavik or his brothers could recognise or read. The forest’s fractured moonlight slid across those shifting symbols, turning them into a quiet, living script.
Nix seemed aware of the change in Olis, yet he did not move his eyes from the creature in the valley. His stillness was unnerving, his magic held tight beneath his skin, as though he were listening to something only he and the scribe could hear.
Very slowly, Olis drew a deep breath. The light caught along his robes as he swept one hand in a wide arc around himself, his fingers brushing lightly against the illuminated threads. At his touch, all the colours woven through the fabric poured into his blue-stained fingers, gathering there like liquid starlight. Then he flung his hand out into the valley and the darkness beyond, moving as though casting a fishing net across deep water.
Each point of coloured light flew outward and hung suspended, forming a constellation that unfurled across the valley in intricate patterns. The whole expanse flooded with colour, light dancing in and out of the crystal clusters, revealing every detail in every shadow. The boys stared, astonished, as several huge creatures were caught frozen in place, all facing their camp. And at the opposite treeline, a tall, slender female elf staggered back, blinking against the sudden brilliance.
The light remained and did not wink out as Oren, Tavik and Bran had expected. It held steady across the valley, caught in the crystal clusters like a thousand suspended dawns. They watched as Olis strode towards two of the nearest creatures, each almost as tall as he was, each with a single eye and four fangs that slid over their jaws, gleaming under the constellation light. The creatures stayed very still, their singular eyes following Olis’s approach without fear.
When he reached the closest creature, Olis placed his hand upon its flank, speaking softly as though sharing a secret meant only for its ear. The boys could not hear his words. They found themselves torn between watching Olis murmur to a nightmare creature and glancing at the female elf, now fully visible at the opposite treeline. She had risen to her feet and was facing their camp, her gaze flicking between Olis and the creatures, then back to the boys, her expression unreadable in the shifting colours.
Seemingly satisfied, Olis let his hand fall and made a sound in his throat, a low note that echoed faintly like the eerie cry that had woken them. The creatures looked up at him, then answered with brief, gentler calls of their own before loping away down through the valley. They crossed the stepping stones of the stream and climbed the opposite slope towards the higher ridge where the boys had travelled earlier in the day, their forms slipping back into the crystal-lit darkness.
Olis watched until the last creature vanished into the trees on the far side. Then he turned to the elf and said, “Hello Liv.”
