Chapter 18
Merrilee
Dawn.
The word echoed in my mind with every powerful stride of the kuda's legs, with every beat of my racing heart.
I didn't know how long I'd been riding—time seemed meaningless here.
The rock formations rose from the wasteland like the fingers of some buried giant reaching desperately toward the sky—five massive pillars of stone, ancient and weathered, casting long, dramatic shadows across the broken ground.
My heart leaped into my throat.
I urged the kuda forward with renewed urgency, my entire body tense with desperate hope.
The Welati were there. Somewhere in that valley.
Warriors with a code of honor.
People who kept their promises.
My only hope of saving Ahrick's life.
The air changed as we climbed higher into the mountain range.
Thinner. Colder. Sharper. It burned in my lungs with each ragged breath, searing delicate tissue with every inhale, but I didn't care.
I couldn't afford to care. I leaned forward into the kuda's neck, my fingers tangled desperately in her coarse mane, my body moving instinctively with hers as the ground rose steadily beneath us.
The rock formations—those massive stone fingers I'd spotted from the wasteland—loomed closer with every powerful stride. They were even more imposing up close, ancient and weathered by countless millennia, carved by wind and time and geological forces into shapes that looked almost deliberate.
Like someone had built them as markers.
Or warnings.
The thought sent a chill down my spine that hadn't to do with the cold mountain air.
The landscape shifted dramatically around us as we climbed.
The barren wasteland gradually gave way to something stranger—vegetation that shouldn't exist in a place this harsh, this high, this hostile to life.
Twisted trees with bark that looked like brushed metal, their surfaces reflecting the dying light in unnatural ways.
Their branches were bare except for clusters of bioluminescent pods that pulsed with soft blue light, creating an eerie glow in the gathering darkness.
Vines grew in geometric patterns across the rocks, their growth too precise to be random, their leaves sharp-edged and crystalline, catching the light like fragments of stained glass.
Everything here felt like it would cut you if you touched it wrong. Like the entire ecosystem had evolved to be hostile, to repel intrusion, to wound the unwary.
The kuda navigated the increasingly treacherous terrain with practiced ease, her hooves finding purchase on rocks that looked too smooth, too steep, too unstable to support her weight. She moved like water flowing uphill—impossible, but undeniable.
We crested a ridge, and the valley opened up below us like a secret revealed.
The Welati.
I'd found the valley. Now I just had to find them and somehow convince them to help me. Convince them that a human girl they'd never met, carrying a stone given to someone else, deserved their aid.
I urged the kuda down the slope, my heart thundering in my ears so loudly I couldn't think, pulsing against my windpipe with each frantic beat. The stone was a solid weight in my pocket, pressing against my thigh with every movement, a constant reminder of what I was risking. What I was asking.
Please let this work. Please let them help. Please don't let Ahrick die because I failed.
The kuda's hooves struck stone, the sound echoing across the valley with alarming clarity.
Too loud.
Too obvious.
Too much like an announcement of my presence.
But I didn't care. I didn't have time for stealth.
"Welati!" My voice cracked on the word, raw and desperate, stripped of anything resembling dignity. "I need to speak with the Welati!"
The sound of my voice died quickly in the thin mountain air, swallowed by the vastness of the valley.
Silence fell across the landscape—heavy and absolute and suffocating.
I pulled the kuda to a halt, my hands shaking violently on the reins, my entire body trembling from a combination of cold, exhaustion, and fear. The stone felt like it was burning through my pocket, searing my skin.
"Please!" I shouted, my voice breaking completely. "I need your help!"
Nothing.
Just silence and darkness and the faint pulsing glow of those alien plants.
Then—movement.
Two figures detached from the shadows near the largest rock formations, moving toward me with a grace that made my breath freeze. They appeared seemingly from nowhere, as if they'd materialized from the stone itself.
Warriors.
They were tall—taller than any human, almost as tall as Ahrick.
Seven feet at least, maybe more. Their bodies were lean and powerfully muscled, built for speed and precision rather than brute strength.
They wore armor that looked like it had been grown rather than forged—organic plates that followed the lines of their bodies perfectly, dark as obsidian and etched with intricate patterns that glowed faintly in the firelight from the settlement beyond.
Their skin was burnished bronze with sharp, angular features. Eyes that reflected the firelight like a predator's—not quite absolute black, but close. Dark enough that I couldn't see where iris ended and pupil began.
Their hair was bound back in intricate braids that must have taken hours to create, and woven throughout were strands that changed color like a fiber optic light show.
The warriors moved in perfect synchronization, steps silent despite the rocky ground beneath their feet. Weapons hung at their sides—long, curved blades with edges so sharp they seemed to cut the air itself as they moved.
They stopped exactly ten feet away, maintaining a distance that felt calculated.
One of them spoke—a language I didn't understand, all sharp consonants and flowing vowels that sounded like wind through stone canyons.
"I don't—" My voice shook badly. "I don't speak your language. But I have this."
I pulled the Welati stone from my pocket with trembling hands and held it up, praying they would recognize it, that it would mean what Nansar said it would mean.
The effect was immediate and dramatic.
Both warriors went still—not the stillness of hesitation, but the absolute frozen focus of predators who'd just spotted prey.
Or recognized something sacred.
The one on the left stepped forward slowly, his hand extended. Not threatening. Requesting.
I placed the stone in his palm, my heart slamming against my ribs hard enough to crack through my ribcage.
He studied it for a long moment, turning it over carefully in his hands, his fingers tracing the patterns carved into its surface with reverence. Then he looked at his companion and spoke—quick, urgent words I couldn't parse, his tone conveying importance even if the meaning escaped me.
The second warrior's eyes widened fractionally—the first real expression I'd seen on either face.
The first warrior handed the stone back to me, then gestured sharply toward something in the distance.
"You'll take me to your village?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper, hardly daring to hope.
He didn't answer—just turned and started walking.
I dismounted, my legs shaking so badly I nearly fell. My muscles screamed in protest after hours on the kuda's back. Starfield nudged my shoulder gently with her nose, and I pressed my hand against her neck for a moment, drawing strength from her solid warmth.
"Thank you," I whispered to her, meaning it with every fiber of my being.
Then I followed the warriors into the night, leading Starfield behind me.
The village seemed to spring up out of nowhere—one moment we were walking through darkness and stone, the next we'd crossed some invisible threshold into a settlement that looked like it had grown organically from the mountain itself.
Buildings rose directly from the rock, their walls a seamless blend of stone and wood and materials I couldn't identify that appeared shaped by nature rather than tools.
Organic curves instead of hard angles. Surfaces that flowed like water frozen mid-motion, preserved in eternal grace.
Nothing like the salvaged metal structures of Fange City with their rusted seams and bolted-together desperation, their patchwork ugliness.
This was something else entirely. Something ancient and deliberate.
Villagers emerged from their homes, silent and watchful, their dark eyes tracking my every movement with unsettling intensity.
Men, women, children—all of them with that same burnished bronze skin, those same impossible eyes, that same fiber-optic hair pulsing with light in individual colors and rhythms.
I felt exposed. Vulnerable. Scrutinized.
Human.
So utterly, completely human in a place where humanity meant nothing.
The warriors led me deeper into the settlement. The air smelled of something sharp and clean—ozone and stone and something else I couldn't identify, something that made my sinuses burn slightly.
We stopped in front of the largest structure, its entrance framed by those same geometric patterns that covered everything here, glowing faintly with its own internal light.
One of the warriors spoke—a single word that sounded like a command, resonant and final.
The entrance opened.
Not a door. The stone itself shifted, flowing aside like water, revealing a passage lit by flickering torches.
The warriors gestured for me to enter.
I took a deep, shaking breath and stepped inside.
The chamber was circular, carved from wood that still bore the marks of whatever tools—or powers—had shaped it.
More torches lined the walls at regular intervals, casting everything in soft light that seemed to pulse in time with the fiber-optic strands in the Welati's hair.
The synchronization was hypnotic, disorienting.
And in the center of the chamber, seated at a long carved table, was an elderly female.