There. She had found them indeed and had not lost much time, or so it would seem from their new instruction. Khida shaped a short greeting, Naiya's arrival seeming to have startled her. It had startled Naiya too, despite her tentative understanding of the web. Her hands shaped a greeting of her own, but she resisted the urge to reach out to her wife. She didn't know that touch was possible, and she wasn't sure she wanted it if it was. Things were too strange here, off...
She didn't want to think too hard about it lest she worry herself out of the web once more. She turned to Azmere, teaching still, perhaps she had not missed much. His hands were... full. Although how he had pooled the silken colors of the web into his hands was not clear. His hands moved almost distractedly, like the skill was one that took little thought, shaping ball to string, then string to knot.
An origin, he said. Each one unique, and used as a tie to the web. This must be how families and belongings were tied to the web. His gesture had her eyes falling to her new tie, the same knot in his hand.
He pressed his knot into the strands beneath their feet, and bid them to practice, but not her, she noted as her called her away. His words were kind, first, a compliment paid, then an offer made. He spoke of creating an origin of her own, using djed. That was a word she nearly recognized. Stories shared over a campfire spoke of how some people used djed to do evil things, to steal the life from others.
It was the source of the fire in Quzon's hands... and now she knew it was the source of the web as well. Again he said practice, but there was little instruction, and less time as he began making his way back to the other women.
She followed him and found that both the other women looked as baffled by the lesson as she felt. They could talk more later, once they had seen about the purpose for their initiation into the magic. Azmere left, gone in a blink.
Startled once more by the power of the web, Naiya's gaze turned to the others, unsure. She scanned the landscape, spinning in a slow circle until she spotted him, a silhouette light against a dark outcropping. A quick glance at the others, we go shaping her hands as she pointed out the man in case the others had missed him.
She leaned down reaching for a glowing strand. Instantly she was falling into the web and rising again beside the man. He moved again, and she followed, falling quickly into the pattern of moving in the large jumps until she appeared beside him, and beside the discordant sight of their spring home filled with decay and death.
Worse than the sight of their desecrated home, their sacred landing of the gods, was the fear, it filled the space, filled her as she took in the sight before her. Pillars of bone, decked in rotting flesh, carcasses forming piles as tall as she stood. Her heart ached, the waste, the altar of dira spread across the site.
Glassbeaks roved in packs that could decimate entire encampments of Drykas, neither circling, nor patrolling, but drawn here all the same. She moved, reassured only minutely by the promise they could not be harmed in the web, trying to find what drew them. It could simply be the decay. They were scavengers as much as predators, but with packs so large, and in the same territory-
There must have been something...
There! In the shadow of the crater. She couldn't say what she saw, but it was different than the death that saturated the space. She moved in a jump, the strangeness of the feeling lost to the discovery.
Carved deeply into the bloodied earth were marks, deep and wide. She stood in the gouge, staring across the divot in confusion. She was no tracker, not like Khida, but even she could see that something large had been here, and it had been dragged across this space. She turned her eyes in the direction of the path, seeking something that could have caused such a wound in Semele's tough skin.
Perhaps there was something there, in the distance. She could be there in a blink. The temptation to chase it was great, the promise of the web's whispers and speed pulling her towards the discovery.
"Khida." She called the name like the pull of a lead. Quick, a distraction, the correction of a mindset or action that was wrong. She looked for her wife, for the Watchman, and for the interesting, wild woman who was Merevaika. She neared her wife first, recalling how she had been startled before, she moved the distance in short stints, appearing a distance away and closing it in small gaps.
"Khida, I found... something" strange, unsure She flashed her eyes towards Azmere, becconing him and Merevaika too should she catch the sight.
"Something," she began once they could hear her, "this way." She moved a short distance, leading, until they stood inside the gouge that had caught her attention.
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Naiya space Pavi | Common | Tukant
other space Pavi | Common | Tukant
other space Pavi | Common | Tukant