"But how? Are you going to come with us?" Sol only just realized there was no way a Guardian Beast of the Stake would be allowed to join him on his return to his village. It would be disastrous if the people saw Haati walking here with her five pups.
Haati shook her head.
At best, they would be vigilant and distrustful. At worst, they would attack Sol and everyone else before they even managed to cross the Steelpine Bridge.
"I'll teach you how. But first, you might want to cover yourself." Haati's voice resonated inside everyone's heads.
"Hmhmhmhm yes! This nakedness won't do!" Grandpa Rahzgir came along and handed Sol a bundle of dark-colored fabric. "Wear it. You need something to cover yourself up."
"Thank you, zhe'ha—"
"Grandpa."
"..." It felt weird to Sol, how hard this old man wanted him to say grandpa, but there were no downsides to it. Besides, Sol had called him that a couple of minutes ago. "Grandpa. Thank you."
"You'll find the size fits you quite nicely. I moved all your equipment and pouches into this new one, with some extras, of course. Your coat and inner attire have been shredded to bits, so don't complain! Hmhmhmhmhmhm!" The Old Chief looked proud of himself, as if he'd pulled something priceless from a ruin, even though his house was in poor condition.
Sol didn't even bother to check at first, but he was surprisingly pleased when he found the attire was almost exactly the same as what he'd had. The difference was the material and the coloration. This one ran darker, leaning toward black and deep grey with hints of brown and red, but everything else matched: the placement of the pockets, the pouches, the belts, and the hidden compartments near the wrists.
The material was better, too. This was not low-quality, thrown-away dagzan fur. This was actual Lowland Garm leather and fur, rare and powerful. It was also light, and it felt easier for Sol to move in. The shoes were thick, but flexible and warm. The cloak felt soft and tough at the same time. Sol ran his hands over it and found it would be resistant to slashes and piercings.
He was also surprised to find the two dagger sheaths at the back of his waist restocked with two daggers of good quality. Not fancy, magically laced, or runic, but definitely better than what he'd had for the last couple of days.
"It fits me well." Sol pulled his hood up, still shocked that everything felt like it had been made for him.
"Of course it fits you well! After all, it belonged to—" Grandpa Rahzgir seemed to remember something and cut himself off in the middle. "—someone unimportant, but thankfully, his size fits you well when he was your age!"
Huh... maybe this belongs to Chief Rahzmir or something. Weird to think a massive man like him would wear clothing my size...
"Does this belong to the Chief? If so, I'll say thanks to him when I see him."
Grandpa Rahzgir looked sad for a blink, but he smiled again and patted Sol on the back. "Yes, yes, it does. And you don't have to do that. I bet he's happy someone gets to wear his clothing after all this time! Hmhmhmhmhmhmhm!!"
Nia watched the exchange with a smile. A couple of days ago, the Old Chief wouldn't have believed there would come a time when Sol would actually call him his grandfather.
—
—
"Huh? Sol's your grandson, grandpa?" Nia washed the fish the pups had caught in the Dalmas' cold water before putting them into her basket. It had been six hours since they'd been spat out by the water spout, and Sol had been bleeding all over.
Nia did what she could to staunch it. She'd thought a Benefica would suffice, but apparently, Sol's injuries were worse than she'd thought, and the Pulse of Life didn't help her case. It left her without magic for a while.
"Grandson, Grandson? Or just, grandson, grandson."
"HUH?? SSSSHHH!! Not so loud, dagnabbit!! Do not say this in front of the boyo!! That would confuse the crap outta the young'un!!" Ol' Crazy's head was wet with the Dalmas' freezing water, his eyes darting around for more fish to catch with his bare hands. "He's Grandson Grandson."
He leaped. He caught two fish with his hands and one with his bare teeth.
"JZZT STTTY SLLLENT ABOUDIT AND IDLL BE FAYN!" He plopped down and dropped the three fish near Nia's basket.
"But why? Wouldn't it be better if he knew?"
Ol' Crazy's eyes changed, just a bit. He no longer darted around like a rabbit. Even his overall color and demeanor shifted.
"In Nhevari culture, the most honorable thing to do when we made a grave mistake was to exile ourselves and make amends with the world. To leave and never come back. Disappear. Try to improve things from afar. The farther we go, and the more improvement we make, the better." He crouched next to the girl and started to watch the surface of the water.
Behind them, all five pups played happily between the Longrasses. "We value strength, but not only the tangible kind. Not just the kind you use to build or break a wall. We value conviction. We value someone's way of creating their own solution to the world's many questions. And the world will ask unfair questions, oftentimes."
Nia fell silent. She couldn't remember much, but the silhouette of a woman with broken white armor, two swords, and a white cloak, all marred with her own blood, surrounded by the lifeless bodies of her sisters, flashed through her mind.
—
"Look at me! ████ ██ ██!! PLEASE!! LOOK AT ME!" One of her sisters' voices, filled with deathly desperation.
"The █████ ███████... Is it with you? Then I will buy you time." She could still remember how her voice got muffled because of her stark white helmet.
"Please… Please ████ us all." The knight's breath was ragged. Nia knew that the woman knew that she was dying.
—
Hm? What was... who was that? Tears started to well up, and she blinked a few times, trying to shoo the tears away.
Grandpa Rahzgir continued. "It's the same for you too, is it not?"
Another flash inside her mind. A very familiar voice of one of her sisters. "Promise me... that you will ████."
Nia waited a moment before nodding.
Grandpa Rahzgir looked toward the five pups and smiled. "It must've been hard. For him. For those pups..." He paused, then looked back at the human girl sitting right next to him. "...for you."
Nia blinked. She bit her lower lip to keep herself from shedding tears. Then she looked at the old man beside her and replied, "My mother and sisters said everything would be just fine when I found him. I don't know if I found the person I was supposed to find or not, but..." She looked toward the house. Sol was still asleep, and there were no signs of movement. "I hope I found the right one."
"You definitely did."
Nia was taken aback by the old man's quick reply.
"He's a Geherrim with human blood running within his veins, and not only that..." Pain tightened his expression. He continued slowly, choosing each word. "He was also born under the star of our sworn enemy, our perpetual oppressor from the Gardens of Ferdeios. His soul was cursed by the Star of the Precursor. The worst star to be born under. It can only be seen from Gehenna when a great, era-altering disaster is about to occur. I was surprised we could see it from this world. And it doesn't help his case further that he has only one horn, an omen of cataclysm, an omen of total destruction."
Grandpa Rahzgir stopped for a moment before continuing. "Every time there's an instance of a baby cursed with that star, a massive conflict follows. Sometimes between the Ten Tribes, sometimes between the Geherrim and the Gleaming Ones... sometimes, even the Forsaken were caught up in the mix." He was lost in thought for a moment, like he was remembering something from a long, long time ago, from time immemorial. "The last person who was born under that star opened the gate and tethered our world to your world."
"The Final Conflict..."
"Yes. The 'Final' Conflict. I doubt very much that it will be final, as no conflict is ever truly final. As long as there are people able to remember it fondly and refuse to learn from it. As long as there are those who profit from it, in one way or another. As long as there are those who find revelry in the pain and destruction of others. When, I do not know, but it will happen. And the responsibility still weighs on my mind. The blood of those who died. The pain." He closed his eyes and exhaled.
Nia could see it in him, the heaviness, the weariness, the numbness. A deep-seated exhaustion and unresolved grief.
He continued. "And to think I was right beside him all that time, yet my voice was always out of reach. We were all blinded by desperation. By rage. By hatred... to the point that we chose to condemn another to take on our fate for us."
Nia couldn't understand even half of what the old man was saying, but she could feel the guilt all the same. The same sharp pain gnawed in her chest. She couldn't remember why. Her memories were still fragmented.
The silhouette of the Mother Archivist, her sisters, and the knight who protected her flashed in her mind again, then dissipated. If only she could access all her memories again, it would be easier for everybody, but she couldn't. Her charge as someone who wielded the Memoria required her own memory to be kept under lock and key, lest it be overwritten by the sheer load of information, by the sheer amount of power. The process of Falling also made everything even worse, as her fragmented memory was now scattered, and she didn't know whether it would find its way back to her... or be lost forever.
All that she knew, the thing that was crammed into her mind, was that "Mana" was the thing that enveloped all creatures. The thing that exists in between. It resided between breaths, blinks, day and night, life and death. It enveloped all humans, animals, plants, Geherrim, everything, without exception. To cast a spell out of mana meant to shape what enveloped a living being and project it outward as a new form, sometimes beneficial, sometimes destructive, depending on the intention of the caster.
The Memoria she wielded was just another form of mana, a very specific, purified form. Something that resides in a space in between one's memories. That was why an Act of Remembrance took so much out of her. Every time she deviated from her ordained path and decided to use Memoria for some other purpose, it took a piece out of her, quite literally. It carved something out of her being and turned the memory of it into something real. She could only hope the something the Act of Remembrance carved was not her actual memory.
"What about his parents?" Nia sat right next to him now, no longer crouching. "Are they still around?"
"His mother passed away shortly after he was born. The fact that she was hated by the entirety of the village just made it worse. The condemnation. The reluctance of the people around her to assist. The fear. While his father..." He stopped. He opened his mouth, but he couldn't find his voice.
"It's okay, grandpa. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to..."
"Yes, please forgive me. But I hope the time will come when he finds it in his heart to call me his zhe'har—his grandfather."
"He will! I promise."
—
—
"Ow, Wanwan, you're too heavy!" Sol was buried under the snow again. Wanwan pounced him when he noticed his savior was now looking proper and strong again. All four of the other pups decided to pile on him as well. "Ow! Ow! You guys are gonna kill me! Ow!"
Grandpa Rahzgir's eyes met Nia's.
"See? I was right." The girl's smile was beautiful, and it reminded him of the other human he knew, the one his son had brought back in the middle of the blizzard. She'd worn the same attire this girl wore. Her smile had radiated beautifully, too.
A white dress. A white-gold circlet with a veil covering her hair and her face. The similarity was uncanny. The only difference was the hair coloration and the freckles on her face. Everything else was eerily similar.
"Do not stray too far from him and the pup, little one." The old man patted Nia's back softly. "They will need you, just as you'll need them."
Nia smiled and nodded.
Haati walked forward and growled softly at her pups, something that forced the five to lay off Sol and sit attentively in line.
"Now, perhaps it is time for us to see whether I will be compatible with you or not, little sun."
"Compatible?"
She lifted her head and sniffed the cold air. Her eyes moved toward the Highlands, toward the direction of the village, at least somewhere near it.
"Yes. Let's go for a Hunt."