Come dawn the hill awoke under a cold drizzle. Air still moist, grey clouds spread and thinning out. Everyone went to their chores all the same.
The mist remained, unfazed.
For hours as they worked and played the beasts felt the same tense, solemn atmosphere. Battles were usually preceded by drinks and music, if only to alleviate their fears; here they simply waited under a silent routine for the first sacrifices to arrive.
Some couples arrived alone. Some were escorted. One tribe had misunderstood and sent two couples instead. The ones turned back were fearful to leave.
Etelet had little time for them. He had hurried to bring Tunu to the cave.
"Wait inside until you hear the horns."
"And when I come out?"
"The sacrifices will be lined up before you. They'll be the ones coming to you."
"Okay. And then?"
The kobel apprentice looked at him, a bit puzzled.
"Then you feed."
"In front of everyone?"
"Yes, that's the point! It's a sacrifice, they need to see you feed on them. If you can, leave no remains. They are sacred offerings, if you leave some they would feel at fault."
"And then we could punish their whole tribe!"
"Yes, exactly, let's not do that! Now, go in and you all, leave us already!"
He chased the crowd, let Tunu walk alone to the cave's entrance. The champion could see his friend give more instructions for braziers and dyes.
Soon the cavern had absorbed those voices, leaving even the drizzle to fade.
He walked deeper in and up, to that room where the rocky spire still towered over a carpet of bones. More bones than before.
Without knowing how long it would be, the kobel sat there, legs crossed, and closed his eyes. There, in the cavernous dark, he could feel his heart beat so quietly. His own heart echoed the tension outside.
Yes, from the moment he had gazed at that mist, even his heart understood the monstrous threat that awaited them.
It was so calm, an ironclad promise of victory and yet the usual excitement was missing. What usual warmth would have him drown in power had been exchanged for this cold, unrelenting resolve. As if it too could know fear.
Something that could threaten even a wyvern.
Tunu got another couple hours to consider those feelings. He himself was conflicted, but only to the extent that he wanted his tribe to join in his glory. Lose or win, even at this very time he could only wish for them to share his fate.
So naturally, his thoughts lost themselves in purple eyes.
But he heard the horns or rather his own ones felt the vibrations. So Tunu got up, felt his stomach growl and smirked. So much for a sacred ritual. Yet his heart beat at the thought: no, he was sacred. This was a sacred place from which he inherited.
He walked out to face a vast crowd.
Up above on a low cliff were the kobels, with the few left captive trailing afar. They cheered at his sight and Etelet, furious, had to yell for them to shut up.
On the small plateau itself was the crowd of captives, so numerous that they overflowed on the road and past, and further down more waited, seeing little from there but present regardless.
Those ones had zealous eyes fixed on him.
And to the front, lined up, were the couples wearing only kobel words Tunu could not read on their skin, in a blue dye that the drizzle luckily was not washing away anymore. The sky had cleared somewhat, the braziers were not sizzling anymore.
Because the kobels had broken the sacred silence, Etelet was forced to improvise a new round of chant after which the horns blared once more.
This time, thankfully, all stayed silent.
So, after a solid minute, the first couple walked forth, all the way to the scaled lizard.
They kept their eyes to the ground, walked the last couple meters on their knees and stood there, their necks offered to him. Tunu watched those necks and exposed bodies, stunned suddenly by this uncanny sight of beasts ready to die.
His hesitation made his friend nearly panic.
But there was another set of eyes on him, from the crowd of warriors that sat closest on the height. He could feel her gaze without even looking and he himself felt the hunger shake his body.
So he fed.
He fed and before he was even finished with those two, the next couple walked forth. A male and a female, holding hands, eyes down to throw themselves at his feet.
Then the next. And the next after them. By now he was not even seeing them anymore, busy feasting on all that flesh. His mind almost blank. His maw ravenous. There was something in it all that to him tasted exquisite. Power, simply.
He had not even realize the captives cheering.
The captives were chanting a single name in as many tongues, in a wild cacophony. And the kobels, after having been scolded, did not know if they were allowed. One glare from the young kobel below them kept them shut.
Yet they wanted to join the chants.
All the kobels felt so excited, in this air filled with the smell of wet grass and iron, of choking charcoal. It was exhilerating. So when the last couple fell and their champion plunged his teeth in their body, with the captives extatic, finally the shaman apprentice released them.
The whole tribe acclaimed the legend. The whole hill that they called a mountain had erupted in chaotic chants and hectic horns.
A single bramée answered them all.
A single, monstrous voice had carried all the way to them, overwhelming their chorus.
They froze.
"Have heart!" Etelet scolded them all, yelling as loudly as he could. "Scream! Scream your guts out! Your champion is invincible!"
So they screamed. Yelled their warcry with all they had, until their throats hurt and even after. They banged on metal, they brought all the instruments they had. All to answer that inhumane voice that had, for a moment, cut through even their bones.
Tunu got up.
He was dazed, he was barely conscious.
He was thrilled.
"Let's kill that beast!" He shouted and his own voice boomed over their own uproar. Added to it. They aligned their screams to his until all hearts beat on the same rhythm.
He walked forth and the crowd of captives opened like nothing, a vast path to let him through. They would have thrown themselves down the slope to let him pass. Those prisoners cheered him and the warriors that followed him down the path.
With the suppletives, that was more than a hundred.
Galvanizing even more, he felt Savae push through and just behind him. She would have walked straight past the champion had they not held her back. Of them two she was even more bestial. The true paragon of a kobel warrior.
"It's coming! The mist is coming!" A sentry was shouting.
But none could hear. The tumult was just too high, the eyes too blind. And it didn't matter, not when their best was already on a warpath.
Nor did they realize how their cries were answered all around the plain, all the way to the stream, by all of their tributaries. Weaker, tamer screams to join their madness. If that was even possible, those many tribes had united in this one expedition.