Once there was nothing but a three-part darkness. The trinity of night. 'The night of innocence', 'the night of dreams' and the night of unknown beginnings. The only three great watchers of the world watched each other and the great empty vast. They existed with each other and despite each other. Nestled into the folds of their being was their will of existence.
With the sparks of their struggle awoke a man. He walked the realms of the night and the boundaries of empty vast.
Dimio came to know his loneliness, so he cried and slumbered in the lap of the night of innocence.
"Human—human, why do you cry so? Are the nights not empty and vast and cold?"
"Oh night ever-young, I cry because it is empty and vast and cold. You have the night ever-dark and the night ever-changing. Even in your enmity you have each other. Who do I have?"
~ Excerpts from the Book of Sephyr
Malay
When the commotion died down, I saw the soldiers drag a bedraggled man towards the camp.
The man was laughing and babbling, frothing all the while. He had a beard matted with dry mud.
Sento was wildly gesticulating, speechless and gasping, as he held his rear in pain.
"Huff... Huff... The fool really tore a chunk out of my arse. I was just checking the outer brush when I saw something crawling."
Sento didn't continue; he just pointed at the man, who was now tied up and sitting down.
"What do we do with him? He's clearly not right in the head," Waladi asked, rubbing his hands in his annoying, greasy manner.
"We don't have the time to play nanny to every lunatic washed out by the night," Rolan grumbled, but still looked at Sir Ravis for direction.
I was equal parts amused and befuddled by a strange madman coming to bite Sento in the arse.
Sir Ravis didn't pay much mind to Rolan's grumbling and asked Mr. Fagu,
"What do you think, sir?"
The old man walked towards the madman and peered closely into his eyes.
"Why were you hiding in the brush? Look at me."
The lunatic looked at Mr. Fagu and started chuckling again, with the wheezing delight of a hyena.
"Hiding? No, not hiding, not hiding. If I was hiding, how could you find me? Did you find eyes when you looked in the dark? Did you find the darkness of the Lord? The god is chained facing the great empty vast and we're left with darkness and flowers and long fingers."
Before he could say much more, Rolan cut him off with an urgency in his tone.
"Eyes? Lord? Do you mean there's a Lord-ranked creature around here?"
"Hehehe, heehe, blind fools, all blind. It's red... The answer is red. The Thirteen are no more, just like the children of the sun. It's the new order. He said hide, hide in a hole and forget the glory, and then we all die. Hahahaha!"
The madman kept babbling nonsense, and when it was apparent that he wouldn't give any straight answers, Sir Ravis ordered the crowd to disperse.
Mr. Fagu pleaded to give the madman something to eat.
Just when I was about to turn back, a chime-like voice echoed in my head.
"He... That's not some madman. He is not simple. He talked about Thirteen and the new order, and the children of the sun," the ghost spoke, reminding me of his existence.
"Oh? What is Thirteen? I know a little about the new order from Scourge, but not much," I asked, interested.
He fell silent for a moment, and I thought he wouldn't answer, like any other time, and I already felt my irritation building up.
But then he slowly began.
"The Thirteen... They are a coalition of unworlded families. There are, of course, other unworlded groups, like the children of the true sun, but none as prominent as the Thirteen."
His voice somehow turned melancholic after saying that, as if he was reminiscing about something.
I stayed silent, waiting for him to continue, because this was the first time he had given a straight answer.
He then sighed.
"You're not strong enough yet; your fate is too easy to read, to mold, to break. Knowing too much might not be the best for you. You should..."
He hesitated for a moment, as if struggling to say more, but then he continued,
"You should pay more attention to your dreams, but just don't admit them out loud."
With this final warning, he shut up.
I tried goading him several times again, but he didn't respond.
Right then, I saw Sir Ravis receive a report from the scouts.
"The main pass is out, sir," the lead scout reported, breathing hard. "The central stone arch across the ravine collapsed during the recent storms. The chasm is impassable for horses and heavy wheels."
A collective murmur of frustration swept through the camp.
Sir Ravis stood frowning in deep thought.
Then he said with a sigh of resignation,
"We'll keep to the course for now and take the Old Sunway for a detour. It'll delay us for a few days."
Although he said words of assurance, Sir Ravis himself looked troubled.
Mr. Fagu suddenly stepped forward and asked the scout,
"Can people on foot make it down the ravine?"
"Aye," the scout nodded. "A man on foot with a light pack can pick his way down the rocks and cross the creekbed easily enough."
Mr. Fagu looked at Sir Ravis silently for a while and then said,
"Well then, we'll keep to the main road. If we go with you, we'll probably have to make our way back to Nifey."
As Mr. Fagu had somehow procured a place on one of the trading vessels in Nifey, we had to go our separate ways, but it came sooner than any of us expected.
Nifey mostly works for trading vessels and merchant ships; for commercial passenger ships, you had to travel to Founi like us.
So it was decided that our fellow travelers would accompany us as far as the Sunway Pass, and then we'd go our separate ways.
---
It was raining, and most people in the company had sodden clothes and a lethargic, irritated gait.
To me, who was comfortable in my carriage watching the beautiful sunshower through the window I was curled up against, it was almost magical.
The lilac clouds hung over the canopy, almost touching the fringes of the wilds, and the sun peeked through the fraying lines of the clouds.
When the rain came suddenly, we couldn't find any shelter, nor could we set any up easily, so we just kept going.
We were almost to the Sunway Pass, and I watched Mr. Fagu and Kina through the edges of my vision occasionally.
My protective silence had turned bitter and become poignant.
So with my sealed lips, I listened to Mr. Fagu murmur paragraphs from the Book of Sephyr.
"The exalted creator bent destiny into folds and created the tree of all life. Then he created the garden of burden and solace and put the tree of all life in its center. With the authorities of night, he created impassable mountains of mist around it."
Mr. Fagu continued reading the chapters of creation; sometimes he turned to chapters of guidance or seeking.
He kept reading until we reached the Sunway passage.
So much time has passed, and now I'm sitting in the garden of burden and solace that Mr. Fagu used to read so reverently about.
But I see nothing magical; all I see is a mark of an inept, desperate, and now absent God.
When we reached the Sunway Pass and its massive, dilapidated gate—in dire need of repair—we decided to rest there before separating and moving on.
Mr. Fagu opened his Book of Saints to the page of the Saintess of the Sun and showed its likeness to the marble statue that was just beside the gate, in the center of a dried fountain.
He tried caressing the statue from the parapet of the fountain, but he couldn't reach.
"This is the legacy of a saint, left to collect dust. The Temple of Seven doesn't care about gods; I don't even know what they really care about," he said, his forehead creasing into the deep-set lines of thinking he had earned.
Before his departure, Mr. Fagu left a copy of Pilgrimage of Heart for me.
Kina only wanted to leave with a nod, but a stern stare from Mr. Fagu had her saying a polite farewell to everyone.
If I knew what would become of this separation, I don't know what I would have done.
But I'm sure there would have been a lot less death.
The old man waved back thrice before he disappeared behind the meandering road and a wall of green and dark.
---
On the third day of me being alone in my carriage again, I started peeking into the dark of night as I used to before Mr. Fagu and Kina joined us.
Again, I saw the lights scurrying up one of the trees, and I frowned.
Right then, a sharp whistling noise tore the silence of the night, and we heard a frantic screeching.
By the time the lights were concentrated on that tree, the creature had died, nailed to the tree by Sir Ravis's spear.
We all saw a spindly creature with all head and two bony hands, with no torso or legs.
It had no discernible features on its face like a mouth, eyes, or ears.
It only had a big black circle on the top of its head.
It was one of the Eyeless.
These are called "Eyes of the Lord" because they mostly scout for Lord-ranked chaotic creatures, but they are so low down the ladder that they scout for any higher-ranked chaotic creature.
"Is it really a Lord-ranked creature or just a higher-ranked chaotic creature?" Waladi asked nervously, voicing what was on everyone's mind.
"You've all taken the madman's warning too seriously; there's no Lord-ranked creature here. If there was, the place would be stuffed full with imperial legions," snorted Rolan.
Sir Ravis remained deep in thought, and everyone watched him, slowly falling silent.
He finally spoke:
"No matter if there's a Lord-ranked creature or just another creature higher ranked than the Eyeless, it'll do us good to be cautious and fast. It's not as if we can go back to the main pass with how that is."
Everyone murmured their agreement, mostly because nobody wanted to walk back and take another road, and nobody believed there could be a Lord-ranked creature out here.
Most likely it was a rank-one creature, as the Eyeless are not ranked chaotic creatures like wolaesk or skiem are.
And that was how we convinced ourselves to walk into the belly of the beast.