16. Desert Camp

> “If you’re looking for something you never know if you’ll find it. But if you go looking for nothing, you know for sure you’ll find something. Therefore the best way to find something is to look for nothing.” - Elthenian Logic Problem

The caravan spent the day on high alert, wary of another attack from the tops of the canyon. The trail away from Kaz’um looked identical to the one that took them to it, as far as Athena could tell. Sekardi thought very differently, and reminded Athena that, not only did she have an eye for these things, but she had traversed this route thousands of times in the past. If so much as a rock were out of place she would know about it.

No attack came, and as the depth of the canyon diminished Athena began to discern the mountains that rose all around them. To the left and the right they seemed to climb higher and higher with increasing distance until they disappeared into the haze and sky.

“Remember that Aeserus isn’t a round planet. It’s flat, as far as we can tell,” Sekardi told her, “So there’s no curvature to take the horizon out of sight. If the air cleared at the top of one of those mountains you could see for thousands of miles in all directions.”

“Has anyone ever been up there?”

“Not that I know of. Even the D’varsha haven’t explored up there. They prefer to dig down rather than up. Besides, there’s no such thing as a clear day here. Nobody’s seen the peaks of those mountains; nobody knows if there’s a sky with stars above; nobody’s ever seen past the haze.”

Athena looked up. During the visits to Jashard she had sometimes wondered what might be up there, but had taken it for granted that the only thing in the whole astral plane was Jashard with its walls and tower and the Aeseri and Engella within it, and those unlucky enough to be banished to the Wastelands outside the Walls. So much about that had already been proven wrong, so perhaps there was a whole universe of activity up above them, busy trading with each other and passing the Aeseri by without so much as a look, as the caravans seemed to do out in the Wastelands. Or perhaps there was nothing after all and whatever Aeserus had become was all that existed in this dimension.

The horizon before them began to open up, and as with the canyon it looked identical to the Wasteland on the other side of Kaz’um. Given the size of the mountain range Athena had expected some difference, but there was no weather here to create one. No noticeable temperature changes to generate air movement, no weather, no rain, and nothing growing. Except, it seemed, far away in the forest that had produced the wood that had been used for the cage that had held her, and the finely crafted table the D’varshan council sat at. She wondered what else there was out there, somewhere. Perhaps resources that nobody had yet discovered.

It was near nightfall when the caravan emerged from the canyon. Aguel called a halt as soon as they had put distance between themselves and the clifftops. The rokkars formed a protective circle and guards were posted before it became dark and, once again, Athena felt useless as activity buzzed all around her. She was grateful when someone gave her something to carry, or a rope to untie, or a tent post to hold. In a moment of standing still and holding something just to be useful she noted that even Ostri appeared to have a better idea of how to put the camp together than she did.

“You’ll soon learn what needs to be done,” a female Engella said to her. She didn’t ask her name, because she had no expectation of being in the caravan long enough to need to remember it. Finally, with the camp set up, she rejoined Sekardi.

“I meant what I said earlier. I want to come with you when you leave.”

“Why?” Athena asked, “Your life seems… comfortable, with the caravan.” It wasn’t entirely comfortable by Aeseri standards, but there were worse ways to live in the Wasteland, from what Athena had seen. She could never accept the compromise, but Sekardi was not Athena, Goddess of War.

“I didn’t tell you how I came to be here,” Sekardi replied, “Here in the Wastelands.”

“No. I thought you wanted to leave your past behind you so I didn’t ask.”

“True. But you asked about my reasons for wanting to go with you, and they’re linked.” She paused for a second. “Athena: do you remember your parents?”

Athena took a sharp intake of breath. Her parents were not something she had even thought about for centuries. The whole idea of family had disappeared from the Aeseri soon after the Ascension. Athena’s generation were the first, and the last, to be born in the astral plane. Their parents had Ascended, but they had remained mortal. They had lived in Jashard, for a time, and needed no sustenance to maintain their bodies, but they had aged and died nonetheless. Most left children behind them, children that grew to adulthood, and then stopped ageing. That was why all Aeseri appeared to be the same age, and, except for a handful of years here and there, they essentially all were the same age. All children of the generation that had ascended.

“I remember them, but not in detail,” Athena said, and then almost wistfully, “I didn’t realise how short our time together would be back then.”

“None of us did. Our parents were just a tiny part of our lives, just a few decades, compared to the millenia that we’ve lived on our own. I remember mine more for what they did than who they were to me. They served in the government, before the Ascension. They were diplomats to the Jotun.”

“The Jotun? I thought they had severed relations with the Aeseri long before that?”

“They had, and the Aeseri, while we were still mortal, had spent centuries trying to rebuild some kind of relationship. Eventually the Jotun accepted our outreach and my parents went there to live. They told me about it, about how strange it was to be surrounded by beings four or five times their size, and how, if it wasn’t for Elthenian technology, they would never have been able to withstand the gravity on Jotuna.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Well, when the Ascension was imminent, they were called back home. They didn’t want to go, because they said we would need to maintain relations with the Jotun even after Ascending. They returned to Aeseri to make the case for remaining but they were forbidden and all-but imprisoned.”

“Why would anyone not want to Ascend? It gave us near ultimate power.”

“Near being the important words, to my parents. They didn’t believe the talk of becoming gods in any case. They maintained that, even at an advanced age, and, even as mortals, the newly immortal Aeseri Council would need to rebuild relations with the Jotun.”

“Did that ever happen?”

“No, but my parents convinced me of the value of the Jotun. When I was older and became immortal, or thought I had, I left the astral plane, leaving Jashard and my elderly parents, and revealed myself to the Jotun. They didn’t trust me, but when I told them who my parents were they tolerated me staying there. There wasn’t much they could do about it, now that I had all the power the Ascension gave us, but there was no point in being there against their will, not if I wanted to do as my parents had and act as an intermediary between the Jotun and the Aeseri.

“The problem was that I couldn’t be an intermediary because no other Aeseri knew I was there. The Council had explicitly forbidden contact with the Jotun, saying we didn’t need them, they weren’t to be trusted, and they would only try to turn other planets against us. Although how they reconciled that with the concept that we were the gods and nobody could stand against us, I don’t know.

“Still, I remained with the Jotun, and I used power to grow to their size. I was treated as one of them and learned their ways, living in the mountains and learning to read nature.”

“But you were immortal? You could have done anything.”

“This felt important. It was important, or it would have been, had I been allowed to continue.”

“Then what stopped you?” Athena wondered how anything could stop an Aeseri after the Ascension.

“One day another Aeseri appeared on Jotun. They didn’t want to welcome him, but I thought he might become an ally, and with enough allies even the Council would have to change his mind. I knew him as Luca.”

“Lucathar…” Athensa said quietly. Sekardi nodded.

“It was under the guise of friendship, but I see now he had his own reasons for trying to befriend the Jotun. They were right to be distrustful. He never formed the relationship with them I had. It frustrated him, and he only stayed for a few years. I didn’t think anything of it.”

Sekardi looked suddenly wistful.

“But?...”

“But when I returned to Jashard one day I found he bore more of a grudge than I could have suspected. He had informed the Council on what I was doing, and he laid the blame squarely at the feet of my parents. The Council agreed, and they were the only mortals to ever be cast into the Wasteland.”

Sekardi’s eyes began to well. Even after millenia Athena could see the pain was still deep.

“Did you see your parents die?” Sekardi asked Athena.

“Yes. That part I still remember.”

“You were lucky. I never saw mine again.”

The memory of the death of Athena’s parents brought an unexpected twinge of pain, but perversely it had been cause for ceremony at the time. It was a landmark moment for all Aeseri. They were the last generation to die, and they had brought on the Ascension to ensure immortality for their children, and they were honoured as such. Although, Athena thought, putting her fingers to the cut on her forehead, it was not as much immortality as they had thought.

“I never saw my parents again, alive or dead,” Sekardi said, “I didn’t have many followers, just a few small tribes on Earth. The Council converted them to another religion, my power left me, and I, too, found myself in the Wastelands.” She looked around, past the boundaries of the camp and at the dark sky, “I sometimes think they could still be out here. My parents, I mean. Maybe the Wastelands had yet another trick to play. Maybe just as we travel further from Jashard and become mortal, perhaps mortals travel further and have their life prolonged.” She looked down at the ground. “Unlikely, I know. They died thousands of years ago. But I never saw it.”

Athena tried to take it all in. Lucathar had betrayed Sekardi, and her parents. He was the reason both of them were here. That wasn’t unusual: he was probably the reason nearly half the Aeseri were in the Wastelands. Athena herself was responsible for most of the other half, she reflected.

“So you want revenge on Lucathar,” Athena said. Was revenge a good reason to take someone with you? Athena’s reason for fighting was to restore freedom to the universe, which was not the same thing. Although if revenge was served as a side dish, that would be fine.

“It’s been too long for revenge. I don’t want him to get away with it.”

Was there a difference? Athena didn’t know, but she did know that Sekardi, with her long years in the Wasteland, would be an invaluable companion.

“And Aguel knows all this?” she asked Sekardi.

“He’s here for the same reason, more-or-less. He’s here because of me, and I’m here because of Lucathar. He says he’s well past revenge, but I think he won’t be unhappy if we can thwart Lucathar’s plans.”

Athena looked around at the camp. Aguel was talking to one of the Engella and pointing at the perimeter, giving instructions for overnight patrols.

“Is now a good time to ask him?” she said to Sekardi.

“As good a time as any.”

Ostri emerged from the gloom with a grin on his face.

“The organisation of this caravan is very impressive,” he said, “It’s almost as good as our mining operation. Although much simpler and far fewer people are involved.”

Athena smiled at Ostri’s need to brag about the skills of the D’varsha, even out here where they were irrelevant.

“We’re about to go and talk to Aguel,” she told him.

“What about?”

“About Sekardi joining us,” Athena said, nodding at her and realising that Ostri had not even met her Aeseri companion. He looked her up and down.

“Another Aeseri lost in the desert?” he said bluntly, “Would we not be better with an Engella so we had a chance in a fight?”

“With my pathfinding you won’t need to fight,” Sekardi said, unflustered by the aspersion, “Unless, of course, you’re a typical D’varshan and go looking for one.”

Athena wasn’t sure if Ostri was about to erupt in anger, but instead he started laughing.

“Arrogance doesn’t get anyone far out here, so I will assume you’re as good as you say you are for you to have lived this long.” He rubbed his chin for a moment. “Will Aguel let you leave?”

“He will,” Sekardi said quietly.

The two women turned and walked towards Aguel. Ostri shrugged and followed.