“In retrospection, I see a flooded forest, trees jutting out of the green mirror. A frozen in time serenity. Yet, my notes talk about the dread and horror of this paradise.”

“Beyond Yr”

Chapter 1, Page 3

Kuravel

Perkins

The Tusk jutted above treetops. Some of his bandit companions called it the Lone Ridge, it didn’t classify as a mountain, though Perkins couldn’t tell what the criteria were. Folks had their ways. The Tusk was sharp but not higher than five times the highest tree next to it. Maybe it’s stood taller in the past. Who could say? Perkins knew the Imperial Pantheon well enough to be aware of the changes and shifts in the world when the Imperial Pantheon’s gods were at war. Believing in it was a different matter altogether. Every companion in Butcher’s band believed in something. Every folk had its way through life. A belief was a part of survival. Perkins had experienced it first-hand when he hadn’t been one of Butcher’s people. Before Perkins was Perkins. Yet, the belief was a good thing to carry you forward. He’s lost his, somewhere along this road of banditry. The forest is all I need. Perkins made his way down slowly, Haruna trees were one of the tallest, but proved slippery in the worst possible moments and Perkins couldn’t allow himself to fall around Siddy who might have another change of heart and attack him. He landed with a soft ‘thump’ as the ground was covered by a thick carpet of dead leaves. Siddy ostentatiously played with his knife, while watching the girl. There was a trace of a smile in the way he eyed her. The girl was on a brink of panic. They gaged her tightly to ensure no unwanted sounds came out of here, especially now. Emm was gone out scouting again. So close to the Silent Falls they couldn’t make a mistake. If any band was at the Falls then they had sentries and traps all over the place. Unless, they were short on time, and of course, no sentries would remain after the sun dipped under the horizon. Still, they had to mind traps left behind, either by the band that Emm found traces or some other band that could’ve found its way to the Falls in the past. The Falls was a place that was fairly known, but not fairly popular because of its close location to the Chasm. Folk’s stories babbled about monsters coming out of the Chasm in the dark. Monster or not, staying in the jungle during the night was a death wish. It was possible to survive, as they did the last night, but more often than not it was death. The death walked the night. The saying went.

“Gather things,” Perkins said watching colorful leaves, surrounding them. Some were as deadly as the night was. He knew them. Once he’d been a tribe’s healer. He’d known himself under a different name back then – Thatal. It felt like a lifetime ago. Perkins had known every tree, bark, grass, animal, and stone in whereabouts of his village. That knowledge has killed Thatal and has given birth to Perkins.

Perkins heard something.

He unsheathed a machete, while a spear or a sword were better for fighting people they did poorly against the jungle. He glanced at the girl, she still eyed Siddy. “You will follow me, quietly.” He added weight to the last word. He couldn’t leave them alone. One should never trust someone like Siddy.

A liquid dripped slowly from large palm leaves. At the first sight, it looked to be ordinary moisture, Perkins knew better. These sleek-looking palm leaves belonged to a bitterhoney palm, it posed no threat unless you drank the liquid. It possessed unique and extremely addictive properties. Animals addicted to it would stay by the palm until they starve to death. Such a cruel way, but this was the way of the forest. He hacked their way through the palms with almost silent slashes. Not many people could chop bush without a sound. Emm came close. Perkins continued wading through the bush, chopping and slicing ivy leaves, bird roots, heart plants, snakeling trees, and countless others. Behind him leaves rustled and branches snapped. The girl made more noise than a band of twenty men. Perkins slowed when the ground started slanting down. As they advanced, the green ceiling rose higher and fewer beams of light made it to the bottom of the forest. The Silent Falls was a strange place, where trees grew higher, but the ground was significantly lower, nullifying the difference. How much of that was a chance Perkins had no idea. An hour passed, and Perkins felt like a bait on a hook with all the noises the girl has managed to make. Whatever he’d heard before hasn’t happened again.

He glanced at Siddy, giving him a sign to draw his sword, machete wouldn’t do much good. If they were outnumbered, then the sword wouldn’t make a difference too. Siddy put the bags on the ground, slowly, to not make sounds, then drew closer to Perkins, on his way forcing the girl to sit.

“If there is anyone out there, they know,” Perkins whispered. Siddy nodded and a smile bloomed on his face. The bandit pretended to enjoy this, but in the truth, Siddy would be the first to run away.

Perkins drew his own sword, carefully fastening machete to his belt. As soon as the girl sensed the mood she started trembling like a leaf. Perking whipped his head around, searching. From all sides, rich green walls pressed against them.

“Shut up,” Siddy snarled at the girl. Perkins felt tension grow dangerously up. Siddy was slowly losing the nerve and was on the verge of recoil, and he worried that the girl would be caught in an outburst.

Emm appeared out of blue in the middle of them. Siddy blinked, perhaps trying to decide if he should have stuck the sword through the scout. Eventually, Siddy lowered his sword. Perkins wasn’t so quick with his blade. We’re so close. We can’t lose our cool now.

Emm’s hard eyes told Perkins that he might not like what he was about to hear, and indeed he did not. “Whoever has left the trace is gone. Judging by the rubbish they’ve left behind, I can say that it was a band from the northeast. Far beyond the Uccan River.” No. Impossible. They came earlier, why? They must have had a reason.

“How do you know it?”

“They used Tota grass to wrap their food. The climate on this side of the Uccan River is too wet to allow this plant to grow uncultivated and buying it doesn’t make sense when we have abundant Lake Algae.”

Perkins’s face turned to a stone. How could this kid know this already? Emm’s origin wasn’t known to Perkins so there could a good chance the young scout came from the far northeast.

“What now?” Siddy asked.

“It looks like they did not stay at the hideout,” he said, “I went inside to check and … there are other belongings left. But they are someone else’s. I don’t know what to make of it.” So, someone else made its way to the Silent Falls? What in the name of the forest is going on there?

Emm

Emm grimaced, hearing how much noise the rest made. He was fairly sure that no bandits have remained around the Falls but the things in the hideout worried him to no end. They belonged to someone who didn’t live in the jungle. How could someone come such a long way from another region without preparation? It was incomprehensible.

He lowered his body almost putting his head between knees. Twenty feet ahead lay the first Silent Hollow, not large this one, merely five feet across, though as deep as others. Silent Hollows cropped in all directions around the Tusk in a radius of five hundred paces. What lay at the bottom, if there was any, was a mystery. A stone dropped made no noise. The Silent Falls was a basin with fifteen Silent Hollows of varying sizes. The smallest one was three feet wide while the largest one, which lay at the feet of the Tusk, seemed to be around twenty paces across. Who’s made these bottomless holes was unknown. Emm’s tribe believed that the Silent Hollows were the gates to the underworld. The freezing-cold air that blew out of them, made it easy to come to such a conclusion. No other place in the Fifth Region possessed anything similar to the Silent Falls. Most bandits cared nothing about the origin of this area. Emm believed that the forest itself has built the Silent Falls, though the young scout couldn’t decipher the goal behind it.

He waited until the rest caught up. Watching cracked branches and plucked leaves, Emm stifled a grimace. More than anything he had learned to keep his emotion toned down during the moments like this. Butcher’s band was an unpredictable gathering with idiots who started a fight because of a wrong expression. Emm didn’t blame Perkins for his decision to leave. Bandit’s life wasn’t Emm’s calling either. This life wasn’t of his choice. Butcher’s taken something that belonged to Emm. It’d tied the young scout to the bandits for years. It was time to get it back and move on.

Emm warned Perkins about the Silent Hollow and waved him to follow a new path. Where Perkins and Siddy would simply chop their way through the bush, especially dangerous one, Emm would simply avoid such places, finding easier passages. The ground close to the Silent Hollows had very little green foliage, plants did not like a cold breeze that escaped the Hollows. Some believed that staying for too long near the rim of the Silent Hollow could freeze a man to death. It was hard to imagine, dying from the low temperature in the Fifth Region.

“The dead walk underground, trapped in an everlasting chill.” Emm shivered. This had been the first phrase his mother had told him about the Silent Falls. And to think that it was nothing in comparison to the Chasm of Ethnea, made Emm very humble.

He passed the Hollow ten feet to his left. This side seemed to have more trees, but fewer thickets. Emm moved like a river in a riverbed, always flowing around, bending where necessary and press lightly if acceptable, but without a lasting consequence.

Snap.

He froze. The sound did not come from behind. It came somewhere from the right, not more than thirty feet. He peered between the tall and lean trunks of the trees that soaked sunrays more than a hundred feet above his head. A rustle made his hair stand on end. Another snap was lauder. Whatever was there it was coming his way. Behind him Perkins stopped, the bandit gripped the hilt of the sword the moment he saw Emm’s face. It was the girl Emm worried about, not about her safety, but her clumsiness. She could give them away. She’s going to… Emm half-turned to Perkins when a slender shape appeared in front of them. Perkins was fast, Emm was faster. The scout thrust the sword right into the body of an unfortunate animal. It made a long wailing sound, thrashing about. Anyone in a radius of three hundred paces could hear it. Their position was compromised. Emm knew that the bandits who had left the traces have been long gone, but the mysterious owner of the things in the hideout could be anywhere. It unsettled the young scout greatly. Emm deduced that the things couldn’t belong to more than one person and not many lone travelers traversed the jungle and lived. There were madmen and Royalbloods who were many times stronger and faster than the average person. Though Butcher was one, Emm hasn’t seen the boss to ever venture the jungle alone. Some tribes believed in the Sacred Hunters, but Emm couldn’t imagine a mythological figure to walk around the forest with clothes and food that came from a different region. The Sacred Hunters were meant to be sent be the forest itself to right the wrong. It’s not the right time to think of the legends. He forced the chilly thoughts out of his head and focused on the task at hand. He meant to end the trashing, but Perkins already took care of that. The healer sometimes has shown a gleam of respect for the forest. Emm nodded briefly. The animal turned to be a deer. They were common around the Silent Falls. The air here was colder than anywhere in the rainforest.

“We can’t leave it here,” Emm whispered, peering around. “If someone comes to investigate the noises…”

Siddy nodded in agreement, but Perkins only stared at the animal.

“Too much hassle,” the healer finally said. Indeed, their time was running out. He could not see the sun, but it had to be halfway down to the horizon. The entrance to the hideout was not far away, yet they couldn’t afford to hurry. Not here, not now.

“The body won’t last long after sunset,” Siddy added. “Why not cut a piece for ourselves?”

“No,” Perkins simply replied, shooting glances at the ceiling made of branches and leaves.

Emm could see shadows already creeping in. “We should go then,” Emm whispered, trying to listen for anything. The Silent Falls was a dangerous place. Eventually, they moved out, leaving the body of the deer behind. The girls squealed and Siddy had to carry her for twenty paces because she refused to get close to the killed animal. Forest Gods forgive them. Hopefully, their ignorance wouldn’t kill them. Yet, hope was in a short supply in the forest. The forest mocked those who came to conquer it. Emm slowed down, carefully balancing his steps against the thick carpet of leaves and exposed roots. Traces of the band he found lay north from here, not far away, but he knew they would not cross them. His attention was somewhere else. He couldn’t find any trace of the owner of belongings in the cave. Unfortunately, the timing worked against them. The sun was racing down, and the shadows gathered. Emm worried that their current pace would get them to the hideout shortly before sunset. Whoever occupied the cave would either be already there, or they would meet the man. These thoughts occupied Emm’s mind and the moment of distraction almost cost his life when a cold air did not give a sufficient warning and Emm stopped on the edge of the Silent Hollow. A cold draft made his skin shiver as much as a bottomless, black void—

Something hit him in the back and Emm tumbled forward, as he fell he clawed at anything he could but his fingers raked only the cold air. Whirling, he fell to meet his end… and then something brutally jerked his trousers, arresting his fall. Impossible. What’s going on? The moment extended as he stared at the blackness yawning below. Then he looked up to figure out what stopped him.

An ornamented piece of wood pinned his trousers to the hard wall of the Silent Hollow. The coldness that assaulted him made him question if it had been the act of mercy or a way to prolonge his death. Wait … this is man-made. Someone must have thrown it… For now, the issue was to get out of here. Only then, Emm would bother with asking the question of who had thrown it. He got a better look around. The walls of the Hollow were full of roots, but getting out of here seemed like a challenge as there were about thirty feet between him and the freedom.

Calls came from above, then the faces of two bandits appeared above the edge. They considered him with calculating eyes, then exchanged some sharp words and Perkins withdrew, leaving smiling Siddy. From his vantage point, the bandit couldn’t see what saved Emm. They weren’t alone here.