Chapter 26: Sky Mountain – part 14

D’Argen woke to the sound of soft laughter. He shifted, only to realize that he was lying down instead of sitting up over Lilian as he had fallen asleep again. He felt around but Lilian was nowhere within reach.

“He is awake!” that was Yaling’s voice with laughter still tinging it softly.

“Here,” Abbot’s voice came from close beside him.

D’Argen smelled tobacco in the clear air. He leaned closer to the other man but instead of the pipe of tobacco, he had a wooden bowl thrust in his hands. “Drink this.”

“Ugh!” D’Argen groaned. It smelled even worse than it had the previous night. He trusted Lilian not to poison him though and obediently consumed the horrible concoction.

“I am sorry,” Abbot spoke quietly beside him.

“For making me drink this shit? You should be!”

“I meant for your eyes.”

“We went over this,” D’Argen started with a grimace. “We’re good.” He finished the horrible tea and almost gagged on it on the last gulp. Keeping it down was hard. Feeling it sloshing around in his usually empty stomach was making it even worse.

Instead of focusing on that, he reached for his blindfold. It had gotten loose in his sleep, and it easily slipped off now with only a single tug. He squinted his eyes open and the sharp stab of light only made him more nauseous. There was, however, a bright light to the left. He turned to face it and felt the warmth of the fire.

It was only when he registered that warmth that he realize how cold it was. Had Thar stopped using his mahee to keep the cold at bay?

“Where is Lilian?” he asked.

“You slept pretty deep. Whatever Lilian gave you knocked you out for the entire night. Solid.” Abbot answered. “Lilian says you should be good by tonight. Your mahee was churning all night in healing you. Yaling stayed up with me to talk so you can consume.”

“You didn’t get any sleep?”

“We will get some when Thar and Lilian return.”

D’Argen felt his throat tighten and his heartbeat pick up. “Where are Thar and Lilian?”

“Lilian wanted to go back down. They had a theory on what was causing… well, everything we experienced.”

“And you let them go?!”

“First of all, I am not Lilian’s keeper or jailer. They know what they are doing and, even if I wanted to, I could not stop them. We both know that. Second of all… Thar went with them. We now know that his scent is what kept him from falling asleep like us and he replenished enough to keep both him and Lilian safe.”

“We are still not sure why you did not fall under whatever magic is here, by the way,” Yaling added in.

“But… I did,” D’Argen replied, focusing on that instead of the itch inside him that begged him to go running after Lilian and Thar.

“Yes, but not like us. You were hearing things as well, but maybe, me blinding you is what kept you from seeing things.” Abbot was sketching as he spoke, the sound of chalk on paper quiet under the cracking wood and howling wind.

“Oh no, I was seeing things, definitely. Which reminds me, you said mimic demons—?”

“Hold on!” Yaling interrupted with a snap. After a moment of silence, she released a heavy breath. “Nevermind. You were saying?”

“What was that?” D’Argen asked instead.

“Yaling is listening in on them, just in case they need help,” Abbot answered.

D’Argen’s heart was still beating too fast but he did feel a little calmer. “Does Thar have my sword?”

“Yes,” Abbot confirmed. “How are you? Are you cold?”

“What? Oh… umm… yes?”

“I felt your mahee earlier, it is focused on your eyes rather than keeping you warm. The bear skin is helping.”

D’Argen gagged and almost threw up the tea he had just drank when he remembered he was covered in the untreated fur. He held it. Barely. A burp escaped him instead and Abbot laughed.

“Shh… hold on…” Yaling hissed at them from the left. “They are coming back. All is good.”

A moment later, D’Argen heard footsteps crunching in the snow. He dared to face in that direction. Thar, who wore all white, was indistinguishable from the background. Lilian, however, was a short dark shape moving closer to the fire.

“They are not clouds,” Lilian said apropos of nothing.

“What do you mean?” Yaling was the one to ask.

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“Not… not fully. I just checked again when we went looking down and it is not clouds in the sense of the weather. They look different too.”

“Please explain to those of us who can’t see what you’re talking about.”

Lilian moved closer to him until they were sitting right beside him again. D’Argen opened up the bear fur and Lilian immediately stuck to his side. He closed it around them both. A moment later, the cold wind calmed. Abbot’s faint scent disappeared as Thar’s mahee took over, keeping the fire blazing hot even as he controlled the cold to stay away. The fact that he could do both, even with his mahee chained down and limited, was a sign that he was still stronger than everybody else on the mountain. Probably even combined.

“We found a fungi. A type of… mushroom, I think. I have not seen anything like it before.” Lilian started speaking in a halting tone, their voice soft and tentative. It has been a very long time since D’Argen had heard them sound so unsure. Especially about plants.

“A magic mushroom caused us to see things?” D’Argen scoffed out, unable to keep the doubt out of his voice and hoping his tone alone would make Lilian snap at him or at least laugh.

Lilian grabbed at the strap of his armguard and tugged gently two times. D’Argen closed his mouth and let his grin drop.

“It is nocturnal,” Lilian continued to speak. “We saw it unfurl and it released spores into the air. It looked like mist.”

“So… the clouds are… mushroom mist?” It was hard to keep the incredulity out of his voice but he did his best.

Lilian reprimanded him with an elbow in his side then said, “Not all of it. Some of it is natural. But enough of the spores must be around and in the air to make it so bad.”

“And it releases more when destroyed,” Thar added in.

“And this… mushroom… is what made us see things?”

“And hear,” Abbot tacked onto his question.

“I have to take some, to study it, but yes, I believe so. There are no demons on this mountain. Not… not what we know of demons.”

“What do you mean?” D’Argen asked softly.

Lilian shook their head so quickly that D’Argen felt the motion all the way down the length of his body to his feet. The motion was too reminiscent of their earlier seizure but it stopped before the panic set in.

“Lilian,” he whispered and leaned closer to them. “We’ve talked about this. No holding it in.”

“Not now. Please.” Lilian’s voice sounded like it was breaking. “We will talk about it later.”

D’Argen’s heart felt much the same.

The last time Lilian sounded like this was shortly after their fall. They were in a dark space, trapped in their mind. It was the first time D’Argen had ever seen a Never Born come so close to harming another one.

The mahee, the one thing that all of them had inside them and that connected them all as one, recognized itself in the others. It made it impossible for a Never Born to harm another one. Sometimes, it even made it impossible to think of it. It also made it impossible for a Never Born to harm themselves. It was like a law in the nature of all magic and what they were. It was why D’Argen saw thick black silhouettes of the other Never Born – something he could not run through – when he opened his mahee completely.

Lilian came too close to breaking that one law.

And while every Never Born knew of Lilian’s dark moods and both Yaling and Abbot had seen them through multiple depressive episodes, they had not experienced it how D’Argen had. None of them were there when Lilian used their mahee so completely that barely a sliver of it was left. When they fell with a scream of pain and the churning mahee inside them slowed to a complete stop. When their eyes rolled back and they fell unconscious. No, they only knew that the summer storm Lilian created spread the seeds of the Life Crops in the southern peninsula so far apart that most of the land was now covered in rainbow flowers.

D’Argen suddenly stiffened when he remembered the anger coursing through him as he raised his hand at Abbot. He stopped. It was going to be a slap – a reprimand – but it was an act of violence against another Never Born. Against the mahee. And his body not only followed through on the action but there was no tug inside him telling him to stop. He had stopped it himself, knowing that it was wrong and—

“Wolves,” Lilian finally said, interrupting his musings. “I think Thar and I were surrounded by wolves earlier. This is a natural habitat for them.”

“Well… we did see the wolves here,” Abbot said.

D’Argen was not sure what they had done to the wolves’ bodies though he was sure their blood was already covered by fresh snow. Hopefully, their fur was not taken for another ill attempt at keeping them all warm. D’Argen fingered the edge of the bear fur over him. It was a little softer and a little shorter than a wolf’s fur.

“And maybe… maybe wolves surrounded us too? Earlier?” Abbot sounded unsure.

“I am not sure,” Yaling confirmed his tone. “Thar? You said you and Lilian were actually fighting something, right? Like, it attacked you and hurt you?”

Thar did not reply verbally but D’Argen was looking in his direction. Even though he could not make out the man’s features, his head was moving in a slow up and down motion. D’Argen plucked a few strands of fur out and then brushed his fingers so they would not stick to his skin.

“For us two, it was not the same,” Yaling continued, motioning a hand between her and Abbot.

“I have a theory,” Lilian finally joined the conversation again.

“Let’s hear it,” D’Argen immediately prompted and nudged them lightly. “Abbot’s earlier theories were absolutely ridiculous.”

“Hey! I did say it was possibly a plant or something!”

“Uh-huh.”

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