Trials

"They're testing us." Dhanur took the arrows from a dead northerner's quiver.

"Isn't that what the spirit said?" Janurana practically bounced as she licked the blood from her fingers after draining another fallen warrior.

"Urgh. No. I mean they're prodding us, seeing our weaknesses, just looking for us. That's why only three came at us. If your warriors start disappearing, you send a party this size to scout and at least triple that to set an ambush. You okay, Abba?"

Brachen was trying to gain as much energy as he could from the sliver of light piercing the canopy. To his dismay, it looked larger than it was compared to the jungle's darkness. "Yes," he wheezed. "Much too old for this gallivanting. You'd think these northerners part wolf seeing so well in the dark."

"Maybe their magic is helping their eyes now." Janurana giggled, lost in her bloody energy though she tried to control her volume as Dhanur glared.

Dhanur then took a slow breath. "Maybe. Never seen them use magic like this though down south. Must be some kind of magic from the land here. I dunno. But they have some Clan Macaque spirits with big eyes for night vision." She lifted the head of the northerner, exposing his clan rhino markings. "If they knew we were around and not some party out past their return time, one of these groups would have had a spirit. They're probably all at their bases or maybe up in Aram."

"How far are we now?" Janurana bounded up to Dhanur's side, then fell back as she was glared down again.

Dhanur scratched her wound and helped Brachen move the bodies off the road as respectfully as they could. "Don't know. But probably a good ways in now, if they didn't move us from the gate. Maybe the fog did all that, dunno. Never seen that though." She got them moving.

"The Light is less powerful than before." Brachen caught up, stopping for a moment in another sun ray to stretch his back. "Night is coming, I believe."

"Great. Probably no dry tinder in a jungle," Dhanur scoffed.

"What are we gonna do?" Janurana asked.

"Go until it's darker. Hope we have a plan by then. Can you see any better yet?"

Janurana sucked her teeth and rubbed her thigh as if the memento patch would be there. The moment she touched her new pants and not it her energy tumbled off a cliff. "No, the same as before. I can still smell and hear as well as ever."

"Then it is some kind of magic or something that's blocking just us. Whatever, smell and hearing is our best option right now." Dhanur had tried to summon Dekha again, but only confirmed that the magic wouldn't work. She sighed. "Blood'll keep you up, right?"

"Yes."

"Then we keep marching, through the night. Drink as much as you can to keep awake."

"Yes, madam warrior." Janurana bowed.

"I'm not a—"

"You're certainly acting like one now." Janurana giggled.

Dhanur raked her hand through her hair and winced when some got caught in a new knick in her gloves. "Now I see why you were so peppy back in the capital."

"The northerners from the inn," Janurana declared proudly, then sighed and shoved the last image of the innocent northerner's silently screaming faces aside.

"Ha!" Dhanur covered her mouth and chastised herself for her volume, despite the battering sounds of far off guars rutting drowning them out. "Bet they tasted like sugar and fruit, huh?"

"Actually, yes. I find the person's diet tends to add a flavor to their blood. It's the only flavor I can enjoy anymore."

'I guess it helped Janurana that you failed to help that northern girl back there,' Dhanur's inner voice would have had a wry smile if it had a face.

Dhanur couldn't help but chuckle at the irony, then winced as if snapping awake. She ran back to her father. "Oh, dark, right. Abba, are you gonna be able to keep walking?"

Brachen was stretching his arms and poked a bent scale on Dhanur's armor. "We shall see, Dhanur. Perhaps my body shall remember its past strength, or maybe the young lady here will carry this old weight."

"And he can shoot off his Light as I run around like some kind of dhanur on a deer." Janurana snickered.

Despite her need to stay quiet, Dhanur couldn't help but give a much needed chuckle to endure the stress of it all.

They made it to the first bend in the path and came to a dead stop. Brachen looked between both his companions, who were straining their senses to tell what was around the corner. Anything behind it would have been perfectly hidden by the bend's rise, topped with drooping foliage like a melting blob of green ice.

"If I was gonna set up an ambush…" Dhanur said to herself. She drew and pointed to the brush on the inside of the bend, and motioned to Janurana with a nod.

Janurana sniffed and focused her hearing on the opposite side of the turn. She shook her head. "Nothing. I do hear running water beyond this corner."

Dhanur put away her arrow. The jungle had begun to calm for the night. "Can't tell if silence is better now or not."

"I for one am parched. Uttara has so many fish to sell, about time we reached a river." Brachen stroked his mustache.

They cautiously came around the bend, Janurana hopping out first as she would be fast enough to dodge the first attack. But there was nothing except the river and the bridge. Once they had turned the corner, Dhanur and Brachen could hear the rushing water as clearly as Janurana. Being wider than the road, the river allowed for the canopy to part, letting in just enough light to illuminate the forest floor and the mist that rose from it. Only about ten cart lengths up and down stream it abruptly turned, cutting off the sun's rays once more.

Brachen gave a gentle sigh and closed his eyes to bask in the Light's warmth, but soon joined Janurana and Dhanur's fascination with the bridge. It was a horrid tangle of vines like those that hung fron the canopy. These, however, had been twisted and tied together, allowed to grow, bark over, and root into each other into the shape of a bridge, forging a perfect order from their chaos. But rather than freeze in shape, the vines continued to grow down, dipping into the water like the pillars of a normal bridge. Hanging moss joined them, leaking off the sides to sway with the billowing breeze, creating a sheer curtain below to cover the underside.

"Great place to hide, under there. I don't like this," Dhanur curled her lips.

"We must continue, no?" Brachen asked, moving forward.

"I don't hear anyone." Janurana pulled her duppata down as she approached the bridge. "How ironic."

"Mm?" Brachen smoothed his mustache.

"You're quite parched and need a blast of the sun, but I cannot cross such a river of my own will. And the sun and I have long been enemies." She shook her fist up.

"Must we carry you?" Brachen asked.

"A bridge usually does the trick."

"You really don't hear or smell anything?" Dhanur was falling behind, looking about.

"No," Janurana said. "As you said, the ones we have seen were only scouts, yes?"

"Right, right." Brachen nodded. "I doubt a trap has been set yet. Come, let us quench our thirsts. Well, I shall." He chuckled to Janurana.

"Abbaji, we should really be quiet." Dhanur was scanning the branches above and observing every bird or monkey moving between them. None swerved to avoid a northern warrior waiting in ambush. She returned her worry to the river. "Wait!" Dhanur said as loud as she dared. She ran to Brachen who was sliding down the river bank and grabbed his collar. With all the strength in her draw arm she yanked her father up like a puppy with its scruff.

Brachen rubbed his throat and tried to regain his breath. "Are you trying to kill me, Zirisa??"

"Pretty easy to poison the river upstream."

"Do you see a school of dead fish?"

Dhanur looked the river up and down. "No, sir…"

"Then we can at least grab a drink." Brachen roughly tore himself from her grasp. "Thank you for thinking of me, Zirisa, but I am not a child."

Dhanur drummed her fingers on her bow, then went to her belt and grimaced at her drink bag not being there. The beer would have been a perfect mid march shot of strength or at least she could let out her nervous energy corking and uncorking it. But she fisted her hands.

'Would have it if Janurana didn't—' she thought but was interrupted.

'If her mother didn't,' her inner voice said.

"Janurana," Dhanur called in a sharp whisper.

"Yes?" The gwomoni eagerly bounded over.

"You really don't hear or smell anything, do you?"

"Only your bandage." Janurana covered her nose.

"Dark." Dhanur turned her arm away.

"Still nothing."

Dhanur furrowed her brow and sighed. "Maybe that's just night here. Loud during the day and quiet at night?"

"That is like the plateau. Perhaps it's like with mother," Janurana whispered. "Perhaps these northern spirits are coming out more at night so the creatures are giving them a wide berth."

While Janurana grinned with excitement at more being between herself and her mother Dhanur scowled. Kunya and the Boar spirit were around during the day and she had put an arrow in one of them.

"Let's just keep moving. Abba?" Dhanur turned, and didn't see Brachen anywhere. "DARK!" she screamed and scratched wildly at her hair. "DARK! DARK! DARK! DOWSING LIGHT LEAVE IT!! ABBAJI!?" She spun in place, panicking.

"Dhanur, calm down." Janurana reached up to grab her shoulder.

"Calm?? He's a Light follower! And Southern! Who knows wha—"

"If they wanted—"

"Why didn't you hear anything! You said there was nothing!"

"You're going to alert whoever that was, Dhanur!" Janurana stepped closer and made sure her posture was as straight as could be, giving the warrior an order. "We can't help him if they catch us too."

Dhanur shook as she couldn't vent her frustration and then ran to the riverbank which was lacking her father's dead body.

"I don't know why I didn't hear anything, and I hear nothing now. Their magic seems to be affecting my sight so it's no surprise it may have affected my hearing." Janurana tried to smell Brachen but got no new trails.

"Dowsin' gwomoni," Dhanur peeked under the hanging moss.

"What??"

"Sh, sh!" Dhanur checked the tree line.

"Oh, so you screech when night is falling but I must do nothing of the sort when you insult me," Janurana scoffed. "Just whisper. I can hear better than you."

"Really?? Now?? My father is—" Dhanur scowled deeper and focused on the riverbank. She could tell where Brachen had kneeled and the scrape from when he seemingly fell forward into the river. There were no corresponding tracks on the other side, or at least none that she could see in the dwindling light.

Janurana looked past her, not getting near the running water. "I don't hear him over there."

Dhanur sucked in any desire to vent her frustrations and just rolled her eyes. "Can you see any tracks?" she whispered loudly.

"No." Janurana matched her volume.

"Smell him, do ya?" she asked, almost like speaking to an animal.

Janurana sniffed again regardless. "No."

Dhanur strained her eyes, struggling to see the riverbed. The water was brackish, full of algae, river scum, plants, fish, and every type of life that could possibly make a living in a stream. Daylight was fading but she could reasonably make out a stone on which a turtle was scraping its shell and a log in which a school of fish hid. No silt had been stirred from a man being dragged down and the river wasn't so deep that he couldn't surface from a moment's swimming.

"Then he's—" Dhanur turned to leave the riverbank.

"In the water. I assume he can swim?"

"He tried to teach me once, yeah." Dhanur bowled past Janurana. She waded off the road, into the brush, and followed the river downstream.

"Maybe a spirit or northern warrior seized him in the river?" Janurana followed went to hike up her sari, forgetting she had changed clothes.

"If he were dead, his body woulda floated up and if some spirit got him under there we'd've seen him blasting some Light before it came for us. Wait, shut up, getting dark." Dhanur slowed her pace to try to be quiet.

Janurana bit her tongue, telling herself that Dhanur only meant such hurtful words since her father had disappeared.

"Are we certain he flowed down river?" she asked.

"No." Dhanur choked on the word. "But it's easier to swim downstream faster so…"

They slogged through the dense undergrowth with its tangled mess of vines, shrubs, saplings, ferns, fronds, bushes and every kind of plant who didn't seem to care that so little light actually reached the forest floor. More than once they had to brave walking along the river because the undergrowth was too dense to pass, Dhanur kept her bow drawn at it the entire time in case whatever grabbed Brachen leapt for them too.

Janurana stayed as far back from the water as she could, but having fed multiple times in a single day, she had more than enough energy to lose some to the running water's proximity. Despite the lack of boot sucking quagmires, tiny streams stuffed with gharials, and hordes of bugs, Janurana felt a pang of nostalgia for her father's swamps. Above, the birds began retiring for the night, their calls fading away with a few monkeys going about their evening business, leaping between trees. One scurried along the branch directly above them, knocking off an overly ripe mangostein which pelted Dhanur right on the head. Luckily, it was soft but she still silently groaned at the annoyance and blunted it by eating the fruit.

Soon though, a horde of flies and butterflies swarmed around her hair. No matter how many times Dhanur swatted, they all came back. She lamented never actually taking her hood back from her father at Vatram's inn.

"Here," Janurana whispered, stopping Dhanur.

Dhanur flinched. "By the Light you're dowsing quiet when you walk… Right. Gwomoni. You've always been that quiet, huh?"

"Mm-hmm, clever how I stayed on Dekha often, eh?" She scooped up a handful of dirt. "Rub this in your hair, it should keep those pests at bay." Janurana went to do it herself, but Dhanur recoiled.

'We've been over this,' Dhanur's inner voice popped up. 'If she wanted to kill you, she would have by now.'

Dhanur relented, but spun around before Janurana was done, following the river again.

"Smell him yet?" she asked.

"No."

"Dowsing great." Dhanur absentmindedly brushed some of the dirt from her hair.

The undergrowth didn't let up. They maneuvered around patches of brambles or climbed over fallen trees nearly as tall as a house even on their sides. Dhanur took a few glances when atop one to see if anything was near, but there was only more undergrowth rustling with the natural ebb and flow of a forest. The jungle was cooling with night nearly upon them so the mist had begun to dissipate, but the darkness was more oppressive. Still, she scrambled down before she could have been noticed by whatever may be among the trees.

There was one sudden flash of northern magic off in the distance. Dhanur heard the clash of bronze and scream of battle as Janurana did and both collapsed to the floor. The undergrowth swallowed them up and they waited for the battle to subside. Neither heard a word of southern, nor did any flash of Brachen's Light illuminate the jungle. Rather, they heard boar's squeal alongside a Kalia's hiss and Janurana finally put together that the scuffle she heard when arriving at Vatram was between the Boar Clan and the other clans.

Dhanur fiddled with her bow as she rose from the blanket of plants, looking side to side, struggling to keep the river in view.

"I still don't smell him." Janurana said, still whispering. "Wait."

Dhanur drew her bow as if the victorious warriors were now charging them. Janurana grabbed her shoulder and pointed down.

A scaled pangolin trundled past them, unperturbed.

"Your people," Janurana chuckled.

"My father's been captured by northerners." Dhanur yanked herself away and continued.

"You're right. That was poorly timed. I was simply trying to— it doesn't matter. I apologize, Dhanur." Janurana gave a quick bow as they walked, then sighed. "Dhanur."

"Too loud," Dhanur whispered.

Silently, Janurana leapt into the air and landed in front of her with a noiseless plop. Dhanur aimed and nearly loosed right in Janurana's mouth before she relented. "That pangolin wasn't worried about us, that means it's seen people."

"Yeah, northern warriors who probably saw you jump like a monster."

"No, it sees people. Every day. If it only witnessed occasional patrols, it would have curled up at us, not carried on like nothing was amiss."

"So, we're close." Dhanur looked side to side. Her fingers twitched.

"I still don't hear or smell a thing. But I would assume so, yes."

"Ugh, northern magic." Dhanur spit then rolled her eyes at Janurana's disgust. "Well, excuse me, gwomoni kumari."

"I just told you we're near an enemy camp and you want to keep fighting me?"

Dhanur scowled.

"Dhanur, I get it. No, I do. Do you truly believe you're the only one who's had to get help from less than appealing sources? I did. I've lived Outside for… I don't even know anymore. I did things I wasn't proud of and got people killed just because I sought companionship!" Janurana brought herself nose to neck with Dhanur, whispering as loud as she dared. "I just told you I killed an innocent northern trader and you laughed it off. Do you know what? She tried to scream for help but couldn't as I sucked the life out of her because I knew that she would die if she tried to get home alone and I needed to eat. But I didn't want to let you help me because I was scared you'd be killed too. And what happened? I think you should say 'thank you, Dekha' for saving us. Saving us from my monster of a mother. But am I a monster because my mother is? No. Am I one because I happen to have the abilities of a gwomoni? I did not ask for this. This does not define me. Plenty of unscrupulous monsters use their power for ill, gwomoni or not. A governor can slaughter their people, but it does not make me the same as them because I am noble myself!"

Dhanur tried to shush Janurana, who had started climbing over a whisper.

"I know we're approaching our foes, and night is upon us and before you knew I could easily toss a warrior like a doll you said we should be open and honest. Well, we're not some young noble woman you can protect and feel you're back with the woman you loved." Despite Dhanur's offended scoff Janurana continued. "We're both in this together, we're going to fight together, we're going to save your father, we're going to speak on this so we can work as efficiently as possible together. So, I'm sorry you have to know I'm a gwomoni. You did the same dowsin'," she mimicked Dhanur, "thing when you thought I was just a noble. Your inner conflict was all over your face thinking I was some gwomoni then. But now I can actually help you without trying to hide just how much I actually can."

'That is true,' Dhanur's inner voice added.

"And why would you want to help me?" Dhanur asked, leaning back.

Janurana counted on her fingers, curling her entire face into a scowl Dhanur had never seen from her before. "Because you had no idea who I was, let me sleep in your home despite your apprehensions, took me to a refuge through the Outside, and now I can work with you to kill the monsters who made me like this, made my mother a malevolent spirit, and ruined my life. In any case, it's partly my fault you're here anyways. If I never showed up then Brachen would have remained atop his mountain and you would have enjoyed your comfortable home. I lost my abbaji and I don't want you to lose yours."

Dhanur let out a long, ragged sigh, took in a breath with practiced ease, and let it out with just as much measurement.

"Okay. Alright, Janurana." She put a hand on Janurana's shoulder and patted it three times, then put her fists together, and bowed. Janurana bowed back, but Dhanur didn't rise.

"I'm sorry?" Janurana blinked, confused.

"It's just a warrior thing." Dhanur blushed. Janurana could see it despite the darkness. "Shows we're comrades, alright? If we're gonna work together like this then, ya know, so go ahead and bow back like, uh, a warrior."

Janurana chuckled and put her fists together. Following Dhanur's lead, they clasped each other's forearms to interlock their connection to each other, with dainty noble fingers rubbing against coarse leather gloves.

"And I'll be sure to retrieve that wonderful ax you gifted me when we return from here," Janurana said.

"It was a pretty great find, huh?" Dhanur turned and motioned for Janurana to follow.