After a half-day of travel through the Dry River riverbed caused the awe-inspiring panorama from the hilltop to seem a thing of the distant past. The glorious explosion of renewed life strangely gave way to the desolation of increasingly water-deprived river: the once-bustling liquid gradually vanished into nothingness. Over the course of the mid-afternoon, the river turned waterless. Further, just the river lost its essence, the lushness of life in the valley likewise succumbed to withering of death. The green hue that enveloped the land adjoining the hill diminished to lifeless yellow, which then transitioned to herbal brown. As the JRB now trudged down the river, they would have cherished a brown landscape dotted with the decomposition of life, but alas, the visible signs of dying transitioned to absence of life. They walked through an absolute wasteland – completely devoid of life.
The absence of joy accompanied the absence of life. The JRB slogged along in absolute misery. The jovialness from fishing or the beauty of the hilltop vista slipped from their minds as they traipsed into the abyss. In less than a day, the group descended from an abundance of life into the lifeless Expanse. The barren land yearned for even a drop of water, which appeared absent for generations. The valley lacked even the tiniest of plants – no thorny shrub, no prickly cacti, no dull-colored flowers, and not even a tiny sprout grew in the valley. With no water and no plants, the valley also lacked any semblance of animal life: no buzzards overhead, no rodents below, and no beetles beneath. Absolutely nothing lived in this forsaken valley. Without water, plant, or animal, an eerie silence permeated their travel. During their travels, the JRB grew accustomed to the sounds to the wild: running water, chirping birds, rustling grass, galloping deer, clicking crickets, or whooshing wind. The last day of travel, however, offered none of these sounds, or any sounds for that matter. Silence screamed from their surroundings, and without the sounds of life buzzing about them, an uncanny emptiness sank upon their presence. The silence eviscerated them; it swallowed their strength and feasted upon their courage. After only one day, the journeyers would welcome even the most horrifying sounds: the scream following the unexpected news of a loved one’s death; the piercing cry from a person whose hoe just punctured his foot; or the final gasp from a prey succumbing to its predator. Yet, silence prevailed, in all its emptiness. The thick hush even absorbed the conversations of the JRB. When someone tried to speak, the voice evaporated into the arroyo of nothingness.
The four travelers slumbered through the valley. One day seemed like a thousand years. The simple beauties of life, and even life’s most oppressing tragedies, felt trapped in an unattainable memory. The Expanse was more than a desolate wasteland; it was far worse than death. The valley exuded the absence of life. Even the greatest horrors of life possess a spark of life, and while those horrors may seem unbearable, at least life exists. Trudging along, unable to link a coherent thought in his heads, Daks muttered a profound realization: “Death is not the opposite of life. Nothing is the opposite of life.” Talon tried to agree but was unable to force the words from his mouth. He tried to nod his head, but once his head nodded down, it refused to come back up When Talon succeeded in wiggling his head back into place, the thought escaped his mind. His mind, once again, drifted into a void.
For two more days, the group plodded along through the waterless riverbed. Saying nothing, they stopped in the evening for camp. Silently, they arose in the morning, and then, continued the trek. Locked within each of their minds, but unable to express into thoughts or words, was a sense of drowning - drowning in the abyss, and as a drowning person instinctively fights the water in an effort to breathe, so also the travelers instinctively traveled onward to escape lifeless prison that now enslaved them. Each step they took, not of their own volition, but because of their smoldering life instinct, an instinct that not even the cursed Expanse could fully extinguish.
They walked; and they walked; and they walked some more. Aimlessly, they traveled down the riverbed. Thoughts of the second challenge or their quest to reach the mouth of Dry River or the light arsenal or the Protectorate never entered their thoughts. They exhibited no concern for the others, yet they stayed together. Not through any sense of camaraderie, but rather, they walked together only because the four individuals instinctually strove for the same place – a place where life existed. The four travelers trudged along systematically. Onward, they continued.
They no longer stopped to drink – empty water bottles dangled from their packs. They picked at their food rations, never more than a bite at a time. Seemingly, on automata and seemingly, devoid of life, they tramped forward. They lumbered onward with no particular destination in mind. As a drowning person seeks only to escape the water and to breathe the much-needed air, so also the travelers instinctively longed to escape the malaise that now enslaved them. Anywhere else would be better, because everywhere else lacked the encompassing nothingness.
A low, steady voice quietly boomed, “What brings you to the Valley of the Disinherited?”
Talon gasped for air. His lungs completely filled with air for the first times in days. The haze of nothingness immediately evaporated. Talon’s lifted his eyes from his empty gaze upon the ground to the face of Rose, his sister. Like him, she gasped instinctually and immediately returned to her senses. As she looked around, Rose turned to Willow and Daks, both of whom experience the return to complete life. Talon turned to join their gazes, and this time, all four travelers stared at one another, not in the absence of thought that dominated their previous three days but in mutual bewilderment at the current situation.
The booming voice interrupted their stares at one another, “I said, what brings you to the Valley of the Disinherited?” The query received no reply. The member of the JRB continued to look blankly, this time at the questioner rather than at each other. Their refusal – or perhaps inability – to answer frustrated the owner the deep voice who once again thundered much louder than before, “Answer me! What brings you to this valley?” Despite the questioner’s escalating infuriation, the four dumbfounded travelers said nothing. Looking at the intently at the thing questioning them, each tried unsuccessfully to say something – anything, but no sound escaped from their lips. While they clinched their mouths, four sets of eyes nearly popped from their respective sockets.
The questioner was not human. Yet, he – at least it seemed more” he” than “she” – spoke like a human.
The thing possessed four legs, and at present, it walked upon all fours as a bear might. The beast – for lack of a better demarcation – crouched as it walked toward the humans, thus disguising the exact length of its long legs. Short fur covered its body, but the pattern and color lacked consistency. Shades of beige, yellow, and orange dominated its exterior, but small splotches of ebony and russet also appeared on the beast. Two asymmetrical auburn stripes ran along each side. A long thin monkey-like tail extended from its backside. The beast’s head rested upon almost non-existent neck. Its head most closely resembled a bison: two short stubby horns extended from the side of its head; its nose extended well beyond the face and sniffed incessantly; two constantly twitching cattish ears poked from atop its head; and its green eyes glistened and appeared to focus upon multiple objects at once.
The image of the most unusually strange beast before them paralyzed the four travelers. Rose finally overcame the grappling effect of fear and managed to lose her tongue, “Our business is our own! Move aside so we may continue.” Talon, despite his current paralysis, immediately noted the irrational nature of her request. While the creature was most certainly the most intimidating thing imaginable, at least their suffocating malaise of non-existence faded in its presence. Talon was unsure of connection between two aspects, but the belief that the creature – in some way – shielded them from the asphyxiating void seemed likely. Further, he preferred disembowelment at the claws of this hideous creature to spending another moment in abyss.
“Feisty girl,” bellowed the creature. “
Answer my question.” The creature arose from its crouched position; it towered over the others. Nearly twice the height of Talon, the creature – by all appearances, a perfectly constructed warrior – glared down at the other four feeblish fiends. Its lean, thick muscles bulged from every limb. A thick shell-like membrane covered its chest, obviously designed to protect the being’s inner organs. A similar membrane covered both of its hands; razor-like nails on each of the four fingers and opposable thumb clicked against one another as the creature repeatedly clinched its hand into a fist. The ferocious creature, after showing the travelers its true appearance, once again asked the question, “What brings you to the Valley of the Disinherited?” The creature’s tone changed from its angry bellow to a whisper as it continued, “Answer me, lest I become impatient.”
Willow, still looking down, respectfully responded, “We come to make right what we have made wrong.”
The beast softened its tone as it retorted, “Say that again, little one.”
Willow craned her head toward the towering creature, stared straight into the being’s face and repeated her answer, “We come to make right what we have made wrong.”
“Well, I did not make anything ‘wrong’,” declared Daks innocently, thrusting his arms into the air dismissively. “I just got dragged into this mess by mistake.”
The creature flashed a glance at the leather-worker apprentice that tacitly declared, “Silence!” Daks obliged. The deep voice again boomed, “What can you ‘make right’ in the Valley of the Disinherited?”
Talon entered the fray, speaking with a quiet confidence, “Valley of the Disinherited? I am afraid our business is elsewhere. We thought this was the Verve Valley, but perhaps we erred in travels. If this is not the Verve Valley, we have no desire to be here.”
“Verve Valley?” answered the creature. “This valley has not been called that since before the Age of Centage. Who enters this valley and calls it a name from another age? Where did you hear that name?”
The four companions glanced fervently at one another in the empty hope that someone might concoct a believable answer. Talon tried to answer but jumbled his thoughts, “We … need to come to this place … and we left in a hurry … saw a mapmaker … this map … came this way … entered the Expanse … it says ‘Verve Valley’ … we came … strange village like ours … the sunrise.” Daks put his head down; he gazed in disbelief at his sixteen-year old companion’s pathetic response. Rose looked away hoping the creature might seek confirmation from someone else. Willow opted for the clueless look as she gazed blankly into the sky. All four knew their charade before this creature was over. Talon’s nonsense invited their doom.
“Show me this map,” demanded the creature. A sigh of relief overcame all four travelers. Daks thought, did that thing believe Talon’s bumbling, nearly incoherent, snippets? If so, its intimidating exterior must connect to a mind made of hairballs. The lanky youth took the map from his bag. Just show him the map and he sees ‘Verve Valley,’ and the story becomes verified, and then everything will be fine. The creature snatched the map from Daks’ puny-by-comparison-hand and immediately un-scrolled it. Holding the map with its hands, the thing stared immediately at their current location. Scrawled in small but legible letters, the map clearly declared their location as “Expanse.” The map also labeled “Dry River,” but no other landmarks were identified. Specifically, the appellation “Verve Valley” did not appear on their depiction of Centage. The creature slung the map to the ground and bellowed once again at the four dumbfounded travelers, “Lie to me no more, you insolent vermin. The map says nothing concerning ‘Verve Valley.’ Yet, you enter this land using that moniker. You learned the name from somewhere other than this map, and you have lied to me. Creatures of this world do not lie to me. So, I ask you once again, how come you use a name not even known in this age?”
Talon’s mind documented their error concerning the map and the valley’s name. After learning the name “Verve Valley” from the Book of Epiphany, the group (more to the point: Talon) never thought to verify that name upon the map. From the ancient document, they knew Dry River ran through the “Verve Valley,” which both resided in the Expanse. When they found the labels “Dry River” and “Expanse,” they (more to the point: Talon) never verified the logical conclusion that the map labeled the valley by its name. At the time, there seemed no need to ensure the same semantic identification in the book and on the map. The landforms on their visual diagram matched their travel, and for the JRB, they decided their course based upon these landforms rather than upon their designations. Besides, thought Talon, numerous names on the map were misidentified. Their map, for instance, referred to their village as “Village #94” – a previously unknown designation to the village’s residents. In addition, from Talon’s village, they could see mountains, but they were called “Distant Peaks” rather than the Blazing Mountains. Talon suspected some names changed during the time between the map’s creation and their present journey. He guessed, however, the discrepancies spanned generations, but he never believed the alterations extended over the ages.
The creature continued to glare down at the four youths. He wanted an answer to his question, and from all appearances, the JRB exhausted his patience with Talon’s inadvertent half-truths. Rose stepped toward to the intimidating creature and boldly answered his query, “As stated, we travel to this place to make right our wrongs. We seek sand from the mouth of Dry River – a river that, according to the Book of Epiphany, runs through the Verve Valley.” She thought of ending her statement with a slight directed at the creature, but instead, she thought the truth possessed enough confrontation.
The creature growled back, “How dare you mention the Book of Epiphany? Who are you to speak of such things? I see nothing but children standing before me – arrogant, insolent, wayward, stupid children.”
Rose, not intimidated by the creature, inched forward and closed the gap between her and the beast. She craned her neck to stare into its hollow eyes, and confidently declared, “Oh, I dared, didn’t I? And what are you going to do about it, you ugly, speckled brutish thug? As for who I am to speak of such things, I am Rose Sunsculptor. I am a sun-sculptor by birth, by name and by trade.” In one fluid motion, Rose slung off her pack, reached into the bag, retrieved the glowing ice axe, and slung the tool upon the ground. The tool landed gently in front of the creature, with one spike stuck in the ground and the handle poking into the air. Rose continued, “Look upon this tool as verification. Now move aside. I travel to make right my wrongs, and you are standing on my path. We need to continue on our journey.”
“I am not moving,” the creature retorted.
Rose quipped, “And I am not turning around.”
“We face an impasse. Neither will relinquish before the other. If you are indeed a sun-sculptor, take your glowing ice axe and strike me. Even a little human girl like you becomes a great warrior with a weapon so powerful. Pick up the weapon and slay me. Long have I lived in this valley, and even longer have I waited for my demise. Death does not frighten little girl. I am not afraid to die, and … I am not afraid to kill. Strike me with the weapon before I strike you. Slay me, if you can, and tell Centage of your conquest. Tell how you bested Laghorn, Friend and Guardian of the Disinherited.”
Rose stepped back from the glowing ice axe lying between Laghorn and herself. The creature glared at Rose; he waited for her response.
Daks, like the other three, closely watched these proceedings. He slowly stepped in front of Talon. In this position, he slid just behind Rose in such a way that the girl now stood directly between Daks and the creature, thus slightly obscuring the towering figure’s vision of the tallest traveler. Making certain to act beyond the purview of Laghorn’s gaze, Daks calmly waited for the right opportunity and then lunged toward the glowing ice axe lying upon the ground. Talon, seeing Daks’ lunge at the weapon, pounced upon the other boy with cat-like reflexes. The sun-sculptor grabbed the back of his friend’s bag
and slung the taller youth to the ground. The boys tumbled one upon the other. The element of surprise, upon which Daks’ ill-fated effort relied, vanished into the melee. Daks struggled to his feet and towered over Talon with a loathing glare; his focus shifted away from the weapon lying between Rose and Laghorn and toward the companion who just scuttled his plan.
“What are you doing?” screamed Daks at Talon.
“What are you doing?” Talon bellowed back. “Our problems will not be solved by weapons.”
Daks snapped, “Well, not now, they won’t.”
Laghorn, who closely followed the exchange and who unbeknownst to either teenager, knew of Daks’ lunge toward the glowing ice axe from the boy’s first twitch. “Silence,” he boomed. He spoke with a sense of authority that required acquiescence to his requests. Talon and Daks snapped to attention and obediently looked toward the hulking beast.
Laghorn glowered into Talon’s eyes and asked, “Why did you stop your companion’s attempt to grab the weapon? I spoke truthfully when I declared that with such a formidable weapon, even the weakest human becomes a great warrior – perhaps even great enough to defeat me.”
“I stopped him,” answered Talon, “because I am a Sunsculptor, and I will not stand idly while someone uses a glowing weapon to harm another being. That glowing ice axe,” Talon pointed to the tool lying upon the ground, “is a tool designed to help people, not hurt them. As a sun-sculptor, I cannot allow the tools made from my hand to devour life.”
“Strange, Sunsculptor, very strange indeed,” responded Laghorn. “I knew many sun-sculptors in the previous age, and I must tell you, they loved war – ‘good for business’ they often say. I saw glowing blades spill enough blood to fill this empty riverbed, and yet, you come tramping through here talking of your ‘opposition to violence.’ Either your companion and you are part of elaborate rouse, or … just not possible.” Laghorn bound his tongue, refusing to vocalize what he could not fathom: sun-sculptors who detest violence.
Laghorn then turned his gaze toward Daks and whispered at the cowering boy, “If your companion had not stopped you, then right now, the Disinherited would be feasting upon your carcass. If your hand had touched the hilt of the ice axe, I would have splayed your innards before your fingers tightened their grip.”
In the blink of eye, Laghorn leapt from his current position to directly in front of Daks. The un-jawed mouth of the creature hung other Daks head; Laghorn’s razor-sharp teeth rested close enough to Daks that small amounts of blood began to drip from his head. The human boy, too frightened to move, experienced a momentary full-body paralysis. With his brief life literally flashing before his eye, Laghorn instantaneously sprung back to his previous position. His body moved faster than the human eye could comprehend. Seeing the creature now back where he started, Daks finally breathed again. Looking down at his pants, the oldest traveler noticed he wet himself.
Laghorn, now standing once again in front of Rose, spoke with less intimidation than before, “Your friend interrupted our conversation. I offered you the chance to slay me with your weapon …”
“It’s a tool, not a weapon,” interrupted Rose.
“So you say,” responded Laghorn. He continued, “I offer you a chance to slay me with your ‘tool’, but you, apparently, refused. And now, after seeing me nearly devour your companion, even the dimmest of humans would not think to attack me now, would they?”
“I was never going to attack you,” quipped Rose. “Why would I want to do that?”
“You spoke of the Book of Epiphany. How do you know of this thing? And who are you to speak of such a thing, Sunsculptor?”
Rose said nothing. In a rare moment, she experienced a loss for words.
“I grow impatient!” growled Laghorn. “Little girl, you want to test my patience, do you? I will ask you one more time, and if you fail to answer my question again, then I will know all I need to know about you. I suggest you answer me, because if you do not, I will leave your presence, and thereby, you will lose the protection my presence provides from the Disinherited. So I ask you one final time, how do you know of the Book of Epiphany?”
Rose believed Laghorn. She looked to her brother, and quietly directed him, “Talon, tell him what you know.”
As Rose glanced toward Talon, she noticed he had already retrieved the book from his bag. He held the double bound, but sliced open, book in his hand and interrupted the conversation between the beast and the girl. Talon spoke boldly, “Laghorn, Friend and Guardian of the Disinherited, we know of the Book of Epiphany because my family has possessed it for many generations. I travel with it now.” Talon extended the book toward Laghorn. He extended the book toward the multi-color brute. Once Laghorn clearly viewed the book, Talon moved it from under his arm in a blatant attempt to show the book, but while shown to the towering creature, the book remained in the possession of the curly-haired youth.
15 DISINHERITED