Last Life

WHILE EVERY VILLAGER looked on curiously, Mongwo and I walked over to his tent. I sensed no aggression from the natives. Just an insatiable interest and astonishment. Honestly though, everyone was trying to keep a safe distance.

Inside the village looked about like I imagined. The Lao tribe’s way of life corresponded to the late stone age. Leather clothing, tools made of bone and stone. No metal, no ceramics...

Based on the large size of their tents, they must have each housed several families. The grown children must have had no reason to leave their father’s house after starting families of their own. Next to one of the tents, I saw a fire with a pile of flat rocks stacked inside.

A step from the fire, a leather bag of water was hanging on a tripod. An old woman in front of it, paying no attention to our arrival, threw hot rocks into the pot-bag straight from the fire one by one. The water in the bag hissed and started to boil. After the stones, she added a few chunks of meat and fruit.

At the entrance to Mongwo’s tent, we were greeted by a young woman and man. I saw a resemblance to the old mage in their facial features. Mongwo’s children or, more likely, grandchildren stared at me wide-eyed. Whereas the young man was slightly spooked, I could read delight and interest in the woman’s face.

On her left forearm she wore a thick leather brace. She must have been one of the archers defending the village from the creatures’ attacks. And she had seen the whooping I gave the giant crab. And thus her attention.

“Mah-ah-ksuh Renard,” the old man said to me, nodding at the young Lao. “This is my granddaughter Salalee and my grandson Toghkwos.”

“Salalee, Toghkwos,” I nodded, pressing my hand to my chest. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Grandfather!” the young archer’s eyes crept up into her forehead. “He knows the true speech just like us!”

“Yes, grandfather,” the young man finally switched on and, raising the tent’s wide flap, added: “Everything is ready.”

“Excellent, Togh!” the old man smiled. “I’m so hungry I could eat a fivehorn!”

A few minutes later, we were sitting with Mongwo and his grandchildren eating an early breakfast in silence, though there was so much food it felt more like lunch.

Lao fare was simple, but tasty. For the most part, their diet consisted of a variety of fruits. Some of them were boiled, and now I knew how. Others were fire roasted. And others still were served raw.

Beyond plant-based food, the pelt laid out on the floor that served as our table also contained meat and fish as well as some elongated shells and large snails.

The Lao also treated me to a slightly fermented sour juice of a dark green shade which Sal poured from an elongated flask into bulbous mollusk shells. The flask itself was made of a dried fruit that looked a lot like a pumpkin.

I joined the feast only after a thorough scan revealed nothing suspicious. Poisoning guests was seemingly not allowed by the Lao code. But that was no reason to let my guard down. And thus I was very cautious with the sour juice that clearly contained alcohol.

After the feast, Mongwo waved a hand to send his grandchildren out of the tent. Though I could read disappointment on their faces. They clearly wanted to stay for the conversation.

When Sal left the tent, I saw a clever smile on her face. And a few moments later, using true vision, I saw her silhouette outside the nearest wall of the tent. A clever girl, she clearly was not going to give up so easily.

“So then, Mah-ah-ksuh Renard,” the old man said, again tripping over my name.

“You can call me just Renard,” I suggested. “We’re friends now.”

The old man gave an open smile and placed a hand to his chest.

“Then you can call me Mong, my friend!”

“Friend!” I repeated, and we shook on it.

“To the east,” the old man pointed behind himself, “live the Tao. To the north — the Rao, and to the south — the Mao. We are all children of Meemeeteh the Great Mother. Where do your people dwell?”

“My people dwell far to the west,” I replied.

“But no one lives in the west,” the old man said in surprise. “Those are the wild lands.”

I had a hard time not smiling.

“My people live beyond the wild lands,” I replied.

“But that is where the lands of the living end!” Mongwo exclaimed, baffled. “There is no life past the Great Bound!”

I saw fear and distrust in his eyes.

“My people live beyond the Great Bound,” I shrugged and smiled. “And as you see, I am not dead.”

The old man grunted, and I heard a muted exclamation outside the tent where Sal was hiding.

“But the Great Bound brings death!”

Hm. Now that was curious. So the barrier also killed the locals. Except for Ghosts... Who like strykers could go in and out of the Shadow.

“As I said before, I’m not so easy to kill,” I again shrugged and smiled.

Mongwo clicked his tongue admiringly and shook his head.

“Now I see how you defeated the earth beetle with such ease, my friend! Because even the Great Bound was not able to kill you! You are a great hunter, Mah-kuh-suh Renard! But why did you leave the lands of your people?”

“Sometimes, the Great Bound snatches parcels of our land,” I replied. “My enemies decided to feed me to it. But they did not know that I was more than it could chew.”

I laughed at that. Mongwo threw up his hands and guffawed loudly. I didn’t know if he was testing me, but he clearly liked what he’d just heard.

While speaking with the old man, I was keeping an eye on his granddaughter’s energy system hidden behind the tent wall. When I scanned it the first time, I saw a faint magic glow in her channels. But now that she was very excited, the magic in her energy system grew more distinct. By the looks of things, the Lao tribe was going to gain another gifted member when she grew up. I wondered if the old man knew about his granddaughter’s faint gift.

“You said the Great Bound swallowed you,” Mongwo continued his interrogation. “But then why are you so far away from it?”

“When the Great Bound swallowed a section of our lands, darkness came over my mind,” I replied. “And by the time it returned to me, I was flying through the sky.”

The old man gasped. His mouth gaped while his eyes glowed with admiration and astonishment. I could tell the shaman of the Lao tribe’s emotions were completely sincere. Listening carefully and hanging on my every word, he appeared several decades younger.

“The cage my enemies put me in was being carried in the tentacles of a massive monster,” I continued.

Picking up a small piece of charred wood from next to the fire, I used it to quickly draw a giant stingray carrying me through the air on a flat stone.

“The Lord of the Heavens,” the old man whispered, stunned, staring wide-eyed at my drawing. “How did you survive?”

“The Lord of the Heavens was attacked by different creatures and had to drop my cage to fight back.”

Then I had to tell him everything that happened to me over the last two days. Though I left out the bruts I harvested then absorbed.

When I told him I saw his gatherers in a glade and decided to follow them, the shaman just nodded in silence but did not look angry.

“I am not surprised that our hunters were unable to detect you,” he said when I was done. “You are a great hunter.”

“No,” I shook my head. “There was one hunter who sensed my presence for a long time. He even tried to ambush me. I had to wait him out several times. It was the only way I could lull his vigilance.”

“Mak’ya,” the old man nodded importantly. He clearly enjoyed the praise. “He is our greatest hunter.”

“Mak’ya has excellent senses,” I confirmed, and the old man smiled in satisfaction.

“Renard, what made you want to tell me all that?” the shaman asked suddenly. “It was after all a risk. What if I didn’t like what I heard?”

“You gave me the clothes off your back, invited me into your home and fed me... You are my friend. I could not insult you with a lie.”

The shaman gave a broad smile. He appreciated that. And I liked him, too. Seemingly, despite the environment, his tribe had held onto concepts such as hospitality and honor. I hoped greatly that I was right about that. In any case, I was prepared for things to take a turn for the nasty.

“What do you intend to do next?” the shaman asked the question I was most anticipating.

“I intend to return home. My friends and family are expecting me.”

Was it just me, or was the shaman somewhat upset by that? I didn’t blame him, though. A hunter who could slay a giant crab so quickly would be a real find for a small tribe like this. And considering that I had clearly killed the crab with magic, the shaman was likely picturing an idealized scenario.

“And what about your enemies?” the old man asked a very smart question. “If they were able to capture a hunter as strong as Mah-ahks Renard, they must be very dangerous and powerful.”

“Right you are, my friend,” I nodded. “That’s why I have to stay in these lands a little while. I have to ready myself for the confrontation.”

Mongwo’s face lit up with a big smile.

“Renard, my friend, please be my guest in the lands of the Lao!” the old mage announced, not hiding his delight.

“Mong, my friend,” I placed a hand on my chest. “I gratefully accept your invitation!”

* * *

It had been five days since I came to live with the Lao tribe. In that time, I was able to learn the basics of life among the natives, though most of them still treated me with caution. But the opinion of the locals didn’t seem to interest Mongwo one bit, and he was the absolute authority for the Lao and letting me stay in his tent.

Sal the shaman’s granddaughter was at my side practically the whole five days. She could speak the witching tongue fluently, despite having a strange accent. And she served as my guide to the tribe’s lands.

As an aside, none of the locals had the foggiest notion of the Shadow or Wing of Strix. The world of the Lao was quite small. The farthest any of their hunters ever ventured was to the gathering of all tribes. For all the so-called children of Meemeeteh the Great Mother. As far as I was aware, Meemeeteh occupied a position somewhere between goddess and legendary first ruler of their people.

At times, Mongwo’s granddaughter’s place was taken by his grandson Togh. But unlike his sister, he was clearly afraid of me and tried to keep our conversations to a minimum. To be fair, I was not the only person he kept his distance from. He clearly had problems with socializing in the tribe.

One evening, Mongwo told me the story of Sal and Togh’s parents dying. That shed a lot of light on his tight-lipped behavior. It was actually surprising how open he was... Because a few years earlier, a river monster which was described as a giant snake, ate his father and mother right in front of him. He had plenty of reasons to not want to talk...

Sal, being a hunter and active participant in tribal life, was mentally more resilient than her little brother. And whereas Togh had a panicked fear of going near the forest or lakeshore, Sal swore by the memory of her ancestors that she would one day kill the creature that ate her parents. Honestly though, she told me that in confidence. And asked me not to tell her grandfather. Mongwo clearly was no big fan of his granddaughter’s warlike ways.

However, the shaman also did not know about Sal’s fledgling gift. He was completely focused on Togh, slowly teaching him everything he knew. I meanwhile could see that becoming a mage was most likely not in the cards for him. I had already spent several days considering how to clue the old man in to his mistake. I was in no rush to tell him directly. Who could say what they thought about seers?

The whole time I was in the Lao village, I was absorbing brown brut mana, using their magic to reinforce my energy channels. Five days of almost constant brown mana absorption had drained the crystal by approximately one percent, two at most. The crystal I extracted from the crab was a truly bottomless well of mana. Though it was hard to expect anything else with my frail energy system.

As an aside, the natives took the crabs, or earth beetles as they called them, and dragged their bodies into the woods for scavengers. When I asked why they didn’t eat the crustaceans’ meat, the shaman replied with blatant disgust that the Lao were forbidden from consuming earth beetles. Like a taboo or something. I was not planning to impose my own values on their belief system, so I didn’t ask any more questions.

But the fish I pulled up on shore while swimming on day one was cause for celebration in the tribe. However, Mongwo and I knew how the fish died, so we concluded that it was better not to risk eating it and also left it in the forest for scavengers. And in the end, we were right. The wood toad poison was apparently so strong that it saturated the fish’s tissues. No scavengers ever even touched that “sacrifice.”

On that day, I saw astonishment and distrust in most of the Lao people’s eyes. After all, when I first spoke to them, my body was coated in that same poison.

While I spent the first few days getting to know the settlement and surrounding area with Sal’s help, by day six I expressed a desire to go out on a hunt with Mak’ya, whose group I had followed to the Lao village.

On Mongwo’s request, I did not tell the Lao tribe’s greatest hunter how I got there, otherwise Mak’ya, or Mak as everyone called him, might have taken it the wrong way and gotten mad.

Mak accepted me into the group after a long conversation with the shaman but looked dubious. I figured he just didn’t want to take on any additional responsibilities. An outsider was one thing. If an outsider died on the hunt, that was their own fault. But I was being sent out with my personal translator. And the shaman’s granddaughter had to be watched like a hawk. And so, Mak had a sour look on his face the whole way to the glade where they gathered parasitic mushrooms.

At first, I thought we were going back where I came from, but Mak led the group to the northeast. Based on the wide and well-trodden path, it was a popular route for the Lao and most likely less dangerous.

I immediately figured out the chief hunter’s scheme. He chose this route specifically because of us, or rather because of Sal. She was also aware of that and at first wanted to tell Mak exactly what she thought of him, but I cautioned her against such a rash move. And it was no easy task. Her pride as a hunter had been wounded. And all the quizzical looks from the rest of the group only added fuel to the fire.

While on a break, sitting and examining the razor-sharp stone tip of my spear, I overheard Sal grumbling angrily at the commander. I wondered what he would say if he could understand witching? She clearly got carried away spouting off insults.

“Look at it from his perspective, Sal,” I came calmly right when she sighed and fell silent.

Setting the spear aside, I took a stone knife from a leather case and examined it.

“I am a hunter, not a child!” she came, fists clenched. “He is leading us to Yellow Glade because of me! And everyone knows it is a place where even children can run free! I went there myself many times as a child to look for stones of power.”

I had a hard time holding back a snicker. To me, she was still a child.

“Look at it from a different perspective,” I said, twirling the knife in my fingers to test the balance.

Watching me captivated, Sal asked:

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean what do I mean? The shaman’s granddaughter spending time with an outsider... I think it has more to do with me being in the group. He doesn’t trust me. See how the other hunters are behaving? There are always two or three of them around me. Mak is a good commander. He takes care of you and the others. It would have been pure foolishness on his part to take the hunt somewhere dangerous with an outsider. He made the right choice. This way, he can do some hunting without going against your grandfather’s wishes. As a matter of fact, if I were in his place, I’m not sure I would have agreed to this crazy venture.”

Sal frowned and looked at the hunting party with new eyes.

“You are right,” she said after a brief pause in a calmer voice. “I never should have called him a blue worm.”

“That’s for sure,” I chuckled. “Now, when it comes to harvest... If you want to stick it to Mak, make a bet with him.”

“What kind of bet?” she immediately lit up with excitement.

“That me and you will harvest more stones of power than the other six put together.”

“You sure?” she frowned. “They are the Lao tribe’s best hunters. They work very fast.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” I winked. “Or are you scared?”

Sal shuddered and, raising her chin, raced over to Mak sitting on a log a few steps away from us and very casually shooting me sidelong glances.

After a short conversation with the commander, Sal walked back to me while the other hunters looked on jeeringly. Her arms started quivering in anxiety.

“They accept the challenge,” she told me. “I hope we don’t become the village laughingstock after this.”

I just chuckled and looked over at Mak. We met eyes. I could see the Lao tribe’s top hunter asking himself some questions: “Who are you really? And what do you want?” He clearly did not trust me. Head tilted to one side, I smiled openly and nodded, which only embarrassed him.

We reached the glade with parasitic mushrooms stuck to the trees by midday.

“Ah!” I said, delighted by the abundance of emerald growths. There were much more than in the glade where I first encountered the natives.

“It’s a good crop this year, praise the Great Mother!” Sal smiled.

Mak walked over and said something. The shaman’s granddaughter then translated:

“He says we should call off the foolish wager. He does not want people in the village to laugh at me.”

“Tell him we appreciate the gesture. We would also like to call off the wager because we’re afraid all the Lao will be making fun of their greatest hunters.”

After hearing the translation, Mak snorted and smiled for the first time all day. I should note that Sal’s voice was slightly shaky, but she didn’t let me down.

Mak uttered a short phrase and pointed at the trees.

“He wants to let us pick the first tree. They will give us a little head start.”

I shrugged.

“Hey, why not? It’s not going to save them.”

Mak just shook his head when he heard the translation.

Paying him no more attention, I headed toward a group of young trees with a high density of the parasitic mushrooms on their trunks.

“Renard! Where are you going?!”

I heard slight confusion in Sal’s voice.

“What do you mean?” I asked in surprise. “We choose these trees.”

“But they’re young,” she said, clearly disappointed. “Everyone knows it’s the oldest trees you want to pick...”

The shaman’s granddaughter was clearly already regretting agreeing to my idea. A few times she even turned to find the hunters smirking and mocking us openly.

“Trust me,” I said with a conspiratorial wink, walking over to the very youngest tree. Then, taking out my knife, I quickly cut down the large mushroom closest to me and, in one fluid motion, extracted our first brut the size of a small pea while Sal looked on stunned.

“But...” she tried to say something. I interrupted.

“Now your turn. No, not that one... Over there.”

I pointed her to a mushroom hanging over her head an outstretched arm’s length away.

Sal cut the mushroom down and, hands quavering, extracted an emerald crystal.

“Now that one,” I nodded at another growth. “And after that, go for that one.”

Looking on as Sal’s face stretched out, her hands shivering with the anxiety and excitement that overcame her, she harvested her third brut while I asked with a smile:

“Well? Still think we’re going to lose?”