Beyond the Sandsea: Chapter 1

“Five and a half nights’ flight to the southeast, beyond the Great Sand, our scouts report seeing white spires cross the moon, like jagged claws reaching for the sky. They say it is a beast of old, the greatest denizen of the Greatest Water, risen from the sand to reclaim its kingdom.”

“I have never been one for myths and superstition,” Tessellata rumbled, leaning back into the Alabaster Throne. “Still, our virare must be mapped out someday, and I would make peace with the monster before flying straight to war.”

“But who would you bid send on this duty? Helvus? Aurantia?"

"My son is overseeing the theurgists' rites for the new tower. Aurantia and her underlings-- tytos, she calls them now?-- are busy, putting down an 'incident' to the north. And Nokt knows none of you jitter-rats would ever volunteer." 

The council of lavishly-dressed Kteinein looked away and mumbled excuses among themselves. Only one face remained unturned: the sharp-snouted Rikarisk who had been ferrying wine and canapés between the talking heads.

“Parvus,” the Eald of Ealds said, and the whelp snapped his head up at once. “You have sat and listened and mused. What say you of the matter?"

“I think the scouts’ve been out in the sun too long,” he said, mindful of the blade-tails’ offended gasps and tutting, “there couldn’t be a beast that big out there. What would it eat?”

“You are a bold one, cub,” Tessellata replied. “I am inclined to agree, but none of my ealds would dare soil their fur on this quest. How fare you on a stryx?”

“As well as any other Rikarisk.” That was to say, he was pretty sure he’d learned to hold the reins before he’d learned to walk.

“Excellent. Speak to my armicustos,” the largest, deadliest-looking Kteinein Parvus had ever seen bowed her head, “and requisition ten days’ worth of supplies for your journey. I shall await your report with great anticipation. Dismissed.”

*

In the days before Sicitur, Audacia had been a deadly place. Towns and arare were days apart at minimum, unaware of the others’ very existence, and routes between them were a gamble: changing with the dunes, fraught with skorpions and elf-lions and wild stryx. Slowly, surely, Tessellata’s cartographers were filling in the gaps, and Aurantia’s newly trained mounted warriors, the tytos, were clearing the way. But the area past that empty desert, the place the Kteinein called the Great Sand and the Rikarisk called the Sandsea? That had never been explored or mapped before today. 

Parvus had his pick of his werreken's flock to aid him on his mission, but his folk liked to travel light, and these stryx were too small, too high-strung, too likely to tire out and doom them both. Well, that narrowed it down to just one bird: a golden-plumed old-timer who hadn't been saddled in years. 

Veleda had been lead flyer to his werreken since before he was born, and, if rumours were to be believed, before his mother and her mother too. Her beak was chipped, she was missing one of her toes, and sometimes she would drool deadly acid that sizzled on the ground where it hit. But no matter how long or cold the night, she was always the first up and last out of the air, her broad wings keeping her aloft with barely a flap. But the question remained: would she still take to saddle after all this time?

Clutching her worn old tack in his paws, Parvus strode through the flock as they sat preening or sleeping with one leg drawn up. A few of them leaned in to nibble at his ears, and his own favored flyer hopped up to him, but he mumbled an apology and brushed past her. There, in the revered center of the throng, stood Veleda, tearing up bits of unidentified animal and swallowing them whole. As he approached her, averting his eyes in respect, she paused mid-scarf and stared him down, amber eyes unblinking.

“I need your help,” he said, holding the saddle and reins up to her. Behind him, he heard a few of the other Rikarisk scoff. Who was this cub, to dare approach the flock’s oldest flyer? He felt the great heat that radiated from her body as she leaned her head in, nudged the saddle with her beak, as if drinking in its long-forgotten stench.

“It’s just…” He knew he had to choose his next words carefully. The other stryx were looking at them now, too. “You’re the strongest. No one else could make the journey alone.”

A puff of hot air in his face, like a snort of contempt. Not one for flattery, then.

“I told Tessellata I’d do it. I can’t back out now.” And then, sensing her eye back on him, he continued, “Plus, it’d make us look bad in front of the blade-tails. We’d never hear the end of it.”

Veleda blinked for the first time in minutes. Parvus placed his paw on her keel and felt a low rumble rise from her very bones, though he couldn’t tell if it was a growl or a purr.

Still keeping that paw on her breast, he inched his way around to her side, just as his amita had taught him to do with off-the-bridle stryx. He threw the saddle over her back, and when she didn’t buck or shake it off, he looped the straps under her belly, around the wing joint, and over her head. He heard those same ken behind him change their tune, from amusement to acknowledging mumbles.

He hauled himself up into the seat, slipped his feet into age-stiffened stirrups, and took up the reins. She was unlike any stryx he’d ever ridden: he could feel the raw power brimming in those wings, the taut weight of the reins between his claws. If she decided she wanted to fly one way, nothing in his power could compel her to go the other.

If anyone could make this journey, it was her.

They left Sicitur just after sunset, riding the hot thermals that spiralled out of the cooling ground. Turning his head back towards the setting sun, Parvus took one last look at that nascent tower, and the builders swarming over it like termites. Right now it was barely a foundation and a few sticks of scaffolding. What would it look like if he came back?

No, not if, when. Because he had to come back, right? His amitas would kill him if he didn’t return their best stryx in one piece.

They flew over scrubland and woodland and deadland, and all other manner of -lands that seemed to blend together after a while. Every dawn, before the blazing sun, Veleda would find a sheltered hollow or cave to land in, and they would make camp for the day. Thus their quest progressed without a hitch for three nights. It was around this time that he realised that the quartermaster had severely underestimated how much mash an average stryx went through in a day.

“Typical Kteinein paw-pinching,” he cursed, handing his stryx the last chunk of cricket-cake. She tossed it up into the air and swallowed it whole, but it was barely visible as it slid down her throat. She poked her beak into the empty bundle, making short, high-pitched chirps like a weanling.

“No more,” Parvus said, showing her his upturned, empty paws. She huffed at him.

Come to think of it, that quartermaster might’ve looked a little too happy to see him leaving her depot…

“Skorp me,” he muttered.

Parvus had held out some naive hope that Veleda would be able to catch her own food on the wing, but after half a day of endless sand and cacti, he had to admit that they were probably going to die out here.

There was a reason no one ever settled this far south: Beyond the near-impenetrable expanse of Audacia Great Wood lay a barren wasteland of rocky hills and brown-cracked scrub. It also happened to be prime dragon territory: that apex predator which even the hardiest stryx dared to face.

In fact, he could see a few of them circling overhead now, dark shadows upon darker night, their eyes like stars with none of their warmth. 

“Keep low,” Parvus whispered into Veleda’s ear tuft, and she tucked in her wings and dipped down, until her talons could almost skim the dirt.

To be honest, he didn’t know why he still bothered. He could feel her every movement growing weaker, and every day the reins slacked a little more. Any prey in this area would’ve been hunted into hiding by those fire-breathers up above. Was he simply delaying the inevitable?

Before he could think further on it, he felt Veleda jerk upwards, and not a second later, he felt a shower of sand hit his fur as an armoured claw burst out of the ground, its pincers snapping barely inches from the stryx’s underbelly. Bloody skorpions! Not even the wildlife would let him contemplate death in peace.

“Heads down, atanai! Wish the fire-spitter to see?”

Parvus yanked on the reins and Veleda screeched in protest. He’d been so used to the ambient sounds of the wildlife that another voice made his hackles leap.

A shaggy dragon levelled out beside him. Wait, no, on closer look, it was just another feravo, riding on… what looked like a horrible composite of moonlit skin and wrinkles?

“I-- where did--”

“Ay. Outsiders. Come. Or be fire-spitter’s food.”

Dragons above, skorpions below. He didn’t have much of a choice, did he?

*

“I didn’t think anyone else lived out here,” Parvus said, as soon as they were clear of the dragon hunting grounds.

“Plains-livers all,” the rider replied. Her language was peculiar to hear: she seemed comfortable with the Great Plains style of conjugation, but unlike them, she also made heavy use of compound words that he had to decipher on the fly. Fire-spitter= dragon, that one was easy enough. But what on Wyvera was this ‘whale-fall’ she spoke of?

“Hranfal,” she repeated, as he rolled the word around his mouth. “Not many far-livers have seen it. Praise Nokt my flitter-mouse smelled you, else be ashes by sun-rise.”

‘Flitter-mouse’ was a good word for this… creature. It was as twitchy as the rodents he’d see on the Plains, except that this one was ash-grey and had pale, almost white wings of skin that reflected the moonlight with every frantic flap. Veleda seemed just as wary of this furred flyer, keeping her safe distance from it.

But then the implication of the rider’s words sank in. A settlement, all the way out here? The cartographers would have a field day with this.

“But what even is a ‘whale’?”

“Look for self.”

And then, as if planned by the Moon Herself, they crested a sand dune and came upon the grave of a colossus.

The rising sun highlighted a yawning expanse of shining white mountains, except that these spires were far thinner than any rock. He saw that the scouts’ purported ‘claws in the sky’ were really just the ribs of a massive skeleton half-buried in the sand. Parvus had seen his fair share of bones back in the Plains; he picked out the rising row of vertebrae trailing off beyond the horizon but the skull was unlike any creature he had ever seen. It was long, flat on the top, almost arrowhead-shaped, and the hollows of its eye sockets alone would’ve housed an entire camp of werreken.

They flew in through the ‘maw’ of the so-called ‘Greatest Denizen’, and it was as if they’d dipped into an underground cave: every sound echoed and bounced off the bone ‘walls’. As he looked up, his jaw gaping, he saw more feravo, with baskets clipped to their sashes, crawling all over the tilted ribs, hacking away at some sort of furry moss that grew on the surfaces.

“When did you find this place?”

“Find? Been here since Furrowing.”

“How come we’ve never heard of you, then?”

“We go to Plains sometimes to give-take. No one asked from where we come.”

To be fair, that did sound pretty on-brand for the Kteinein.

“Here,” his guide continued, leading him up toward the vertebrae that marked the threshold between rib and hanging spine. Now Parvus could see the rope-and-slat bridges that connected each bone to the other, and how every hollow had been furnished with humble beds and storage. One of these strange homes was far more elaborate than the others, hung with dyed drapes and carpets, and a grand, old leu sat up from her fluffy rest as they approached, much like Tessellata upon her Alabaster Throne.

“Great-honoured guest,” she proclaimed, as Veleda and the flitter-mouse landed at the rim of the ‘room’. “Must be water-hungry.” As if on cue, a trio of attendants appeared from behind a curtain, carrying jugs of water and platters of that strange greyish moss. “You bring us great-union, ay?”

“Well, uhh…” What would Ensifera do in this situation? ‘When opportunity comes, seize it like a bird’, she’d always say. “Yes. Yeah, I’m here. About the alliance, I mean.”

“Elation. Your flyer, she takes worm or lichen?”

“At this point, I think she’d be happy with either.”

A snap of her paws, and the servants were off again, shuffling off toward the ribs. The flitter-mouse and its rider stayed to the side, wolfing down their own chunks of moss.

“Your forare is wonderful,” Parvus said, trying to make conversation. He picked up a piece from the platter. It was rough and furry to the touch.

“Not forage-ground. Home. The whale gives more than our need.”

Staying in one place for more than a few moons? Now that alone was almost stranger to him than the entire idea of living in a giant skeleton.

“Here we are hide-safe from Shifting Sands’ dangers.”

“What did you call it?”

“Shifting Sands.”

So that was three names to remember now. Parvus took a little nibble out of his serving of moss. Hmm. Crunchy and salty.

“What news from beyond Sands?”

“Oh, not much. Some blade-tail unified the Great Plains werreken, roped us Rikarisk into it, plans to build a new nation from the ground up.”

“But she did not ask our ken.”

“Well, you see, up until about 15 minutes ago, no one knew you even existed out here.”

The attendants had returned from their hunting trip. Two cloth wrapped bundles of thin red worms, almost as long as Parvus himself, writhed and convulsed on their backs. Parvus choked back an instinctive gag, but Veleda didn’t even hesitate. She pounced on the creatures barely a second after they were untied, swallowing bunches of them at a time.

The Hranfal feravo laughed. “Disgusting, ay?”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“The worms feed flyers for travel into Sands. We would give-take with the blade-tails, if they have us.”

“Yes, I think Tessellata would be more than happy to open trade with you.”

“Great-elation. Today, should you rest. Next sun-down, bring Hranfal to all your maps.”

--------

All images generated using AI on https://artbreeder.com

#ds12502

Personal art: +3AP

Monthly challenge: +4AP

Rider: +5AP

2062 words (starting from 'Well, that narrowed it down to...'): +40AP

Total: 52AP