It took some time for Diven to recover from the shock. It was the first time he had seen a dead human being. To be fair, this one only had bones left, so he wagered it wasn’t as traumatizing as it would have been if flesh and skin remained.
Still, it was a dead body.
A grim reminder of what could happen in the rift. Still fully dressed in a heavy leather coat, the skeleton was lying peacefully in the middle of the room.
After all, a skeleton couldn’t be anything but peaceful. It was long dead and bones didn’t inform on the mental state of their deceased owner.
Nervous, Diven stepped closer. Despite the hole in the ceiling, the cavern was dark and he had trouble making out all the details.
He kneeled next to the skeleton and his eyes were immediately drawn to an emblem embroidered on the coat.
An eagle soaring through the clouds.
He recognized it. He had seen it many times while exploring the streets of Kheiron with his friends. Sebastian and Zoe sometimes had it embroidered on their clothes.
It was the emblem of the Opheo clan.
It meant the skeleton was a member of that clan. A distant relative of his friends.
Ex-friend, maybe, in Zoe's case.
But the state of his friendships was something he could dwell on later. How had this Opheo clan member reached this rift?
Maybe it had been hidden underwater long before the passage of the deer-like behemoth?
It had to be. The alternative was that the deceased person had entered the rift roughly around the same time Diven did. It was unlikely. He had been there all along, he would have noticed if someone else came in.
At least, he hoped he would have.
It wasn’t surprising that it was someone from the Opheo clan. With their sky attunement, they produced the best explorers of Kheiron.
They could fly. Just this was enough to put them in a league of their own. When difficult terrain was no longer an obstacle, vast distances shrunk by a lot.
This kind of specialization was not unique to Kheiron. As far as Diven was aware, most Ameian cities were ruled by an assortment of noble clans. Each clan had its own specialty skills and attunement. Together, they brought their city to prosperity.
In Kheiron, the Opheo clan made the best explorers. It was Opheo, their progenitor, who found the natural harbor the city was built around all those centuries ago. Then she guided Leios and Thesios there to found Kheiron.
Opheo never even tried to monopolize the city. She couldn’t. Leios was brought in for his sun attunement, with the goal of creating a clan capable of supporting the city’s food production. Thesios was a commander exiled from his home city. Opheo invited him, knowing the fledgling city would need to be defended.
The three clans were rivals inside Kheiron. But none entertained the idea of dominance over the others. There was too little to gain, too much to lose. The city survived and thrived off complementarity, not supremacy.
All of which explained why the skeleton belonged to the Opheo clan. If a clan in Kheiron could produce explorers, it was this one.
Not seeing any other clue about the dead explorer, Diven turned his head to examine the room. There were tools, weapons, and clothes hanging on every wall. The previous inhabitant had been well-prepared to take on the rift.
Diven was ecstatic. After losing everything to the swarmlings, he could finally restock his inventory. There was even a well-preserved leather bag where he could store all he needed. Knives, hammers, firesticks, spearheads, a bow, and arrows. The insulated environment of the cave had protected the wooden shafts.
Everything was still usable.
There was even dried meat hanging from the ceiling, although Diven wasn’t desperate enough to eat it. There was no way it was still edible.
Under the hole in the ceiling, a mound of pine needles, dirt and wood had accumulated. He would have to clean it up if he wanted to make it his home.
There was also the skeleton to take care of.
The extra clothes stored inside the cavern were about his size. He felt bad about taking them from a dead explorer but walking around in rags felt even worse.
He changed into an old but intact tunic. It wasn’t spotless, but without holes in the fabric, it was leagues better than what was left of his.
The last important thing was the books.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
On a natural shelf dug in the stone wall, there were five books. Only two of them had a title. Thankfully they were written in Ameian, allowing Diven to read them.
The first one was Primer on the Linien Language. It was the language spoken by the barbarians ranging around the Lien River. Diven hadn’t noticed any sign of their presence in his time in the Wildlands. However, he wasn’t exactly good at tracking. A tribe might have lived in the area.
Knowing their language would be extremely useful if he ever encountered them. It wasn’t that he wanted to meet them—barbarians were rough, dangerous—but he was aware things rarely went as he wanted them to. Traveling in their territory, he might encounter a tribe or two on his way back to Kheiron.
If he brought back news of the dead explorer, maybe he’d find some support in the Opheo clan. Anything that could help with his reintegration was worth taking.
The other titled book was Martial Manual of Kheiron. He knew of this work. Every noble scion of the city knew about it. He had even read it, as he studied the spear and the shield before his awakening. That said, he didn’t remember most of its content. Now that he had tasted real combat, he felt that reading it again could prove beneficial.
As for the three other books, a quick glance at their content told him they were journals. Written by the person whose skeleton was lying behind him.
He wanted to read them. There had to be information about the rift in there. About the dangers of this valley. About the guardians. He didn’t want to end up in the same position as their author. Any advantage was worth taking.
But first, there was a skeleton to take care of.
Diven didn’t like the idea of touching dead bones, but he wasn’t about to live with a skeleton in what would be his room for the foreseeable future. The cavern was too good not to live in it. Protected from the elements, hidden, full of tools, clothes and books.
No, there was no way he was leaving.
Which meant the skeleton had to go.
“Sorry about that, sir or miss Opheo,” Diven said to the dead person. “I’m sure you’ll understand my predicament.”
Carefully, he gathered the remains. Hesitating a moment, he ended up deciding to keep the coat for himself. The skeleton didn’t need it anymore.
Carrying the bones outside, he dug a hole and buried them. He wasn’t willing to just throw them in the water. This person might be dead, but it was an explorer from Kheiron. If he could take his remains back to the city, he would.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t in a position to do that. A burial would have to be enough.
Back in the cavern, Diven had cleaned up the debris, gathered wood for a fire and lit one with the firestick. It was so much easier than without any tool.
He reheated his last pieces of spearfish meat and started reading the first journal.
Each entry was dated. The first entry dated back to seventy-eight years ago. Diven didn’t think an explorer would take their entire journal collection on a trip to the wilds. Either that exploration had been very long or it had happened all those years ago.
The explorer’s name was Cassandra Opheo. Diven paused again. The explorer was a woman. This meant he was currently wearing women's clothing.
The teenager shuddered. Should he return to wearing his rags?
For a moment, indecision gripped him. He couldn’t wear that, but looking at the clothes that he had worn since he escaped from the behemoth…
It didn’t matter, proper clothes were too comfortable. There was nobody to see him here.
The journal started with a brief introduction to Cassandra’s life until her awakening. Nothing particularly interesting there, his life had been much the same. Despite the time gap between her account and the present, Kheiron didn’t seem to have changed much.
She was born several decades after the passing of Leios, the last surviving founder, so Diven couldn’t even glean any tidbit of information about his ancestor.
Naturally, some of the current elders of the clan were already sitting in the temple of the sun when the legendary man died. But elders were hard to talk to, an account from an ordinary person would have been interesting.
Then, she described her awakening ceremony. It was very much the same process as the Leios’ clan awakening ceremony. The only difference being that for the Opheo clan, it took place in their temple of the sky.
Like him, Cassandra had been looking forward to learning of her bloodline. As with any member of the clans, she wanted to follow in her clan’s footsteps. To do that, she needed a sky-attuned bloodline.
But she got something else.
When the elder in charge of her ceremony initiated her awakening, a cloud appeared in her sky. Unlike the Leios clan’s garden, the Opheo clan used a visualization of the sky for their inner world. Diven had always found it strange, but it wasn’t the point.
The point was that Cassandra’s bloodline was called Mental Dominion.
And she was exiled for it.
Her elders were afraid of her, afraid of what the bloodline could do. It was only a guess, but they feared Cassandra would grow to be able to control their minds.
Hypocrites. They controlled their clan and the city because of their own power. Now that someone else could threaten them, they couldn’t accept it. Not that Diven didn’t understand their concern, mind control was terrifying.
But from Cassandra’s account, she couldn’t do that. Couldn’t do that yet. More importantly, she wouldn’t do that.
Much like Diven wouldn’t use rot magic to destroy the city.
Why would he do that? Did they think he relished rot magic? The great sun mages of the clan used their powers to help plants grow, not to burn the fields to a crisp.
Why couldn’t they extend the same leniency to him?
He was content never to practice rot magic. And as Cassandra had written, she had promised to never take the Facet of the Mind Mage that had been offered to her.
And yet, he had found her remains lying alone in this damned rift. With nobody around to even bury her. He was wearing her clothes. He had buried her bones himself, and now he was reading the account of how she had ended up here. A premonition of his own destiny.
Could he ever return to Kheiron?
He wanted to. And yet he was disgusted by what he was reading.
His fingers clenched on the parched cover of the book, his eyes were glued on the pages where she described a series of events he remembered experiencing himself. Her older sister was the one who made the journey to drop her off in the middle of the wilds. Cassandra was confused, hurt, angry, and scared.
He continued reading, anxious to learn what other secrets the journal held.