Zodiac Story

The Bay Road and the Teal River Converge Upon Pink and Azure Plains Part 1

Rest, she thought, finally. Urantsog approached the small pond, its outer banks having long dried out judging from the dusty and dry texture. She looked at her reflection and drank heavily from the water. As a human, she would have taken out her pots, scooped the water, and boiled it mercilessly until she was sure that no bacteria remained. Since she was an animal and had drunk from lakes only a shadow of what they once were without any ill effects, Urantsog was confident that she wouldn't sicken and die.

The pond water was cool and refreshing, quenching her thirst. She shook her mane, spraying water across the more parched areas of grass and on her saddle.

Her hoof still itched, even after two days ago when she galloped across the plain almost a hundred times. Whenever she checked it, it looked like a normal hoof. She had seen horses with various issues, ranging from cracked hooves to cancerous growths. She shuddered as she remembered her favourite mare looking at her mournfully as her övöö examined both of her rear hooves. Urantsog missed her, even though it had been twenty years. Chimeg was faster than even her aav's greatest stallion, and Urantsog remembered her neck held high, always wild and free in the steppes. She always joked that Chimeg was her sister, given how alike the two were. In more than one way, that was true. Her hoof was an issue. She would check it later.

Looking around with her ears pricked, she sensed no danger. Urantsog located a medium-sized patch of grass and started to chew on it. She wasn't sure if it was because she was a horse or that was because she had supernatural abilities, but the grass tasted good. Urantsog looked behind her. The cart was intact, her saddle and attached equipment looked like it was prepared for combat, and her dismantled ger was still present. Good, she thought. As much as she liked sleeping under the stars, her ger would have better protection against a Calamity should one arrive. She wondered how her ancestors would have reacted to the Calamities, whether they would have spread further away. She knew that her nagats egch used to live in Ulaanbaatar before the Calamities hit. With the Calamities, many had turned to the lifestyle of their ancestors, assimilating into those that kept to their traditional lifestyle. Ulaanbaatar was still inhabited, but was deserted every time there was an alarm. She had been there. It was stifling, feeling boxed in on all sides, and enough buildings that she felt small and insignificant compared to those towering structures. Urantsog preferred the open steppes, to be able to run wild and without a care.

In other words, absolute freedom.

She told her aav as much, she would settle for nothing less. When she had been younger, she had felt a special kinship with her family herd, envying their free-spiritedness and carefree nature. They didn't need her family; they could be independent and self-reliant. She had resolved to be the same when she grew older. Archery, wrestling, horse riding, taming those that refused to bend to anyone's will, she had done them. She had outshot her düü on their respective horses, wrestled her eej to the ground after a long tussle, and outraced her aav with the help of Chimeg. She had been challenged among her tribe and upheld her titles each and every time.

Much to her annoyance, that didn't apply to her mission. Retrieve her Key from the ghosts of warrior women, find her Gate based off of the location given by her Key...wait for her partner to find their Key and their Gate, or House, or whatever that amulet was saying. No, that would be partners. She gritted her teeth. The success of a once in a lifetime mission depended on two people that she had never met and whose capabilities she didn't know. Her amulet wasn't forthcoming on the details, and she hated charging into anything blindly. She could find both Keys, find both Gates, and then enter them. Unfortunately, Urantsog was bound by an ancient bond and couldn't enter the Gates alone. She needed a partner. If they were slow, she wouldn't help them. They should know how to find their own Key.

Urantsog had some ideas of where her own Key could be. Ghosts could refer to a mass casualty event, a battlefield where the dead were laid to rest where they fell, or a mass grave. She needed to research who the warrior women were. No one in her tribe knew anything about any famous warrior women within their territory or any nearby territories, nor mass graves.

Her hoof still itched. Urantsog would examine it later.

Out of nowhere, her ears pricked up. The sound of roaring thunder reached her. Far into the distance, fissures of lightning snaked across the sky, sending a chill down Urantsog's intestines. She buried it. Fear had no place in her mind, not when there was a mighty Calamity to fight.

She remembered the gigantic blind worm with jagged teeth crawling within the earth. How it tried to intimidate her family and tribe into fleeing. How she picked up the amulet she had found that day and shouted the words that engulfed her in a cloud of smoke. How she rose to the challenge and defeated the horrid worm with its sickly pulsating flesh, parading its corpse through the settlement. This would be no different. All this was was another opponent to prove her skills against.

She tucked her ger and cart safely away, and checked her saddle. It remained nestled against her. Good.

Urantsog glanced upwards, finding the source of the storm. An azure dragon, its scales gleaming in the evening sunlight. The shadow it casted was larger than the buildings she had seen at Ulaanbaatar, long and sinewy and wriggling. No matter, she would triumph over them all the same.

And so she charged ahead.