The Road After

13

13

i. Chisi.

She woke up and immediately panicked. It was too quiet. All the normal voices and sounds that invaded her head every single second of every single day were silent, save for the four horses and even they were strange and muted as if they were trying to remain as quiet as possible.

Reaching for her wand, she clasped it to her chest and channeled the animal essence, searching far and wide. The further she reached, the more essence she channeled and it was at the edge of her strength when she managed to find the voices. Distant and muffled. She tried to cling to them with her mind, but it was taking too much effort, soon forcing her to release the essence and fall back into the unnatural, eerie silence.

Her friends and sister were equally subdued. Listless, moving around the campsite, preparing for the day's leg of their journey. She tried channeling the plant essence to grow grass for the horses to eat, but that too proved to be all but impossible here. Nothing living other than the four companions and their horses was anywhere near.

"I think we should go back down and go around. This place is wrong." Tying his bedroll, Haavo tried to avoid looking down towards the Sunken City.

"We'll be away from this place quicker if we go straight across is all I'm saying." Chisi could tell that the place disturbed Indri as much as her and Haavo, but facing things head-on was how she handled most things. "It'll be two, maybe three days before we get any distance between us and this ... this place if we go back the way we came."

"I'm inclined to agree with Indri. Let's just get this over with quickly." Breena checked the saddles on the horses, tightening the straps where she needed to. "Straight across, straight down. Chisi?"

"I'm alone." Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at her. Even she could tell there had been a quietness, a tremulous tone to her voice. "I mean, not with you. You're always with me, but my animal friends. I can't hear them and it's so lonely."

Her sister was the first and then the others came to gather around her, taking her hand or squeezing her shoulder. They had no idea how much noise she heard usually, over and above the noises they heard. Even in her worst moments, she could rely on reaching out to the animals, even the tiniest of grubs and the worms digging under their feet. There was always a tumult of voices.

Not here, though.

"Alright, flower. Just tell us how we can help you." Breena tilted her head to look into her eyes. "If it's better for you that we go back, we go back. If it's better to go forward, we go forward."

"I don't know. It's so hard to think in this silence." She looked down at her wand, still held tight to her chest, and tried to reach out again, but her first attempt had tired her too much. "I just want to hear my friends again. Quickly. Please."

"Alright. Straight across, then." Haavo spat and stared at the city before looking back at Chisi. "We're not putting her through more of this than we have to. We go across, ride fast and put this shit-hole far behind us."

There was a sense of urgency about them now. The camp was now broken and they were on their horses within minutes, tracking a path down into the bowl towards the Sunken City.

They tried to keep a good pace going, but the nature of the place meant obstacles turned up in the strangest places. Roofs jutted out, towers with inter-linking bridges, chimneys and spires. There was a sense of following the path of what once had been streets, but then they would almost fall over the hand or head of a statue, or have to ride around a hole where a roof had collapsed inwards.

And all the while there was a sense of oppression about the place. Several times Chisi found herself snapping her head around, thinking she had seen something moving, only for nothing to be there. She found the whole place cloying and sinister and it was only because she could see her companions and hear the voices of their horses, a dull, fearful whispering that wasn't enough for her, that she managed to avoid panicking.