THE MRAASHK PROCESSION REACHED the top of the hill overlooking the Jeel and paused. Eshnor was driving the uks cart himself. He reined in the beasts, and for a moment, they all gazed down at the vista, enraptured.
Drishya was seeing Mother Jeel for the first time since the night of his birth. Yet he recalled her color, her fragrance, and the sound of her voice as only a child can recall his mother. He recalled the parting of the waters and the peculiar fish smell of the riverbed as his father Vasurava carried him across. He remembered the sight of fish and crustaceans trapped in the parted waters, still alive and swimming, and gawking at the Slayer newborn. He recalled wishing he could swim and play with them.
He remembered his first days in Mraashk, the milky sweet smell of his mother Alinora, how green and blue and beautiful the trees and sky were, and how he loved this new world and wanted nothing more than to frolic and play and explore it. He had never stopped feeling those things, and a part of him still wished the fighting and warring and crises could just end, once and for all, and all beings live in peace, enjoying the fruits and repast of their shared world.
Why was it so hard for living beings to understand that together they were one whole being symbiotically interlinked through food, weather, biology, and a thousand other intricate interdependent systems, while individually they were nothing but strays, incapable of sustaining or surviving?
Why did beings like Tyrak even exist? Why had they been created? Why was it necessary for a Slayer to be born at all? Why could the Creator not avoid creating cruelty and pain and violence and war? Why could the gods, in whose category he himself was included, not rid the world of such things forever?
But these were questions for other days, other incarnations, other lives.
Today, here, he was Drishya, Slayer of Tyrak, come to face his nemesis at last.
An entire nation looked to him to deliver them from evil.
A world watched, holding its breath as it waited to see if the stone gods still held sway over the mortal realm or if they had finally surrendered it to the urrkh, abandoning their creations and children.
Drishya, said a voice inside his head.
Drishya smiled to himself. Hello, my sister. He knew she was not his sister in flesh, but he had come to know her so well of late, she felt as close to him as a sibling.
I am here with you, she said. I know you will fulfill your destiny today.
Thank you, sister. Your presence and support matter to me.
Remember, I am with you. My strength is part of your strength. Together, we are as one.
Yes, sister. I need you with me, to end the wicked reign of the tyrant usurper.
You have me. We will prevail. And when we have killed Tyrak, we will end the evil reign of his master, the Krushan.
It is a good day, Drishya replied. We will rid the world of two great evildoers.
I leave you now very briefly, but I will return when you need me. Summon me, and I will be with you in an instant.
Yes, sister.
And then he felt the prickle of her presence inside his mind fade as she drew back into her own body, many miles distant.
He touched his father’s arm. “Come, Father,” he said. “Let us go meet the Usurper and end his story.”
Eshnor wiped his face roughly in the manner of a man who is not accustomed to crying openly or showing much emotion. He nodded silently and restarted the uks wagon, urging the animals to move forward, down the long, trundling path that led to the ferry that would bear them across the Jeel. Behind them, the procession of wagons and carts bearing the entire Mraashk clan followed.