“There is one thing you haven’t yet asked of me.”

Mulin tore his gaze from the dancing snowflakes, directing it instead to the aged Stonekin beside him. “I should think there are a great number of things I’ve not asked you,” he replied. “Most of them, it’s not my business to know; the others I’ve not seen the need. Where is it you don’t agree with me on those points?”

“You have a right to know why,” Arnak replied, still gazing out from the cave mouth at the swirling snow. “Why I started this thing; why I first sought his aid.” No need to say whose.

“My companions had their reasons twisted all out of shape, to the point that they dare not trust their memories. And they were only held thrall for a few days,” Mulin pointed out. “With so much longer a time under his influence, even if he was perhaps more subtle, plainly some of your thoughts were swayed or brushed aside. Even if they are recognizable, are your initial reasons so very relevant to this mess?” Belatedly, a thought occurred to him. “Or are they something that you think is relevant still?”

“I think they might be,” came the heavy-hearted reply. “I struck out on my own, seeking a place where people could chart their own fates; not finding one to my satisfaction, I wished instead to make one. Not a place of chaos, understand; not a place where the strong would rule the weak. History is too full of the harsh lessons of such times for me to not pay heed.” The Stonekin shook his head. “Though that is what my dream was turned into in the end, it was not where I began.”

“What was the freedom you sought, then?”

“The freedom to do as we pleased,” Arnak sighed. “The freedom to seek happiness in whatever form we might so long as no others were denied their own in the process.” A pause. “Normally, it is the province of the old to cling to the old ways; I was already past my first century when I had cause to disagree. We are mired in tradition; laws are held to simply because they are laws, not because they have any merit today. For some, the circumstances which drove them have lessened; for others they were exaggerated from the beginning, and may only be more so now.” He shook his head. “Strong indeed are the restraints around our notion of who it is and is not appropriate to love; the chains are longer in some ways now than in the past, but others have not even kept pace with that.

He’d set out on his odyssey because he’d been denied a lover? So it sounded, at any rate – and that certainly struck a chord. Mulin shifted his cloak. “It does seem that some of the tightest strictures are on romance,” he sighed. “Sometimes in law, sometimes in custom that might as well be.”

“Some of our laws – there and otherwise – have not been examined for hundreds of years. There have not been enough people discomfited by them, compared to the difficulty of reviewing them, for such a review to be deemed worthwhile.” Arnak sighed, turning away from the vista at last, staring instead into the corridor. “Stagnant. All I wanted was to relieve that stagnancy.”

Mulin felt his mouth pull into a fang-baring smirk. “Indirectly, you may have done that.”

“What – oh.” The Stonekin’s tail-spade dragged across the rock. “I’ve never believed in prophecy. Mucking about with vague words and half-promises, waiting for someone else to come and fix our problems… but you’re certainly off to a good start, I must grant that. I can only hope you’re able to put enough to right to make up for this… nightmare.”

He made to depart, but paused when Mulin called out to him. “If I may ask… what sort of person could you not have?” It was a morbid sort of question, he had to admit, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if Arnak didn’t wish to answer; phrases of apology waited on his tongue, should the Stonekin start to demur.

They weren’t necessary; Arnak grimaced, and spoke softly, but he was to the point. “A pair of human sorcerers. Brothers,” he sighed. “I’ve never seen any two so close; they shared everything with each other.”

Mulin blinked. In a way, that was very close to his heart indeed; yet in the other… He admitted to being curious; “It wouldn’t have been… physically too troublesome?”

“A little, perhaps, but more for them than myself.” A wry smirk. “And for sake of fairness, I ask who your forbidden love might be.”

And that was most certainly fair. “Mine? It’s not so mysterious,” he sighed. “Exactly the same as any firstborn Magekin; it’s the other one I desire, if not solely. It’s always been a suitable pairing before.” He shrugged and shuffled his wings. “Less so when the other one came from the same shell as myself.” His tail struck the wall; he forced it to be still behind him.

“It’s such a foolish proscription, hm? It isn’t as though you and he could have any inbred offspring whatsoever, much less enough generations of it at once to make a difficulty.”

“So one would think,” Mulin sighed. It was time to change the subject. “What will you do now?”

“Try to pick up the pieces, perhaps.” Arnak gestured into the cavern. “I don’t know. I don’t think there’s enough in me yet to keep after my dream. Not when it’s been so bloodied. Perhaps it’s time to move on. I doubt the Sachi would wish my company, not after the troubles that followed me here, but… perhaps I can find some human city, well beyond our borders, yet where they aren’t so unfamiliar with us as to fear me.”

“Even if these ones can’t overcome their fear, there are other Sachi tribes,” Mulin noted. “And some human cities, for that matter, without needing to go so far afield.”

“And why shouldn’t I do just that?” Arnak swept a gesture around him. “There’s nothing for me here but ashes and regrets. No. It’s time to move on.”

And with that, he ducked into the tunnels.

Well. In that last he’d been right, anyway; it was time to move on. Mulin hefted his pack; with his eyes a bit better adjusted to the gleam of fresh-fallen snow, he trooped outside. The chill of it was especially shocking after so much time in the magma-heated tunnels.

It took only a few moments more for their guide to arrive – not Sharliss, but a heavier-set Sachi fighter, who didn’t speak much and was rather subdued when she did, but who led the way down the slopes with confidence, the Vhark trooping after.

They didn’t go by an exact reversal of the route they’d taken to ascend, for which Mulin was grateful. The few remaining Sachi on the mountain had been faced with a grim task, tending to their dead around the cave mouth; he doubted they’d have had time in the past few days to clean up the awful scene around the closest campsite to it. Their guide didn’t seem to place blame on them for any of it, as much as could be told with how little she spoke, but it would’ve made for an uncomfortable reminder even beyond being rather ghastly, to come upon that scene again.

Nor did they go into nearly-vacant Mar Drerrasett; Sharliss had given their guide some directions, and they went past the city, into the foothills, coming a day later to what was nothing less than an impromptu city. It sprawled over a broader stretch of ground than the original city, a vast collection of tents and living bodies, and now it bustled with the labour of packing. Word of success had beat them here, apparently.

They themselves didn’t linger. Their guide was welcomed into a knot of legs and white-striped tails, and it took no translation to tell that the tumbling reunion was a happy one; but though an aged shaman, her motions stiff and black fur fading to grey with age, gave them profuse thanks and a small assortment of wooden crafts as a material token of them, there was no ceremony; they recovered their burden-beast, shifted most of the contents of their packs onto it, and with the sun at zenith, took to the air at last.