A gray, overcast blanket of clouds pushing from the north coupled with a steep, inclining ascent into the Graves helps ease the oppressive midday heat bringing relief to the scouting party searching for Cedar. Though helpful today, Rihas is certain these clouds proceed cooler air and the arrival of heavier clouds laden with rain for tomorrow. If true, they will lose Cedar’s trail and be forced to hike in wet, slippery, and uncomfortable conditions.

Finding torn remnants of Cedar’s clothing had been no stroke of random good fortune. Cedar had been doused with putrid ichor secreted by the dead insects they had encountered yesterday. They were undoubtedly still alive when Cedar faced them, which evokes an especially troubling scenario where Cedar met the outsider and fought alongside him against the insects. A multitude of possibilities swirl in Rihas’ racing mind. How, when, and where did they meet? Under what circumstances did they find their way together into the Graves …and why?

The persistent odor led Rihas to the shredded fabric ripped from her clothing by thorns. The cloth had already deteriorated from the insect bile and would probably dissolve entirely before long. Rain would wash away the scent and further weaken any undiscovered remnants. Whatever progress they make will have to be made today. Following the impending rainfall, evidence of Cedar’s movements will be erased.

Despite this newly realized urgency, Rihas and his companions make slow progress following Mehetabel’s earlier health episode. He is accustomed to setting a grueling pace and typically expects his young scouts to keep up. Mehetabel and Tamah are not young scouts, however. They are middle-aged women accustomed to easy living inside their opulent village. Striking a balance between forward progress and keeping a pace endurable by his companions slowly erodes the chief scout’s good disposition. Their lazy cadence causes his mind to wander, then linger, for a time upon the circumstance of his strong-willed companion, Mehetabel.

Nomads know very little about the Village of Sensitives. The timing of their arrival in the Hinterlands and their place of origin remain clouded in mystery. Most are women, and none speak the nomadic language natively. The few males who live among them are weak, subservient, overtly effeminate, and nearly unrecognizable compared to their Nomadic counterparts. Conflicting lifestyles of Nomads and Sensitives have served to harbor ill will, obstructing any meaningful dialog between the two. This scouting mission may likely be their first significant collaboration. But it has not been without conflicts. Two days have barely passed, and they’ve already had to diffuse numerous power struggles.

Rihas’ thoughts are a swirl of anxiety, questions, and worries. Cedar’s disappearance, finding the injured outsider, the reclusive sensitives seeking help from nomads, and the return of his prophetic dreams are all somehow intertwined. Mehetabel is the key to understanding how they are connected. She is cautious, deliberate, and guarded . Nearly a female version of himself. He will not gain any information from her by accident. Leveraging details out of someone like her typically requires patience and the subtle application of guile and cunning. He does not have the time required for those things to develop naturally, however. The source of Rihas’ dread will manifest soon. He knows he must reveal his empathic abilities to Mehetabel and Tamah in exchange for information. All that remains is solving the problem of how he broaches the affair and when.

Maintaining focus is the first priority of any scout in the field. Allowing one’s awareness to stray always leads to important details going unnoticed. Rihas’ inattention eventually leads to carelessness, and his carelessness to trouble.

---

Much of their hike through the graves has followed the path of a lazy river. The waterway has narrowed over the past hour, becoming a shallow, marshy wetland dense with overgrown vegetation and enormous trees from which hang thick vines and strings of colorful mosses. The brutal sun has vanished behind a canopy of towering treetops. The terrain has evolved into a severe and unforgiving steady incline where water from the wetlands drains swiftly as sections of raging whitewater rapids and steep waterfalls. Despite all these challenges, their pace does not slow.

Tamah leans into Mehetabel to provide support as they shuffle over uneven ground. She is fairing slightly better but knows Mehetabel will not last much longer moving at their current rate. They will need to stop for an extended rest soon. Both women had underestimated the scope of difficulty this excursion presented. Mehetabel wants to blame Rihas, but he has already slowed his pace so much that he must feel like they are crawling.

Mehetabel’s knees buckle unexpectedly, shifting much of her weight onto Tamah. The two women stumble a few steps and then settle onto a large, mossy tree, “We need to backtrack to the last compound we searched. You are not fit to continue.” Tamah says anxiously.

Mehetabel shakes her head emphatically while breathing in gulps, “…not an …option.”

“Why?” Tamah demands, too tired to keep her annoyance in check, “Is your pride so relentless that it won’t permit rest to avoid being bettered by Rihas!?” She snaps angrily, “Oh, I’m sorry …the male!?“

Mehetabel gathers herself to glare at Tamah but manages only an exhausted wince, “No, Tamah darling. That is not it at all,” Mehetabel works to control her breathing while talking with an evenly measured tone, “Had you been paying attention to anything besides the male’s hind end, you would have noticed.”

“N-noticed what?” Tamah answers sheepishly.

“We’re being pursued,” Mehetabel says flatly.

Tamah quiets herself, nervously spreading her awareness as though casting her senses like a net. It is a trait awakened within empaths, who possess an evolutionary extra-sensory perception. Similar to the mechanics of hearing, empaths observe and interpret emotional emanations transmitted by humans and beasts through some unknown and exotic environmental medium. They are undetectable to those who do not express the trait but are experienced as vivid, layered textures of emphatic affinity by those who do.

In this manner, Tamah senses something nearby, watching. It is impossibly ancient, supremely confident, and keenly curious. Born of the wilderness but not, itself, wild. Exuding powerful preeminence while fearing nothing, the being provokes a predominant instinct of primal danger. And yet, for the moment, it does not pose a threat.

Tamah surfaces from her daze and searches Mehetabel’s tired eyes, “W-what is it?”

Mehetabel smiles weakly, averting her gaze, “We shall no doubt soon see.”

“Rihas!” Tamah looks around, calling out to the scout curiously at first. Then she begins to panic when he is nowhere to be seen or heard, “Rihas?”

Mehetabel’s face grows pale with disquieted alarm.

“Enough of your foolish lessons, Rihas!” Tamah screeches angrily, “We need you!”

Tamah again fills the weighty silence following her outburst, this time with an almost unhinged animus, “RIHAS!“

---

The instant his feet lose connection with solid ground, Rihas realizes his error. His body pitches forward as he makes uncontrolled, forceful contact with the surface of a slick, nearly vertical underground channel. The velocity and angle of his plummet, combined with the odd pitch his bounding body takes after each rebound, sets him into a careening tumble. He strikes different sides of the conduit a dozen or more times, gaining speed after each bounce. The incident ends with his body exiting the chute at a widely obtuse angle, then colliding with a horizontal floor, sliding limply across the cold surface until friction stops his momentum.

He lays for a time, unmoving, replaying the affair in his mind. The river had taken them through a dense patch of overgrown wilderness and craggy, elevated terrain. In the short span of a mile, the lazy waterway had transformed into a trickling marsh surrounded by a knotted field of dense vegetation. The women’s movement had again slowed, and he had allowed his mind to wander. Distracted, he failed to detect the concealed pitfall and stepped headlong into it.

Feeling no sharp, internal pains worthy of concern, Rihas begins gingerly extending his limbs to test for injuries. Miraculously, he escaped the incident with scrapes and contusions, but nothing more severe than that.

Rihas breathes in deeply through his nose, scanning for any unusual odors or musks belonging to potential predators. Sensing nothing, he stands quietly from his prone position. He had emerged from his fall into a roughly circular antechamber where numerous passages lead into darkness. The only light source seems to originate from multiple, odd pitfalls, one of which he had dropped unexpectedly into. The place is not a natural formation but a sort of manmade structure. It is entirely dissimilar to the rough-hewn stacked stone buildings characteristic of the second-world ruins littering the Graves. Instead, the materials, design, and complexity suggest something created by old-world humans before their great society collapsed countless centuries ago.

Being careful to remain inbound of his circular enclosure, Rihas spends a few moments exploring numerous artifacts and examining ancient, inoperative machinery. Oddly shaped pieces on some of these begin to emit a dull and lazy glow as he steps nearby, only to fade into darkness again as he moves past. Unusual designs on panels covering an entire section of one wall pulse weakly with nearly imperceptible luminescence as he approaches. They, too, fade away when he retreats. A dull thrumming, pulsing, buzzing noise tickles the edge of his perception, prompting him to return to the opening from which he had emerged. The noise was not present when he first arrived. It began sometime after he started examining the antechamber, and while faint, it has now become constant.

Certain his presence here has activated something deep within the ancient complex, Rihas urgently studies the chute he had traveled through to arrive here. It is a roughly rectangular conduit with smooth metal panels lining walls that have become crusted with dirt over time yet have somehow resisted corrosion. The center of each panel is adorned with a beveled, vertical strip of darker material stretching upward as far as Rihas can see before the conduit curves gently out of sight, perhaps ten body lengths above him. Uniform, rectangular apertures line the entire length of these vertical, beveled strips, which likely once served as housings for some component of a mechanically natured device that had traversed this conduit. Dimensions of the construct allow Rihas to fit easily within while comfortably reaching opposite sides with outstretched arms.

“RIHAS!” He hears Tamah’s panicked screech from a distance somewhere far above him.

“Tamah!” Rihas replies, shouting upwards through the conduit, “Do NOT move. Remain where you are! There are pitfalls near! I am unhurt but must climb…” His instructions are cut off by a low rumbling originating deep within the old-world complex. The odd noise grows steadily louder in response to his shouting.

“Rihas!?” Even from a distance, Tamah’s faint voice remains unsure.

Wanting to put as much distance between himself and this place, Rihas begins the difficult but necessary task of climbing up the shaft he had fallen down. He quickly ascends the first several body lengths, using the evenly spaced slots in the walls as finger and toeholds.

He hears Tamah’s voice again, though louder this time, “Rihas! Are you down there?”

Grunting with some effort, Rihas responds, “Yes, Tamah. I am unhurt and climbing back up. You should back away to somewhere safe.”

A low rumbling from below sharpens his resolve to exit the conduit. He ascends another few body lengths and begins to feel the strain in his fingers and forearms. Climbing is an important skill taught to all scouts. Unfortunately, Rihas has never been an exceedingly competent climber, considering his larger size and dense build.

“I was afraid, Rihas,” Tamah’s meek voice, though still distant, is noticeably closer, “We can’t do this without you. Y-you are unlike anybody else I have ever met.”

Focused solely on climbing, Rihas balances his center of gravity, then reaches for the next finger and toehold. Eventually, he finds an efficient cadence and turns his attention to the finer muscles controlling his grip on the slots. Though he only half-listens to her words, her voice helps him gauge his progress, “Good thinking, Tamah. Just keep talking…” Rihas thinks quietly to himself.

“You are decisive and bold, far braver than any of us. And still, you remain kind and humble,” Tamah continues, “How do you manage it?”

“My -grunt- mates…” He strains, answering out of reflex while maintaining total attention on the increasingly challenging climb, “I exist -grunt- to honor their -grunt- memory.”

“They were fortunate to have you as theirs, Rihas,” Tamah says absently.

“The privilege was mine -grunt- They made me -grunt- who I am.” Rihas winces in pain as fatigue sets into his finger and toe joints, strained under the effort of supporting his entire body weight. He thinks only of reaching for the next foot and handhold while using Tamah’s gentle dialog as a guidepost.

“I can hear you much more clearly! You’re getting closer!” Tamah tries her best to encourage him.

One body length, then another. Rihas focuses simply on that. He pushes through, ignoring the searing pain in his fingers and toes, not daring to change his cadence or rebalance his weight distribution to other, more potent muscles for fear of slipping out of a foothold. Tamah’s continued encouragement keeps him moving to the next foothold, a persistent reminder she and Mehetabel would likely die alone in the Graves without him.

Soon, the white noise of pain blocks out everything but his mechanical pursuit of the next foothold. His chest heaves with exhaustion, and his body is wet with sweat and blood, which begins dripping from open wounds on his fingers.

“I am -grunt– close to failure -grunt- Tamah,” Rihas says plainly.

“NO!” Tamah commands, “You will NOT fail. You are close. You will succeed! ” Tamah barks with a tone approaching something akin to annoyance, reminding him of his slain bond mate, Sarai.

“Honor your mates, Rihas!” Tamah challenges him, her voice quivering with fear and apprehension, “Japhia still needs you! Do not fail her!”

Then, after a short pause, “Do not leave me, Rihas. Not after I’ve only just found you.”

For how long he continues climbing toward Tamah, he is uncertain. The cadence of his climb becomes his mind’s sole focus. That, and visions of Sarai and Kyria reaching down to him, lifting him up toward the next slot, then the next. He emerges from the visage while clutching not onto their arms but onto those of Tamah and Mehetabel. Although small in stature, Tamah summons every bit of strength available to her body, tugging Rihas up and over the lip of the pit and onto solid ground.

Laying on his side, Rihas writhes away from the pit’s edge and collapses into an exhausted heap. Tamah’s small arms immediately wrap around his neck as she sobs, pulling his head close to hers while alternately hugging and kissing his face. His conscious thought slips away like this, with his last lucid observation before succumbing to irresistible sleep being a visage of his mates Sarai and Kyria embracing each other wearing sorrowful, acquiesced smiles,

“Peace and Calm in your remaining days, Rihas, our Love.“