The arrival of the comet – the Crimson Herald – marks the day in which the Caravan emerges from the Desert and sets camp at your doorstep. Just outside the walls of Kathele, the fortress city at the banks of the Sea of Renkún, the tents, wagons and beasts of burden of the visitors dominate the horizon like a heterogeneous legion, remaining at rest for five days and five nights before venturing out again, leaving behind nothing but dust and rumors, and the everlasting promise of return. On the black heavens, thrust against the greenish tinge of Shimreth, the Crimson Herald fades again into the backcloth of stars, its tail a streak of cosmic blood that lingers on like a scar across the face of eternity until it is finally swallowed by the light of the newborn day.
On these days – the Days of Crimson – the curious mind is most rewarded, for though indeed the Caravan brings with it many goods that are essential for life, none is as cherished as the stories spoken by weary throats after a few drinks. And so you wait eagerly until dusk falls and all trading of wares has ceased for the night, until none remain who wish to haggle and barter for grain or fine wood, for exotic spices or iron ore, and you approach the tent and the firelight and make known your desire.
"I want to hear a story," you say, and offer up what you brought in exchange: a conch shell of exquisite colors that seem stolen from the skies themselves, made to glisten now under the sanguine luminescence of the Crimson Herald. It is a precious thing, fragile, abandoned by its former inhabitant like a ruin in the shallows of the ocean, yet – just like many ruins that litter the inclement sands of the Desert – it holds value to those who know where to find it.
The keeper of stories, her pale skin almost translucent, chitters and clicks her mandibles as her throat adjusts. Two sets of compound eyes – nearly vestigial, for her caste is almost blind – refract the twin radiance of the fire below and the comet above. She extends two of her six dexterous extremities – claws meant to crawl, to climb, to traverse and rule the underground depths – and gently holds the conch shell. She can smell the sea in it, you can tell, even if the colors elude her for the most part; the Tzic know the world and each other by smell and touch just as much as you know it and your kind by sight and sound. Theirs is a domain of darkness and silence, the surface of the world a harsh divide of light onto which very few venture. Alien as they may seem, however, they cherish stories – they crave them – and thus they march onwards, waiting for a chance to return to their colony and spread the tales and legends they have gathered so they may preserve the words in the everlasting light of their collective memory.
She speaks with hoarse voice, the conch resting on her lap.
"And what kind of story, child, would you like to hear?"
"Tell me of the peoples," you respond. "Tell me of what lies beyond."
Something like a smile forms on her mandibles.
"This is a fine trade you offer me, so I will give you not one story, but four. Would you like, little one, to hear what happens in the wake of the red comet?"
You nod vigorously, and the storyteller speaks.
Dak-Elim, hunter, breathes in once, and holds his breath. The muscles of his four strong legs tense, sinew screaming to be released from this aching wait and gallop forward. His four hooves grip the small rock salient on the eastern face of the karst, holding him in place as he awaits for the right moment. Vertical, his upper torso swells with contained air and slowly releases it in a nigh-imperceptible exhalation, his six-digit hands fiddling with his weapon of choice: a net woven from soft strands of fiber, so fragile that a childling could break through it with ease. Dak-Elim knows he should not toy with it: he only gets one shot at this, and a broken net will ruin his chances of victory. Yet the wait seems eternal, and there is nothing to do here, atop the highest karst in the Desert, its pinnacle enveloped in fog and dew, but to gaze at the nebulous nothingness and wait.
Patience is the hunter's ally, Dak-Elim knows. His mother taught him this on their first hunt together. They both waited, covered in mud and grime, for a day and a night, one eye fixed on the spot their prey would show up, the other occasionally catching a glimpse of the passing clouds and the stars. "Breathe, child," she told him, "and let not time make you its prey; its weapon is boredom, impatience its lure. You are the hunter, so you must remain in control of yourself. To be hunted is to be dominated by another, your will broken and yoked. Be your own master and no one will ever think of hunting you."
Dak-Elim envies his mother, Lor-Fal. She is the hunter, kin to beast and bird; she knows them truly, for she has hunted them intimately. Her great curved horns are heavy with trophies – bones and teeth and claws and feathers – evidence of her prowess, proclaimers of her victories. She stands taller, even in old age, than any who came before her and her name is spoken with a reverence reserved only for the spirits of the ancestors and the glorious dead. Her shadow is heavy; a burden upon her own child – the only one she ever gave birth to – and indeed it has followed him here, to the very ends of the world. He need only take one wrong step to be crushed under its weight.
Dak-Elim stands at the edge of the void and does not fear plummeting to his death. His dread, stifled so far under a coat of dull languor, comes from elsewhere. His people, the Kah-Rem, are the children of the karsts and mountains; to them, living at the brink of emptiness is as natural as swimming is to a fish. Here they have built their hanging cities, their horned likeness excavated into the faces of the most remote peaks as proof of their conquest. They have braved the extremes of both the sun-scorched sands and the frozen mountaintops, traveled to every corner of the known world, and hunted every creature big and small. Yet there are places where few of their kind ever choose to venture, places like this one where Dak-Elim stands in wait; they are not places of danger but of sanctity, and to fail here is to climb back down home in shame.
At last, the fluttering echoes through the mist and Dak-Elim knows his wait is at an end. He remains still, however, as his eyes focus on the brightness that pierces through the water vapors at the top of the karst, trying to make sense of the shape that has just landed straight ahead.
There it is. He sees the iridescent plumage that refracts light into all the colors of the rainbow; the scoop-like beak meant to search for mollusks in the mountaintop lakes; the wings as wide as Dak-Elim's hind body is long; and the trophy he seeks – a crown of three crimson feathers, their color matching the Silent Visitor's blood-like trail across the heavens, streaked with silver veins like rivers through the desert.
The bird's name is laruu; to harm it is a taboo comparable only to slaying one's own kin, hence the challenge of hunting it. Dak-Elim needs only one of this male's crimson feathers, grown only at this time of year along with the rest of its iridescent mating plumage, to prove his worth. Should the laruu feel any pain, the plume will become dull and worthless, a shameful token of a failed hunt. Should he take more than one – even by accident – he will be branded a blasphemer and cast out forever, disgrace brought to his name and blood. But if he returns home bearing the red and silver prize on his horn, he will stand as tall as Lor-Fan, his mother, and no longer wallow in her shade.
He checks again. Yes, three plumes; no more, no less. Had the bird possessed only two, it would mean it has been claimed already, and no other hunter is allowed to target it. Dak-Elim's patience, it seems, is now rewarded.
Dak-Elim prepares himself. The bird has not noticed his presence, and it begins its ritual. First, it flaps its wings as if trying to summon thunder, mist coalescing into a spiral around its form; Dak-Elim tries making himself smaller, almost dreading that the laruu will turn and see him peering from the edge of the karst, ending his hunt. Next comes the chanting: the laruu's song is a symphony of shrill highs and roaring lows, a call that echoes through the heavens and past the karst into the distance; Dak-Elim swears he can even feel it reverberating through the stone's own bones. And the last piece is the shimmering of its colors, a show of health and vigor in sparkling splendor; it is so beautiful, like gazing into a dance of celestial bodies, that Dak-Elim almost gives up his hunt as he is moved to tears.
In the end, however, there is only this: as the mist clears, as the laruu reaches the highest of its notes, as its plumage ripples with the colors of the stars, the planets and the Silent Visitor, Dak-Elim strikes. His hooves gallop faster than the eye can process; his arms throw further than the bird can get in a single frightened leap; his resolve is unwavering. In an instant, the laruu is entangled in the net, its ritual interrupted, its mind racing with primal fear as it struggles against this unexpected and unknown captivity. In an instant, the fibers of the net break under the strain of its flapping wings, of its desperate throes. In an instant, its mighty and beautiful form is four meters away from the ground, flying off into the distance and leaving behind the hunter and his now-useless trap. The laruu continues chanting, not in sensual seduction, but as a frightened warning to any others of its kind that may come here to mate. The last of the refracted light bleeding from its wings graces the deserted karst, and the echoes of its voice dissipate into the sky.
Dak-Elim smiles. He has witnessed something beautiful today, something that few ever dare to see. His hand holds his prize – the crimson plume streaked by silver veins like paths connecting the stars in a sanguine heaven. He has triumphed. He is now, like his mother, legendary.
Still, this is a sacred place, and Dak-Elim will not allow the ecstasy of his triumph to overcome and despoil him. He picks up the broken net – he knows that it can be repaired and used anew – to leave no evidence behind; the laruu will return once the danger has abated, and this time no one will cut short its song. Perhaps, Dak-Elim thinks to himself, he can stay behind and wait just a little longer; after all, what would be a better recompense for his victory – better still than the respect and pride of his people – than listening to such gorgeous symphony with no interruptions?
Above the karst, the mist clears long enough to glimpse the sky. Onwards shines the Silent Visitor, the Crimson Herald who has witnessed it all.
"Thus is the first story told and finished. The hunter returns to his people brimming with the pride of his achievement and the moving tale of what he has heard. The Crimson Herald moves to the next place just as the Caravan does, past the karsts and mountains, over the Desert that contains the world. The question now is, child, would you like to hear more?"
"Yes," you answer with eyes full of wonder, and the storyteller begins anew.