The ground grew less rocky as we neared the treeline. The razorflowers had become less common, and few of the ones that were so low were blooming. We could pass without any danger. Their flower spikes littered the ground, but by now they were soft and rotting. Fortunate, because the mist began to surround us before we reached the end of the fellfield where they grew.
Compared to the fog that cloaked the cloud forests on the upper slopes, it was thin. But it was more than enough to dull the sun's light. Beneath the mist, the flower spikes no longer gleamed. They were the same washed out color as the stone.
Ahead, the forest canopy was faintly visible. Oane's forests resemble nothing so much as collections of bundles of grass, with their lower trunks sheathed in flaky wood. The blades arc out like sunshades as they near the top, staying shy of each other's crowns. Each bundle-tree has a very wide span, and while they do overlap they only ever overlap slightly. The effect is a wide open but highly shaded space. That canopy helps keep in the heat, at least compared to the fellfield upslope. Quickly the cold weather gear grew too hot, and the four of us stripped it off and stored it in with the oiled silk tent.
The fog clung to the ground more upslope, so we had a clear vision of the walls of the gorge as we passed through the treeline. They were nearly sheer, as if precisely carved. I've seen canyons eroded by water, and the rock undulates like the course of a river. Even at a glance, I could tell the pass we were going through wasn't formed by such a process.
What processes did form the rocks of Oanes still confound geologists. The cliffs we saw weren't formed by waves, that much is true. But there are signs of water erosion far above the Eruk's current level, suggesting it was once deeper—much deeper. The layers of sediment are suggestive of great floods. Given that Oanes has a rainy season, this is not too surprising.
More puzzling is the presence of igneous rock on some of the layers. For all Oanes is known to be an unstable place, this close to the Eruk nothing capable of changing stone so dramatically should happen. Perhaps the Eruk dries up, and its protection with it, but only the stone seems so warped. The more outlandish theories have rivers of lava flowing across the landscape when reality is unstable—rivers of lava which, for whatever reason, only affect some stone.
Nevertheless some truths have been pried from cold unfeeling stone, even on Oanes. The Eruk has flowed this same course for millions of years, never changing its course. It has grown deeper or shallower, but never has it dried up. There are no old oxbow lakes farther downslope, nor any valleys where water used to flow through. The Eruk remains the only constant thing on this world, more like a mountain than the mountain itself.
As we entered the cloud forest, every surface dripped with moss and moisture. Unlike in many other cloud forests I've been in, here the bushes and smaller trees were few and widely scattered. For all the bundle-tree's canopies were thin, they blocked most of the light. Sunbeams irregularly filtered down to the forest floor, but the rest of the cloud forest was swathed in darkness. Vision there was possible, but only just. Long thin shapes flickered at the edge of our vision, quickly darting from hiding place to hiding place, gleaning yet smaller creatures we could not see through the fog—lower elevation species of kuul. Unlike the ones from the fellfield, these were quiet, not so bold. There are far more hungry creatures in the forest than there are higher up, and they are active throughout the year. It would not do for the kuul to draw attention to themselves, here.
I looked for any sign of those predators. With the fog and fronds, the shadows were both deep and shifted oddly as a faint breeze that did not reach the forest floor stirred them into motion. With every shadow moving, every shadow seemed like it might hide something, something big. I felt no fear, only curiosity. The predators here were no threat to us, just the kuul.
Nothing revealed itself. We saw signs of large creaturesburrows and scrapings, even discarded kuul armor platesbut the predators themselves were well hidden. There were just the kuul, the plants, and the fungi.
So, so many fungi.
We could see the signs of a great cluster of them before we saw the fungi themselves. For all the air was nearly still in the forest, closer to the Eruk the faint breeze from above reached down to ground level, just the slightest breath of wind. And on that breeze, their spores drifted, twirling through the air like specks of brown dust. Only when they were in a sunbeam could I see them. Otherwise, they were totally invisible.
I changed my path to follow them, hopping across a set of broad stones in a slower, shallow part of the Eruk. The stone felt frigid against my feet, a brief reminder of the fellfield we'd come from. The others were quick to follow. We had an idea what we'd find, but had never seen it on Oanes before. Ahead, we could see sunlight, and much more of it. Here, the bushes were much higher. Even with the mist, the light was as bright as back home.
But tallest of all, as we emerged into the clearing, were the fungi. Tall spires extended above the bundle-trees, in brown and pink. They emerged from several fallen bundle-trees. These had split apart when they landed, becoming a loose pile of partially shredded stems. The spores pored from open cells along the fungi's stalks like water, almost a mirror of the Eruk's smaller falls. Before our eyes, a creature emerged from one of the fallen stems, and leapt into the air. Glittering rainbow wings unfolded mid-leap, flickering in the sun.
The cloud forests of Oanes are frequently struck by windstorm. Katabatic winds coming off the upper slopes can be intense, especially farther from the Eruk where glaciers are more common. Every expedition that's bothered to climb a bundle-tree or get to a cliff has seen dozens of places where the smoothness of the canopy was broken by blowdown. Not uncommon for mountain forests, but it appears that the weakness of the bundle-trees makes them more vulnerable. With their only true wood being a thin ring around their fleshy stalks, they're much weaker than the trees we see on other worlds.
Perhaps this is the reason the fungi on Oanes reach such heights. I have never wandered a world with such prodigious growths. Typically on Oanes, fungal spires reach above the canopy. While they reach great heights, they are extremely thin—their spires are far stronger than the stalks of the bundle-trees. But that strength doesn't protect the creatures that would worm their way through their own flesh.
We didn't see them in the clearing, but many fungi in the cloud forests have worms burrowing in their flesh, worms bearing clusters of feathery tendrils. These emerge only rarely and retreat back within the spire at the first sign of danger, so their absence when we were tromping around was to be expected. But when they're emerged, they filter out thousands of spores from the air.
The fungi aren't the only thing on Oanes that recycles dead wood. Many more species of skimmer live in the cloud forest, including ones that live on dead bundle-trees as larvae. These were the winged creatures we saw. They are far larger than their higher elevation kin, and have a more varied diet as adults—some drink nectar, some eat fruit. But the ones that live off dead wood as larvae don't eat at all as adults. Their lifespan is even shorter than the skimmers whose bones we saw upslope. Those lasted a night. These last mere hours.
Their lives are just as fleeting as the fallen bundle-trees.
The storm came upon us as quickly as a striking serpent. One moment, the sky was clear except for fog. Then the next, we heard thunder and saw lightning overhead. Clouds began to truly block out the sun, rather than merely dim it as the fog did. As the wind picked up, the cloud of spores thickened, to the point where we could scarcely see in front of our feet. We had to get within sight of the Eruk, and quickly.
"This way!" I called to my companions, choosing where I thought I could hear the sound of water coming from. We crashed through the understory, not caring how much noise we made for once. Only getting to the Eruk mattered. But as we ran and rain pounded the canopy, so loudly we could hardly hear ourselves, there was no sign of the Eruk, not even as the cloud of spores started to clear. Instead, we were deeper into the forest. With the rain pounding the canopy, it was quite impossible to hear any more.
At first we didn't know how far away from the Eruk we were. Only when the sky split open did we realize how far away we must have been. I do not use metaphor; the stars above tilted away from each other and a line of pure darkness, a deeper black than any I had ever seen before, appeared in the sky. As we watched in horror, the sky began to spider-web above us, more cracks emanating from the first. A strange silver light began to stream from the cracks in great ribbons, yet the cracks themselves remained utterly dark.
Recriminations were swift. In my panic, I'd guided us the wrong way. But though we were in no immediate danger, it was not safe to linger. The river was not visible or audible where we were, and climbing the bundle-trees was much too dangerous. Instead, we turned back the way we'd come from, but downslope. If absolute worst came to worst and we could not find the Eruk by the time we emerged from the forest, we had hope that in more open terrain we could find the river again.
We tried to keep our eyes on the ground, ignoring the drifting fragments of night sky above us as best we could. But the fragmenting reality made itself known in other ways as well. Bundle-trees faded into existence halfway up. The rain reversed direction. We avoided the worst of the unstable reality, even when it meant we had to take the long way around. None of us wanted to find out what would happen if we were caught up in the instabilities. Soon, we could not be certain at all that we were still going the right way. The world around us seemed to spin.
There was worse, soon. Ahead we saw flashes of a brighter violet than the leaves of the understory plants through the fog. At first we thought it as some clearing, overgrown with bushes and not fungi, and we headed towards it, thinking perhaps it might be along a cliff edge that might show us the best way to the Eruk.
But it was not bushes; that became clear as we neared it.
It was a tent, ripped to pieces by time and the elements. Through it we could see bones. For a few brief moments, we paused, uncertain. But then we pressed forward. If we were unable to quickly find our way back, any surviving supplies might be helpful—and understanding how they died seemed prudent.
I searched around. It was hard to make sense of the scene. Some bones were shattered; I could not tell why, for it had been a long time since these wanderers died. Scraps of cold weather gear and violet oiled silk were littered around their campsite. The skeletons were of our own species, and seemed to come from our own homeland; the patterns their teeth were etched were similar, uncannily so, but it was hard to make out detail at this point. Perhaps there were three, perhaps there were four—it was hard to tell.
We found nothing of use, of course. It had been so long flesh was gone and only bone remained. Nothing useful could have lasted that long. And we found no answers, either. Oanes holds many mysteries, and it is pointless to try and understand them all. All we could do was attempt to avoid whatever threats manifested themselves.
We continued onwards. We did not bury them. The soil is thin, and we dared not linger. Instead we moved faster, trying to put distance between ourselves and that grim scene, hoping that safety was just ahead.
But only Raxo hearing a familiar buzzing, in the opposite direction as we were traveling, started to draw us to safety. As we went, we could see long, thin creatures flashing through the air on four wings set on opposite ends of their bodies. They twisted and turned as elegantly as serpents in the water.
Not all relatives of the kuul have similar forms. Some swim, some burrow, and a few fly. Of all the creatures on Oanes, they and their kin are perhaps the most diverse in form and function. These, the ones we saw, swim in the Eruk's waters as juveniles and leap from the river to avoid predators. But as they age and gain strength, their paddles become dainty and their bodies become light. They leap higher and higher, until finally, they don't come back down.
Some relationships of the kuul and their allies are obvious. The flyers have similar relatives that never start to fly and only live within the Eruk's waters. Others are harder. There's dozens of different species that swarm through the bundle-trees, which often look very different. Did they evolve from a single ancestor, or have kuul ascended into the canopy over and over again?
Back in Carcosta, scholars would look for fossils. On Oanes, that's really not possible. There are fossils, strange beasts with too many legs even for kuul and their kin, with no armor plating. But how can those fossils be trusted? Oanes' very rock bears the signs of shifts in reality, even close to the Eruk in ancient times. Genetics seem more reliable. But without fossils, they're of only limited use.
Still, some truths have been gleaned. Many times, the kuul and their allies have undergone mass speciation events. Why is unknown. Perhaps they occurred during whatever disruptions led to igneous rock forming along the Eruk.
The fog started to thin as we once again began to follow the Eruk downslope. It was not too long before it broke entirely, and then the forest was quick to vanish as well, once it no longer protected the bundle-trees from Oanes' sun. They gave way to grasses.
Below us, the plains stretched. We could see the base of the mountain, where it met rolling hills. Miles of the Eruk were visible from our vantage point.
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