A Village In The Mountains (Shuu)

I'm going to be in so much trouble, Shuu sighed.

As he casually hung upside down on a tree branch, his stomach swollen like a balloon about to pop.

The slow life of the outdoors suited him best, he felt, as he stared at the carcass of his latest victim, a brown bear twice his size laid defeated beneath him.

"Shuu!" an elderly woman shouted from a cliffside staircase.

As he heard his name echo down the surrounding mountains - His arm hair stood at attention falling headfirst and hitting the jungle floor - There was no time for pain.

Elder Mari had decided she was a detective that day.

He promptly stood and attempted to cover the head-shaped crater with small leaves.

"What am I doing!" he asked himself.

Gravity had always been his ultimate nemesis. Though he could wipe the blood off his head, just like wiping a spill off a coffee table. "Good as new," he said.

"Shuu!" Elder Mari shouted again.

"I'm coming. I was just" - he looked around nervously- "tying up the firewood."

He grabbed the firewood he had stacked as high as the brown bear's squeaky clean bones and wore it on his back.

sweat collected on his palms from the touching of his hands, his nostrils flared as his face scrunched up. "Thank you for your sacrifice," he prayed.

He dashed up through the trees, knocking down any loose leaves, using the branches as footholds to propel himself toward the cliff top.

Once, he had caught up to Elder Mari, the Tethys village elder. She immediately pinched his ear, pulling him to the tips of his toes.

"Ow! ow! Ow!" Shuu squeaked.

"What was that for," he asked?

Mari said as she looked at him with beady eyes - "I'm sure you did something."

His ears perked;

He felt uneasy as he slowly turned his head toward the three mimic monkeys that tormented him from the safety of the mountainsides daily, annoyingly only repeating words that caught their fancy.

To his dismay, the monkeys sang a number as if they had rehearsed it just that morning.

"Shuu did something."

"Shuu did it again."

"Shuu did something..."

His face flushed red, quickly shifting his head away.

"Did you hear me when I said, be back before practice," - she let go of his ear - the sharp pain he felt was gone entirely.

Shuu apologised as his head turned back for a stare-down with the monkeys as if it was a school turf war between delinquents.

Another not so friendly match between peers.

As he walked into the village, the wind seemed to grunt in bursts from the precise movements and coordinated techniques of diligent Tethyian students at martial arts practice.

"Put the firewood away so you can join the others," Mari said.

On his way, Shuu stopped to help a newly initiated Tethyian child fix the fit of her recently issued weighted clothing, "Thanks," said the child.

"You welcome, and don't worry; you will get used to them soon enough," he said.

"I still feel like all this is completely overkill," Shuu mumbled as he became acutely aware of the true horrors of his life.

"All we ever do is train or practice. Is that all anyone ever thinks about? It's always the same thing; if it's not let us train before the sunrise, to prepare the body for the day, it's let us train to prepare the body for the food," Shuu thought with rattling teeth as he bit his nails. "It would be a divine blessing if no one suggested we train to make good use of the energy the food had provided."

He began to fidget, leaning on the firewood. His act to be as natural as possible had backfired as he caught the practice instructor's attention. "You are late, and since everyone is paired up already, you can spar with Linshao," he said.

"I'm so dead," Shuu muttered to himself.

He franticly started to scan the training grounds with what felt like heightened senses. His heart dropped closer to his stomach with every drum beat reverberated around the monastery.

His eyes were more and more desperate to meet a kindred spirit or - at the very least - a look of encouragement from an ally. Though it seemed it was not meant to be, as everyone's eyes were annoyingly vacant, attentively preoccupied with the twiddle of their thumbs.

"This must be the work of Voidings," He thought," for only the creatures of Nyx could steal the life from a man's eyes. okay, maybe that's a little dramatic but is everyone seriously going to pretend that I'm not looking directly at them right now!"

He panickily realised that none of that mattered as it was not the main issue.

The final beat of the drum would signify the begging of the sparring sessions; time was not on his side.

He had to think quickly.

The energy given by the bear meat he ate in the jungle would not be wasted on such trivial matters. Escape was the only reasonable course of action, and the conditions were highly favourable.

Elder Mari was nowhere in sight; the west wall was likely loosely guarded, and as long as he did not stray too close to Linshao, success would be guaranteed with the sunset obscuring the vision of any would-be pursers.

A yell for help rushed into Tethys village like a gust through a mountain crack. Shuu quickly noticed two people guided by Tethyian children at the entrance arch as the villagers rushed to their aid.

The man was wounded, wrapped in dirty cloths? He may have been unconscious or worse. "Somebody help him! "said the woman who dragged him to the village on a makeshift stretcher barefooted.

"... Scary; she saw the touch monsters near the river," the children whispered to each other as they walked past Shuu.

- His ears perked - "A touched?" he thought as he straightened his back, rushing toward the woman who now stood alone, presumably shaken by the man's condition, "or could it be? that she actually encountered one this far south of the Barter Lands?"

"Miss, Are you alright," Shuu asked?

"I'm" - her eyes shifted down - "I really have to go now," she said.

"Don't you want to know if that man is okay," Shuu asked?

"No." - She looked directly into Shuu's eyes - "I found him, and I brought him here; I really need to leave now."

Her actions made no sense, but she did not strike him as a person who warranted suspicion. After all, she had dragged a man up the stairs on the mountain to bring him to the village; The bruises on her feet told him enough.

"So I presume you don't know who him? Did he happen to tell you how he got his wounds," Shuu asked?

"Touched," she whispered.

Shuu felt a chill.

A Tethyian girl took Shuu's hand from behind. She said Elder Mari sent her to bring him to the temple.

Shuu had been lost for words as his worst suspicions were confirmed.

"Thank you for speaking with me," Shuu said as he bowed before leaving for the temple.

"If a Touched appeared here, could a Voidling be near?" he thought. "This could change everything; last I heard, the Touched had not been seen beyond the Ash Lands. Then again, we usually don't hear much about the outside world; I wonder if something has changed."

"I need more information."

At the temple, Shuu focused on the still unconscious man's wounds as he walked into the room where Elder Mari and two other elders had been treating him.

Her hands were covered in the misty teal fluid known as Asa's aspect, healing magic that all Tethyians have from birth, but none had mastered it quite like Elder Mari.

He noticed the man's wounds were not healing, as would be, expected, more so if it was Elder Mari herself doing the healing. An eerie feeling washed over him as he turned to speak; the room was ghost-quiet; Shuu felt the tension he had not noticed moments earlier so thick it had been pressing against the walls causing them to expand outward exponentially, an uncomfortable feeling he could not quite place, as the room simultaneously felt so confined that moving seemed impossible.

Shuu knew that he had to tell them what he knew and his suspicions.

"Elders, the woman who brought him here --"

He swallowed his remaining words, "Those who fear that which they do not understand are fools doomed to repeat the sins of their ancestors." These words echoed from long since forgotten memories, a bone-chilling revelation as his eyes swept across the room.

The fear these elders felt was of a reckoning to come.

"This is the doing of a Touched," Mari said.

She explained that while the children in the village are taught about the 700-year war raging in the north, the void creatures of Nyx (voidlings) and the Touched they create.

There was much that the Tethyian believed a person should learn for themselves. On a journey of enlightenment, with only the tools required etched deep in their bodies.

One of these life lessons; was the true nature of the Touched.