9 Fractures to Call Eternity

Cotton sprigs dotted the torture that was this slog up to The Ladi. Most other towns cleared crags and boulders and fallen trees from their thoroughfares; but not Ladi GruHas. There were no roads. Her crags and hard ways and steep stone slopes were principal in her defense from ne'er-do-wells and thugs.

"How is it..." A sapped Jayed Cashtiel drew a panting huff. "How is it that The Ladi...has all these hazards...to keep out thugs..." One erroneously placed boot slipped on loose pebbles and one of her buttocks slid into the shoulder of an aging man at her rear. He propped her up with little to no effort on the brawn of that shoulder. She huffed once more, then continued the climb. "...yet...the city is still...so chocked full of thugs?"

"Man will go through great trouble for the promise of arse and gold...mainly gold." The aged one replied with a dry ease to his words. He'd been here many times.

He pushed her further on by the backside up over the husk of a log. So long dead and so rotted out, the log was, that the very hint of her weight collapsed it to crumbles. The tiny living things within it scattered in fright. Jayed panted hard as she recovered, hugging herself close to the rock by only grasping snatches and cold frozen grips. Dead things lay here for so many cycles, the sedge and frost-laden mosses had long since overgrown the actual path they were attempting to follow upward. So far the way up to the Ladi was. They had another forty meters still yet to scale until they'd see the gates of reprieve.

The greying man climbed ahead, sensing the frustration in the girl, then he reached backward to pull her by the wrist and hoist on upward; as was his nature. Vigilant, aware, present of mind. Matter-of-fact. A kin to the wolf, for certain.

He hailed from the royal city of her long deceased mother, Cashtiel. The capital city of one of the four kingdoms in the country known now as The CloseKings of Ashok. She'd only just left those deep woods and lush groves of Ashok a little over a cycle ago. Her den elders—Those Who Wear Old Helms—had bid her to travel, for her curious nature was becoming a choking impediment on her duties within the fluff and trappings of her royalty. They'd surreptitiously designated a new Hunter of the House, a new Weroance, to replace her, in the hopes she'd take to the road to satisfy her curiosities.

It was a welcomed boot. She'd long wanted to fill a higher station anyway. Something besides being a hunter for her den. Something all the CloseKings would praise her for. She had desired, nay, obsessed over climbing to a much grander tier. One the steadfast wolvkin before her had already achieved.

He was a Zadagen Agent. A Paragon and Prince. A King's blade and adviser. A head-hunter. There was nothing higher. Nothing in all the world's military that could best being an Agent in the Service of Kings.

But Jayed felt no farther from this now on the side of these crags than she'd ever been. She wished she had his fortitude for he seemed to tolerate the most ridiculous of tasks, including this climb. His hands gripping the rock reminded her of toil. The beef of his thighs reminded her of power and might. The grey in his hair reminded her of Taphsel. Poor Taphsel.

Taphsel cared so deeply for her rearing when he took her in. He didn't deserve to die. Alone in the shed. No one to defend his life. If she had been an Agent she would have surely saved him.

Jayed shook the memory from her mind. Rock and grass tufts needed to be desperately tended. The greying man above her was a tough old fart and he kept an all too adept pace up this mountainside. How many times had he come here, anyway?

In her daydreaming she'd failed to notice that her half-gloved fingers had started to go numb as they sank deep into something cold. She looked to the slope. There was snow up here. When had the snow started to fall? Had they climbed into it? It appeared to have been falling for some moons now.

She looked up again. Jayed hadn't notice if the old man ahead of her had seen any of her tears that had welled over missing the man who raised her, but she choked down whatever old sorrow for Taphsel had been tugging at her will. She swallowed that frown to regain some sense of scaling speed. Her adopted father would've been disappointed if she tumbled down the side of this mountain due to a lack of attention to the Now.

The greying one's gravely voice broke the soft silence of her musings. "Gru Gate."

Jayed looked up from her intense grip on the soddy crags to view his call to attention. A pair of crimson and orange banners waved long at the crest of the slope from, what she could make out were, two steam-bowed ornate wooden beams on top of two very large posts.

Her eyebrow perked. It was a real gate; almost the size of the gates into Cashtiel. She never knew these folk had a sense of design.

"Veygornne?" She panted. "How--"

"Not far, pup."

The last fifteen meters were the worst as she stared at the looming grey gate into town both taunting and welcoming her tired distressed body. She desperately wanted to loose her hair as it was dreadfully pinned up into that traditional wolaenki.; the fabled mark of those dedicated to the path of becoming an Agent. For a full cycle she'd worn this hairstyle everyday and only just now had begun to hate the very idea of it. She could feel the pressure of her own blood vessels beating against the metal pins holding it all neat.

Veygornne, the aged one, was keenly aware of her limp grabs and struggle to respite, for he chuckled as he pulled her body alongside him the last bit of the way.

"Aaahh, Aphsa-Cashtiel!" A rich manly voice called over the ridge. The greying one cursed at him and threw up a palm for aid. The man calling over, slapped a strong hand about the wrist of the old wolf and hoisted him over the crest.

Jayed struggled and gripped and struggled yet more to reach the lip of the ledge wondering where her greeting and helping hand was. She pulled sod one last time to drag herself on to the snowy, rocky, cold, path. She collapsed onto her back and huffed a full lung's depth five times over before anyone even acknowledged her.

"First time in The Ladi, huh?"

Still no hand, but his voice was as bold as the crisp air up here.

Hastened swells of breath served as her cursed answers to his mocking. Everything hurt. Every muscle still felt just as balled up as it had on the side of that rock, but from the looks of the two men hovering above her now she must have also been a sorely woeful sight. They twisted smiles and concern into chuckles and the shaking of their heads. She gestured a lewd curse to both of her elders as they laughed away her pain.

Two younger faces poked in over on her. One immediately handsome and the other familiar and welcomed. The familiar face spoke first.

"You are going to love the Goldcrest up here. It reminds me of Kago." The girl said happily through a veil of messy pink braids.

Jayed was moved to immediate scrutiny at the upkeep of this one's tresses. They were Agency Prospects; their wolaenki were supposed to be neat and pinned and adorned at all times. "Uh, you gonna fix your--"

"Wolaenki's on holiday up here, girl." The bright girl clad in an equally messy collection of colourful wraps and cloths and scarves poured gobs of smiles onto her friend. "Everything's on holiday up here."

The handsome one shoved a bluish-brown hand toward her and she slapped at it in a slack gable. Jayed was always keen to impress—for she very much liked the attention of males—but if this was to be his first impression of her, she immediately didn't care if he knew the truth. That stupid climb had taken the coy right out of her.

As Jayed was helped to her feet, the mess of braids and smiles and bright blue eyes brushed frost and sod from her wildergear. She'd always been the motherly type. "You remember Siin, right?"

Jayed looked around once, then realizing she meant the handsome young lad she was leaning on, she shot him an appalled expression.

"Siin? Ynggrloch?"

"It's...aBn Ynggr now." The smoothness of his voice shocked her so she almost missed the correction.

"Oh, you took the rites...well, wow." She gave him a stiff once over. Siin's skin was pocky and his nose was crooked and he used to wear holey trousers and ripped shirts. This Siin, who kept his hair in an oily wad on top of his head and lost most of his teeth before any others had properly grown in. An immigrant urchin child who had an incorrigible penchant for skulduggery. Talented in mage craft, yes, but a homeless waif who had forced friendship on her like some forlorn pup.

If he had sworn his talents to the Magi of the aBn Tera Villa, he'd must have surprisingly made more of himself than that subkin on the streets of Cashtiel she grew up with.

The thought struck her, then, of what it must have been making him look this way. "Hm, no wonder you look so fetching. Hopped up on aBn-sauce."

There was a certain stink on her words. Siin rolled his grey-amber eyes, flung her arm around his neck and dragged her toward the gate proper. He huffed a half-irritated scoff at the three of them; pack-siblings reunited.

Gru Gate was indeed as large as she had imagined from over the ledge. Impossibly giant grey posts, two grey beams weighted upon them and brightly coloured banners billowing longer than the beams stood. A primitive fear ran up her tailbone. She reeled ears backward and snarled at the looming thing. Abn Yggnr hugged her ribs into him to soothe the girl.

"Ssh, yeah, I remember. Just dread-of-the-loom, Cash." he muttered low. The sudden enormity of things had always rattled the wolf-spirited folk.

She settled herself.

Beyond the gate stretched a path of peach-coloured cobbles that branched off into five other peach-coloured paths throughout the city. One of them led to a thicket of grey trees way off in the distance and Jayed made a note to visit them during her time here.

Manly timber broke her attention of the woods. "Arrangements have been made for your inn stay already, Cashtiels. Including some furs from Ashok... "

"The rooms are so nice, too." The happy mess of braids clapped one palm on the back of her friend's hand hanging over Siin's shoulder. "Soft dirt patches to curl up in. Plush coverings to lay on." She batted at a dull pulsing nugget of light bobbing in the air in front of her. It righted itself and floated to a higher position next to other nuggets like it across their field of view. "That is if you want to do it the old-fashioned way. They've also got beds."

"Either one, makes no difference to me." Jayed shooed at another one of the many nuggety troll gallstones hanging in the air at her face. Why the planet had been littered with these enchanted Grui right at eye level, she never knew. And she didn't believe anyone else knew either.

"Yeah, they're all the way up here, too." The happy mess sagged. "You'd think these things wouldn't be netted all the way up a mountain but here they are...hanging in our faces...reminding us of the poor eating habits of cruddy monsters noone cares anything about."

Jayed addressed the very manly one to question. "Do you all really still use these things?"

"Only if immediately necessary." he answered flatly. "We have many means of communication. The Grui being our least favourite option." He ended.

"Oh," she shied away from more questions, stashed neatly in the meat of her once-friend's side. Siin had indeed grown into something comfortable to nestle into.

The large one seemed bent about the notion of those enchanted stones in the air and she didn't much want to insight the choler of this golden-haired man in cloaks cutting bright blue eyes at the hanging things.

Jayed freed her now strengthening body from her living crutch and stretched a long stretch as she wiggled her form into limberness. She gave him an odd glance, Siin; taking a second think on their shared childhood. She then passed an eye to the happy one, wishing it had not been two cycles since they'd last met. She walked ahead of the group a few paces, ready now to take in the city.

"Ladi Gruhas." She scoffed, "What an ugly set of words. It's so hard on the tongue. What even does that mean?"

"Well, translated literally, it means Lady Guard Up." Answered the manly voice walking next to Veygornne. She remembered liking this man when she was younger. His hair was strange—golden bright, like the sun—but she always thought he had a warm looking face. "Figuratively, though, it means The Guarded City."

"You mean, figuratively, though, it means 'Lady Pants Down', amiright?" The messy one in colours nudged the plushy coverings of her superior, the gleam of his knowing smile caught a chuckle in her throat.

He looked to her as if he were going to agree then tilted off that response for another. "I am engaged."

"Your loss, boss." Happy braids raised two haphazard arms in the air as she walked up to pair with her kinsman.

Jayed was staring off now at the city before her. Grey in its entirety but not as gloomy as she thought that colour might imply. Infact the air of it looked to be almost jovial.

Jayed took immediate notice of the structures all leaned into the angle of the mountainside. Treats jumped to mind. Grey cookie houses stuck to a stone grey cake. All the buildings boasted grey slatted—what looked to be—shields up one side from their foundations to their shingles; like a swooping scoop. She immediately understood they must have been built to course the winds and blizzards the city was surely often pounded with. Slatted eaves dug into stone and scaffolds were staked into the earth to hold homes and shops and taverns and city structures in solid place from the threat of being blown into the valley below.

Even in all this ashen wood and oddly crisscrossed scaffolding, Ladi GruHas was a gorgeously ornate city. Amongst all the grey cakey habitus, there sprouted a red or orange or jarringly bright lime building dotting the cluster like fruits. She really wanted to eat them. The trim on the windows—of which there were many around the city—were all the colour of whipped cream. Painted flowers decorated the eaves and strings of fresh flowers hung from beams over the elevated porches of some of those loudly painted buildings like sugary decorations on top of this sweet treat.

Jayed instantly understood what fun this place must have been and snapped a hungry look to the happy mess of braids. "Goldcrests you say, Kodlaa? How 'bout mounded-cream cookies?"

"All the cookies you can feast."

Both girls clapped softly to themselves as the three men made scrutinizing faces behind them.

The Guarded City was a hive of lively individuals slinging strings of flowers about the necks of visitors. They had all but ignored the biting cold as their fashion was all lined in fur but unlike the browns and dark greens Jayed was used to back home in Cashtiel, these folk wore floral trimmed robes of oranges and pinks and violets and crimsons. Their calf length tawny hair braided with intricate patterns. Their mapley-brown wrists and ears decked with silver and brass coloured jewelry. Jayed was unsure if all of Gaen a Nce wore such lavish attire or if it was just a custom of the two places she'd visited thus far but she was slowly gaining an interest in them.

Fully invested in the crowded rhythm of the walk into the city, the group made it to a small square with tent-stalls at each corner. Startled from drinking in the sights, Jayed was pulled by Veygornne to the rightmost stall where sat a rotund lady being kissed and petted by—what was clearly suggested to be—her doting husband.

Both the happy mess of braids and the light-haired man prodded politely to interrupt the loving pair. The messy one scanned the scene then made a shamed face at the flaxen-haired man; she was unsure if the lot were intruding upon some solace or just a normal moment of affection. Such a display would be a sour sight to Ashok onlookers. The crowd was thick here and the group squenched in together as they waited for said marital moment to naturally pass before making their request.

Cloaks and robes passed by far too close to Jayed's left shoulder to let her remain comfortable, however. One cloaked man doused horribly in the perfumes of dying roses didn't even break speed as he knocked her side passing by. She cut him an eye and grimaced as he disappeared into the rest of the crowd. She furrowed at the memory of him for she swore she had seen him once before in the port city and now here, moving just as hastily; with something in his grasp she could swear was glowing. She looked back to the couple then back to where she'd seen him disappear within the crowds at the fountain. He'd been at a fountain down in the port city. She was sure of it. Jayed blinked a number of times figuring if she should be angry or sufficiently confused; she was not used to such disregard of personal space from whence she hailed. She chose to shrug away her annoyance.

The smiling wife finally noticed the group standing too close to her stall to have been oblivious of them and jumped to a serviceable demeanor.

"Oh, my good Sers, welcome to the Post's Extension. What do ye?"

"We do with Littera Missiva for the Zadaegen Agency." The light-haired one said sharply. His voice carried so much command, even a few townsfolk and other travellers minded his address. Her skinny husband straightened himself and beamed tiny blue eyes upon them. The flaxen-haired one noticed him immediately and wondered of his familial background, as blue-eyes were uncommon amidst the sea of brown and grey that seemed to blanket Dureyr's nations. His wife went to digging through locked cabinets of scroll cases and parchments.

"It'd be a green case. Uh, with little expensive bits all over the ends of it." The young messy girl instructed brightly.

The tall fair-haired man turned an eye down to her and raised a brow. "When did I tell you it was gree—"

"Ya didn't. The second you asked me to tighten up my wolaenki. I stopped listenin' to ya words and started watchin' ya hands." Kodlaa bent a disbelieving set of blue eyes up to his. "You got a lot of them green things stuffed all 'round in you." She poked at his cloaks.

Siin chuckled to himself. Jayed and Veygornne looked to each other unknowingly. But it was clear, by their familiarity, the manly one had collected both Siin and Kodlaa some time back and had escorted them to Ladi Gruhas to receive orders for their head-hunting trial. She wondered if they had had to endure that dreadful climb also. Though by the looks of the flaxen-haired one, he could have just carried them up the mountain, each in one arm.

As the round woman dug through slots of parchments, the light-haired man turned his attention to the greying old wolf. "How was your trek, Veygornne?"

"Marred with troubles." Veygornne's eyes darted about his soured memories. Jayed looked up, ready to defend her behaviours.

"What, borderguard give you bother?"

"Naturally. These are the only two cities in all of Gaen a Nce anyone ever travels to. Everywhere else, they think we a sorry sack of biters. Which, granted, most of the military is. But, it was more so the whole of the port city and their guard trying to bed this one. Those ruffians wouldn't know noble arse if it stabbed them with a gilded knife. She was propositioned twice, gifted a round of ale, and offered some woman's lay-about son to wed just because she wore a slightly less tattered cloak than he. All in all, our Princess did well, though. Taph taught her to keep her high-born Split-Wolf mouth shut in such cases."

Ashok had once been called the Split-Wolf Kingdoms long ago, but now the moniker only really rested as a favoured appellation amoung those in close camaraderie. All wolvkin took a certain pride in its invocation, just as Jayed's smirk did here.

"Pff, nobility." she thumbed out across to cloud-kissed mountainside; toward the direction her homeland must have been in, but she couldn't have be sure of that. "You do know Droadh's the crowned one. He's getting the chiefdom, not me. I wasn't even thinking about nobility. I was thinking the port city is the gaudiest place I've ever laid eyes on and Gaen A Nce needs a fleet of weyships. This is some of the roughest terrain I've ever trudged across."

"You'll get a weyship when Gaen A Nce opens its borders. You see the way they guard its receivables." The manly one's palm flapped toward the stall of the Post's Extension and the woman still unlocking locks and filing through cases set within cases.

"Oh, so never."

Every rumor Jayed had ever heard of this place was slowly starting to fold into the truth of reality.

The Great Island of Gaen a Nce loved its solitude and its singularity. They were the only people who fostered rampantly unserviceable courtly customs like extravagant curtsies, wildly lengthy greetings, and overweening displays of fanciful swordplay. By the time the rest of the world learned any one of their lavish gestures or bureaucratic procedures, the sentiment would be made obsolete and a new one set in its place. They could remain elitists in this respect. Everything a learned dance. There were so many more rules and odd etiquette and ancient highborn rituals on Gaen a Nce than anywhere else. Most of the other countries cared nothing for it and stayed far away from this island nation. So the only foreigners that ever really visited her shores were either sanctioned or chartered or hired or royal. And the Agency was all of those.

There was one thing Gaen a Nce had in its favour. Its Solarguard. If ever there had been need for armed forces in any part of the world, Gaennish troops were among the strongest and they never failed to flaunt their military power. However commissioning them took scrolls upon scrolls of meandering missives wrapped in banks and banks of crushing bureaucracy. So in this, Gaen a Nce could also remain the most powerful single solitary armoured force in the world.

The flaxen-haired one appeared burnt out from the wait leaning on the stall.

He took a great huff to prod the round woman just in time for her cheery face to smile up at him; pulling out a long green scroll case capped in just the expensive gold bits Kodlaa had so rightly mentioned.

The fair-haired man took it and shoved the large thing into some hidden pocket in his golden furry cloaks that seem to envelope him four times over. He scoffed at that moldy bit of business now done while he and the happy mess of scarves and colours lead the trek to their inn. Siin and the two Cashtiel wolvkin followed closely in suit.