Matabar Chapter 14 - Two Homes

Ardi ran so fast that at tis it seed like his feet weren’t touching the snowy ground. Only his barely noticeable footprints were acting as proof that the gray flash streaking through the trees was not rely a vision or an illusion created by the cold wind. Birds sang overhead, accompanying the hunter. The celestial wanderers flitted nearby, braving the frost and blizzard. They seed to be trying to tell their comrade sothing, but he wasn’t listening to them. Nor was he listening to the branches of tall trees reaching down, shedding their snowy blankets, and waking up in a season when the spirits had decreed that they should sleep and dream of the future and the past. Nor did Ardi hear the moaning of the weary earth. Hidden beneath the ice, it could only mournfully watch as the strong, swift legs of the one who had given this land the breath of magic for the last six cycles carried him farther away.

Maybe Ardi didn’t notice all of it, or didn’t want to notice it, but the forest behind him was changing. The elusive feeling that had reigned here before was disappearing. It was a sense of sothing mysterious and sacred, yet familiar and simple. Like a tale told to a child, like a story sung by bards. The forests and rivers, the mountains and hills were being covered by a blizzard, which was hiding invisible paths and old magic, turning the Alcade and its forests into sothing still beautiful, but now all too mundane.

The hunter tried to calm his heart, which now sought to leap from his chest, not from fear or excitent, but because it was trying to outrun its owner and reach Hawk’s Cliff as quickly as possible. He felt as if sothing was waiting for him there. Sothing that could answer even the most difficult question. The question that had always been postponed for tomorrow and its complex thoughts. The question:

"Who am I?" Ardi whispered, and the wind carried the uttered words and lulled them into the sky.

The hunter was not even disturbed by the storm rising over the mountains. Black clouds covered the sky, which shone with cold stars that were indifferent to this small interlude in the endless dance of the Spirits of the Day and Night. Why would they, the eternal companions of the gods, care about the paths of mortals?

Lightning flashed, brushing against the high peaks of the Alcade, and thunder rumbled in the valley. In that dark hour, as the last of the Matabar ran to a place known only to him, and a giant snow leopard followed his apprentice’s trail, the townspeople below, on the edge of the vast prairies and steppes, hid their children, closed their windows, and locked their doors. The Church had denied the existence of other gods and powers besides the Face of Light, and even his Eternal Angels were no more than embodints of the will of the Light Essence, as the pastors sotis called their "King of Kings."

The boy wiped away his tears with the back of his hand and looked at the blue symbol in the center of his chest. He didn’t know what Ergar had done, or why the essence of the Matabar hadn’t left him with the end of the ritual, which had happened to all other half-breeds. This was why the mountain hunters had eventually been subsud by the valley dwellers.

"Thank you," Ardi said, then turned and headed for Evergale.

As before, he didn’t know what awaited him, but the knowledge that he had sowhere to return to ward his soul.

A bracelet on his wrist, a symbol on his chest, an oak figurine around his neck, and carelessly sewn together furs — these were the belongings with which Ardan Egobar, son of Hector Egobar, set out on his new and most dangerous adventure yet.