Essun had seen many things in her long life.
She had watched Tribes rise and fall from the comfortable distance of the Threshold Lands. She had buried three husbands and outlived children who should have carried her legacy forward. She had witnessed Primal Surges and tribal wars and the slow grinding cruelty of the Lands of Stone across more decades than she cared to count.
But she had never quite seen sothing like the Tokoloshe.
She had watched him and Uncle Adam from afar when they first arrived here.
A weathered old warrior and a young man whose bearing didn’t match his Dross clothing. She knew right away they should have been so privileged Anointed Ones from an empire, refugees from whatever political disaster had driven them to these remote territories. Their manners were too refined. Their knowledge too extensive. Their cultivation too deliberate.
Hell, in the beginning, that kid found it hard to eat the things they ate, and when it ca to sleeping on rough beds and everything else that Dross had to do...they were miserable! Acclimating for them took a number of months before they were doing things naturally with the rest of the Tribesn.
But she didn’t say anything.
They were quiet and helped out, and Uncle Adam was strong. The tribe could only benefit from their presence, so she let them stay and watched from the shadows as the years passed. The Butcher’s attack had been an initiating event, both a horror and a blessing from the Ancestors. It revealed the wonders the Tokoloshe had been hiding beneath that unassuming farr’s exterior.
From then on, she and the entire tribe had basically been along for a ridiculous ride.
And it seed like things were only getting started.
Right now, thousands of Dross waited outside the gates. Refugees from trampled tribes, desperate and afraid and looking for salvation they probably didn’t expect to find. Essun had been wondering how the tribe would handle such numbers, whether they would need to turn people away, whether hard choices would need to be made.
And then she saw the wonder in the skies.
A massive beast descended from the clouds, golden fur blazing in the fading sunlight. Nine tails stread behind it like banners of conquest. A mane of blue flas burned around leonine features belonging to legends rather than reality. Wings of white-gold radiance spread wide, feathers catching light in ways that made the sun seem fucking modest.
Above the creature’s head, a crown of golden light declared sothing she couldn’t read from this distance but understood instinctively.
King.
The beast stopped in the skies, hovering with casual power that made her old bones ache with envy.
And from its back, two figures flew out. The human form of the Tokoloshe she had always known, though his eyes now held golden wings rather than the dark blue she rembered. Beside him flew the Holy Daughter, radiant wings spread wide as she descended alongside the Tokoloshe.
"Kaka..."
Essun cackled softly at the absurdity of it all.
That young man who used to help Elena with the farming, who ate breakfast with the rest of them and complained about the taste of dried at, had apparently beco sothing out of the old stories while she wasn’t looking.
And as if the beast in the sky wasn’t ridiculous enough, she felt the defensive wall begin to vibrate.
The crimson-blue barrier the Tokoloshe had transford pulsed with sudden life beneath her feet. She had been standing on it, watching the refugees approach, and now it moved as if responding to commands she couldn’t hear. The gate opened without anyone touching it, sections separating to create an entrance wide enough for columns of people to pass through.
But the walls didn’t stop there.
She felt the tides of Mana moving through the structure, currents of power flowing outward from the tribe toward the terrified masses beyond. Sections of the wall began to duplicate themselves, new portions materializing from the earth as if grown rather than built. They lengthened forward like massive joined pillars gaining consciousness, separating and widening the periter in real ti.
The walls were literally reaching out to embrace the thousands standing outside.
"Haha..."
Essun couldn’t help but cackle louder, her old eyes believing what they were seeing even as her brain struggled to process it. Was this the answer of the Tokoloshe? Simply expand the walls to fit everyone inside?
It was a grand answer indeed.
She wondered how he would deal with the rest.
Uncle Adam arrived beside her a few monts later, his weathered face carrying relief she understood without words.
The figures of the Holy Daughter and Damian touched down among the refugees, two beings of obvious power landing amid the desperate and afraid. The crowd parted around them instinctively, creating space for figures they recognized as beyond their understanding.
Essun watched from her position on the wall.
Damian floated a few feet above the ground, hovering with casual ease while looking at all the refugees around him. Mothers clutching children. Fathers standing protectively before their families. Sons and daughters who had lost everyone they loved. The old and the young and the injured and the whole, all of them staring at this young man with expressions mixing awe and fear.
They saw him to be human.
But the grand air he emanated felt otherworldly, as if they were staring at an Ancestor who had simply taken on the form of a young man for convenience.
Essun might have been like them if she hadn’t confird many things over the years.
She had watched the Tokoloshe go outside the village and near the mountain to piss and shit just like the rest of them. He had to eat. He had to defecate. He scratched himself when he thought no one was looking and made faces at bad-tasting food and occasionally stubbed his toe on rocks like any other person.
He was only human.
But he was most definitely extraordinary!
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