EMPIRE OF THE CASTAWAYS

Chapter 9: Scratches on the World's Back

 Ravindra 

Recovery took longer than Ravindra expected, and in the weeks after the peak test he discovered that bodies were easier to break than repair, that cold seeping so deep into bones couldn't be driven out just by sitting near fire or lying on warm stone heated by Auratigris's body, and that there was a price for every achievement that must be paid not only in blood and sweat but also in small pieces of self that never fully returned to what they were before. Two toes on his right foot turned black at the tips and had to be cut by Auratigris with claws sharper than any human-made surgical blade, a procedure performed without anesthesia because none was available at this altitude and the only choice was to bite a wooden stick until it nearly broke while the guardian carefully separated dead tissue from living with precision from thousands of years practice on other creatures who'd also challenged Frostreach and lost. The wound healed slowly, too slowly for Ravindra's comfort who was accustomed to young bodies recovering quickly, and during that healing period he had to learn walking with new balance, adjusting how right foot landed because two missing toes changed weight distribution in ways small but significant on dangerous terrain.

But there were also invisible changes, changes Ravindra felt more than understood, a kind of new awareness about the world and his place in it that came not from learning but from direct experience with death so close he could feel its breath on his neck and hear its whisper in his ears on nights when wind howled outside the cave with sound too similar to storm sounds at the peak. Auratigris said this was a sign he'd crossed the threshold from merely surviving to mastering survival, from reacting to danger to anticipating and manipulating, and in the guardian's words was unspoken acknowledgment that the test wasn't only about proving physical ability but also about something deeper, about breaking the part of self that still believed the world was fair or that effort was always rewarded or that there was intrinsic meaning in suffering besides suffering itself.

When Ravindra finally recovered enough to walk long distances without crippling pain, Frostreach's false spring had arrived, a brief period of several weeks when temperature rose enough to melt the top layer of snow and expose black rocks beneath that absorbed sun heat and created small islands of relative warmth amid constant cold, and on these islands sometimes hardy small plants dared send out green shoots that would die once cold returned but for now provided color besides the white and gray dominating landscape most of the year. During this period Auratigris brought Ravindra to a place the guardian called the World's Back, a geological formation located several hours journey from their cave, following a path so narrow and dangerous it could only be traversed when ice melted enough to expose handholds in rock, and even then required full concentration not to slip and fall into chasms gaping on both sides like mouths waiting to swallow the careless.

The formation appeared suddenly after they passed the last turn in the path, and the sight made Ravindra stop breathing for a moment because he'd never seen something simultaneously so beautiful and so terrifying, so clearly the creation of forces far beyond human comprehension and so clearly also those forces didn't care at all about beauty or meaning or anything important to small creatures crawling on the planet's surface. It was a stone wall rising vertically perhaps two hundred feet high, extending horizontally as far as eyes could see left and right like backbone of a giant buried partially beneath mountains, and along that wall's surface were carvings, couldn't be called otherwise because they clearly weren't natural formations though also clearly not made by ordinary human hands with ordinary human tools, carvings so large that one letter or symbol or whatever they represented could be as tall as Ravindra himself, and so many they covered every visible inch of surface in patterns that might have meaning or might just be chaos looking like order from distance.

Auratigris sat at the chasm edge facing the wall, a position making her look small for the first time since Ravindra knew her because the wall's scale made even the massive guardian look like children's toys compared to the monument scraping sky before them, and in the guardian's posture was something Ravindra rarely saw, some kind of humility or perhaps just acknowledgment there were powers in this world making even immortal creatures feel small and temporary and unimportant. "This is one of the seven Scratches," Auratigris began telling in voice quieter than usual, as if this place required whispering though none could hear except wind and stone, "made by gods before they died or left or whatever happened to beings so powerful they could reshape worlds with will but not powerful enough to avoid the fate eventually befalling all living things, which is to stop living either dramatically or slowly and sadly like lights gradually dimming until nothing remains except darkness."

Ravindra listened while staring at those carvings, trying to find pattern or meaning in how deep lines intersected and curved and spiraled around each other like fighting snakes or like rivers viewed from above or like something completely beyond human experience reference limited to scales comprehensible by brains evolved to deal with things the size of bodies themselves or slightly larger, not with monuments made to be seen by gods or perhaps by stars which might also be gods in some people's view who believed anything large enough or distant enough or inexplicable enough must have some kind of consciousness or purpose or plan though evidence for that claim was none except psychological need to believe something larger than self cared about individual small fates who lived and died without leaving significant traces. "What's written there?" he finally asked when it became clear Auratigris wouldn't continue without prompting, and the question felt stupid as soon as spoken because clearly the guardian didn't know either or would've said without being asked, but sometimes questions needed asking even when answers were already clear just to fill silence that otherwise would become too heavy to bear.

"No one knows," Auratigris answered as Ravindra expected, but then the guardian added something he didn't expect, "or more precisely, many claim to know but none can prove their claims because there's no way to verify whether their interpretations are correct or just projections of what they want to believe is true because actual truth might be too frightening or too boring or too different from what's comfortable to believe for creatures living in worlds bounded by time and space and death." The guardian stopped, blue and gold eyes scanning the wall as if searching for something specific though from this distance individual details were impossible to distinguish from general lines, then continued with voice carrying weight of very ancient memories. "I once met an old dragon who claimed he could read the Scratches, and he said this one contained history of the last war between gods that ended with no winners only ruins and ash and promises there would never be war like that again because nothing remained to war over, but then he also said the eastern Scratch contained recipes for achieving immortality and the southern one contained maps to other realms where physics laws didn't apply and the northern one only contained one word repeated millions of times and that word was 'forget,' so perhaps he was mad or perhaps he knew something that couldn't be communicated in simpler language and had to resort to metaphors and unsolvable riddles."

They sat in silence for a long time after that, each lost in their own thoughts not shared with each other because some thoughts were too large or too private or too fragile to speak aloud without risking changing or damaging them in the articulation process, and Ravindra found himself thinking about questions he'd never considered before, questions about who built this world and why they built it this way and whether there was purpose behind all suffering and struggle or whether everything was just coincidence, results of random forces colliding without intent or design and creating patterns looking like meaning only because human brains were programmed to find patterns even in pure chaos because finding patterns was the way to survive in unpredictable and dangerous worlds. But then he thought perhaps it didn't matter whether there was purpose or not, whether gods had plans or whether they just played dice with smaller beings' fates, because ultimately he still had to live and fight and survive regardless of answers to unanswerable philosophical questions, and perhaps that itself was the only meaning that mattered, that he chose to keep moving forward despite no guarantees or certainties or even rational hope his efforts would produce anything more than exhaustion and delayed death.

Auratigris finally stood, movement bringing Ravindra back from philosophical thought spirals to more concrete reality of body sitting at chasm edge with wind blowing carrying cold reminding that false spring wouldn't last long and soon snow would return covering everything in uniform white not distinguishing between living and dead or between important and unimportant because snow didn't care about differences like that. "I brought you here not to teach history or theology," the guardian said while beginning the return journey down the path that would bring them down from this altitude and back to their cave's relative safety that now felt like home in ways it never felt before, "but to show there are things in this world larger than you or me or even the twelve nations thinking they own the world because their guardians can shatter mountains or burn forests or sink fleets, there are things made by powers making guardians look like insects and making human ambitions look like jokes told by small children who don't understand why adults aren't laughing."

Ravindra followed in silence, processing those words and trying to place them in context of everything learned during ten years living in Frostreach, and the conclusion he reached was simultaneously humbling and liberating, humbling because realizing how small and unimportant he was in larger cosmic scheme, but liberating because if he was indeed so small and unimportant then he was also free to make choices without worrying whether choices fit grand plans or universal purposes, he could choose to fight twelve nations or choose to create the thirteenth nation or choose to do whatever he wanted to do not because gods or fate or prophecy said he must but because he decided that's what he wanted to do and that was reason enough in a world giving no reasons for anything happening.

The return journey was faster than the journey there because descending was always faster than ascending though also more dangerous because gravity helping in one direction tried killing in the other by pulling bodies faster than could be safely controlled, but Ravindra had learned how to descend with controlled speed, feet finding holds automatically from thousands of practice times, and in time feeling shorter than actual they returned to more familiar path leading to cave with dark mouth looking like home more than any other place Ravindra ever knew or imagined could be known. Inside the warmth and familiar scent of fur and stone and something that might be Auratigris's own smell already absorbed by every surface in cave so difficult distinguishing where guardian smell ended and cave smell began, Ravindra felt tension he didn't realize he held in shoulders and neck slowly relax, and he realized seeing the Scratch had made him feel something difficult to articulate, some kind of existential vertigo from confronting evidence there once were beings so powerful and now they were gone and nothing remained except unreadable marks on stone that would endure millions of years after everything living now had become dust scattered by wind.

That night Ravindra dreamed of gods who might never have existed or might have existed but were now dead, and in that dream he stood before infinite wall covered with carvings that moved and changed each time he tried focusing on one part, and there was voice coming from wall or perhaps from inside his own head speaking in language he didn't understand but somehow knew the meaning, and that voice said something about unavoidable cycles, about how everything rising must fall and everything living must die and everything built must be destroyed, but also said something about how in destruction were seeds of new creation and in death was possibility for different birth and in ending was beginning waiting to start if someone was brave enough or foolish enough to begin the cycle again.

When he woke, dawn had just begun illuminating sky outside cave with colors brighter than usual, some kind of intense red that lowland people might say was bad omen but in Frostreach only meant there was dust in upper atmosphere refracting light differently from normal, no mystical or supernatural meaning just simple physics well explained by those studying such things though Ravindra didn't care about scientific explanations because he didn't live in worlds of explanation but worlds of direct experience and in his direct experience that red was beautiful in ways making him want to go out and see the world illuminated by this unusual light though he knew it would only last minutes before sun rose higher and light became usual cold white.

He exited the cave and stood at mouth with feet still somewhat painful from losing two toes but healed enough not to seriously disturb balance, and he stared at world turning red under strange dawn light, and for the first time since peak test he felt something that might be hope or might just be anticipation for what would come, feeling that though he was small and unimportant in larger cosmic scheme, he still had choice and agency and ability to make difference in small world space he occupied, and perhaps that was enough, perhaps making difference in small space was the only thing anyone could ever do and all claims about changing worlds or creating nations or leaving legacies enduring thousands of years were just illusions created by egos unable to accept that ultimately all efforts would be forgotten and all achievements would become dust and the only thing mattering was the moment now and what you chose to do in it.

Auratigris joined him at cave mouth, great warm presence standing beside him without saying anything because sometimes silence was better communication than words, and they stood together watching red light slowly fade to white as sun rose higher and world returned to normal version of itself, cold and cruel and indifferent world but also world that could be conquered or at least endured if someone was stubborn enough to keep trying even when every rational indication said trying was futile and the only sensible choice was to surrender or die or better yet both simultaneously to avoid unnecessary suffering.