Ocular Astra Journeys: The Seven Hearth

CHAPTER 4: THE PREPARATION

The walk back to Skrul’s village was silent, the weight of the council’s decision and the impossible map heavy between them. In the clearing where the cage stood, their damaged spacesuits lay where they’d left them, scarred and silent.

Skrul was waiting, his expression unreadable. “The Council has spoken,” he said, his amplified voice cutting through the quiet. “But words are not ships. What is your first move, giants?”

Stollen’s mind, grateful for a practical problem, clicked into gear. “We need raw materials. Metals for the frame. Composites for the hull matrix. Ceramics for heat shielding. Polymers, plastics, fuels, electronics, sensors, and glass.” He listed them like a mantra, the familiar checklist of a spacecraft making the impossible feel slightly more tangible.

Skrul nodded slowly. “Metals, we have in abundance here. This continent is rich in ore. I was surprised you knew that already. The composites you speak of…” He paused. “They are found on Arin’s continent.”

Lyra, who had been staring at the suit in her hands, looked up. “Great. So we go to Arin’s after we get the metals here.”

Skrul’s face grew serious. “To reach Arin’s land, you must cross Eira’s. She voted against your very presence. Her heart is hardened against giants. It will not be a friendly crossing.”

“We’ll manage,” Stollen said, though he felt no such confidence.

A loud, gurgling groan cut through the conversation. Lyra clutched her stomach, her face flushing. “Sorry. It’s just… how are we supposed to eat here? Everything is a bite-sized appetizer. I could eat a whole elephant.”

Skrul’s severe expression softened into something like amusement. “We do not have elephants. But we have Sky whales.”

Stollen and Lyra exchanged a glance. “Whales?” Lyra asked.

“Great beasts that migrate through the highest air currents,” Skrul said, his voice taking on a reverent tone. “They darken the sky for days when the herds pass. I did not know giants knew of them.”

Stollen recovered quickly, playing along. “We’re giants, Elder Skrul. We notice the big things.”

The elder looked impressed. “Then you shall have a feast fit for giants tonight. Or as close as we can manage.”

As evening drew in, the villagers gathered around a central fire pit that, to Stollen and Lyra, was the size of a large campfire. There was a commotion at the tree line. Dozens of tiny figures strained, pulling on thick ropes.

Their quarry came into view. To the cheering miniatures, it was a monstrous, hairy beast—a mammoth, with tusks as long as a house is tall. The villagers had hunted and slain a legend.

To Stollen and Lyra, the creature dragged into the firelight was a furry, round-bodied animal about the size of a guinea pig. Its “tusks” were slender curves of ivory the length of a human finger.

Lyra’s hopeful expression collapsed. “That’s… a snack.”

The mammoth was roasted on a spit over the fire. The smell was rich and gamey. When it was offered to them, they each took a portion. The meat was tender and smoky, flavorful. Stollen ate his share in three bites. Lyra finished hers in two.

“It’s good,” Lyra said, trying to sound grateful. She was still ravenously hungry.

Skrul, watching them, understood. “We will pack what preserved food we can for your journey. It will not be enough, but it will keep you moving.”

After the meager feast, Skrul approached Stollen and handed him a small cylinder of polished wood. “For your journey.”

Stollen opened it. Inside, nestled on a bed of velvet moss, was a scroll no wider than his thumbnail, another scroll. He carefully extracted it, the parchment fragile as a moth’s wing. He unrolled it on his palm, but the lines were a blur of exquisite, minute detail. He could make out shapes, colors, but no specific information.

“I can’t read this,” he admitted. “It’s too small. The details…”

Lyra took it from him. She held it up, her eyes narrowing in concentration. “I can see it,” she whispered. “Seven landmasses. In a… circle. There are symbols. Tiny arrows pointing to deposits.” She pointed to a spot on the microscopic map. “Metals, here. That’s us. Composites… here. That’s Arin’s land. And between us…” She looked up at Skrul. “Eira’s.”

“You see well, for a giant,” Skrul said, his voice thoughtful.

Using a charred stick from the fire and several large, flat leaves from the Heavenly Trees, Lyra began to redraw. Her hand was steady, transferring the impossibly intricate details onto a canvas they could use. Stollen watched as the circular arrangement of the continents took shape on the leaf. It was unnervingly symmetrical, like a geometric diagram, not a natural geography.

While she worked, Stollen and several villagers turned to the wagon. It was a beautifully crafted thing of dark wood and woven fibre, but it was built for miniature oxen. To them, it was the size of a child’s pull-along toy.

“We need to modify it,” Stollen said. They dismantled it carefully, using the parts as a template. They felled several slender saplings—which to the miniatures were towering logs—and lashed them together with tough vine ropes. Within hours, they had constructed a new, crude but sturdy wagon large enough for them to pull by hand. By this time most of the miniatures villagers had left the forest only few left, mainly warriors.

As the moon of Hearth rose, they made their final preparations. They would need every advantage. They changed back into their spacesuits. The familiar weight was a comfort, even if the armor was scarred and the systems damaged. Stollen’s helmet display flickered to life with a cascade of error messages, but the climate control whirred weakly, and the internal comm link buzzed in his ear.

The moment Lyra sealed her helmet, the comm crackled.

“The suits…” a voice hissed, thin and strained through static. “…wake it up.”

It was the same whisper from the cage.

Lyra’s eyes widened inside her visor. “You heard that?”

“It’s in our helmets,” Stollen said, his voice tight. “It’s not someone outside. It’s in the system.”

They scanned the dark tree line. Only the silent forest watched them.

With the redrawn map secured, the wagon loaded with water sacks the size of grapes and bundles of travel bread that looked like crumbs, they were ready. Skrul stood before them as the first pale light of dawn touched the sky.

“The river is your boundary,” he said. “What we call the Sea of Mist. Cross it, and you are in Eira’s domain. She does not forgive trespass.”

They nodded, took the handles of their makeshift wagon, and began to walk.

The forest thinned, giving way to reeds and tall grass that brushed their knees. Ahead, a wide, slow-moving river gleamed under the rising sun. It was perhaps fifty meters across. To the miniatures, it would be an impassable ocean. To Stollen and Lyra, the water looked no deeper than their calves.

As they waded in, the cool water soaking their boots, Stollen’s suit scanner flickered autonomously.

SCAN: FLUVIAL WATER. TRACE ELEMENTS DETECTED: ALLOY PARTICLES, REFINED. GRADE DESIGNATION: H7-R.

H7. Hearth 7.

“Stollen, look.” Lyra pointed to the opposite bank. Partially submerged in the silt were stones—but they were cut into perfect hexagons and arranged in a sunken, geometric pattern. Foundations.

They were halfway across, the water swirling around their knees, when Lyra’s comms hissed violently.

The whisper returned, no longer faint, but sharp with urgency.

“Don’t cross.”

They froze.

“She knows. The glow remembers you.”

A pause filled with nothing but the sound of flowing water and their own breathing.

“The giants before you…” the voice whispered, fraying into static, “…they never came back.”

The transmission died.

Stollen and Lyra stood motionless in the river, the wagon floating beside them. Before them, Eira’s land rose—a terrain of darker, sharper trees and brooding hills.

Behind them was Skrul’s relative safety. Ahead was the place where other giants had vanished.

Lyra’s voice was a thin thread over the comm. “We’re not the first.”

Stollen’s grip tightened on the wagon handle. “And the last ones never left her land.”