Akeha had lagged behind, footsteps slowed by thought. Mokoya stomped over, and it was almost a shock when they seized Akeha’s hand. “Keha. We have to stay together.”
“This is a mistake,” Akeha whispered. “Let’s go back to the monastery.”
In the moonlight, Mokoya’s face looked sharp and angry. “And let them take you away from me?” Even though the exact opposite was happening. “I’d rather die.”
Akeha pulled their hand away. “Stop spouting rubbish.”
“I’m not going back. Mother can’t do whatever she likes. I’m not a token on her chessboard.”
“I told you,” Akeha said bitterly. “You shouldn’t have said anything about your dream.”
“And you shouldn’t have killed that naga.”
Akeha peeled their lips back and hissed. That was enough. They turned their back to Mokoya and headed the way they’d come, feet slipping on the brittle dead leaves that had lain there all winter.
“Keha.” Mokoya lunged after them and grabbed their arm with both hands, fingers pressing through the layers of cloth hard enough to bruise. “I’m sorry, please, don’t leave me.”
Akeha wriggled out of Mokoya’s grasp, but stayed where they were. “Don’t be stupid.” They could no more leave their twin alone here than they could cut off their own arm.
They stood like this for a moment, two children lost against a backdrop of endless forest. The weak foliage shadow shifted uncomfortably as the moon rolled across the sky.
“You lead the way,” Akeha said.
Mokoya pointed. “The path’s over there.”
The sun rose, fell, and rose again as the children walked. A dull pain spread through Akeha’s soles, but they focused on putting their feet down, one after another, on the stone-studded path that led them up the mountainside. As the path dipped into a crevasse of rising granite walls, their calves and back started to cramp.
One sun-cycle later, they stopped to eat and rest. Akeha rotated their ankles, dismayed by how everything hurt. They had been walking for little more than half a day.
“There should be some caves up there,” Mokoya said, pointing into the half dark, where the path disappeared upward around a steep mountain face.
“Did you see that in a dream?”
“No,” they said, annoyance creeping into their voice. “I just have a feeling.”
Akeha leaned their head against Mokoya’s shoulder and shut their eyes. Their twin was right, it did feel damper around here, like there was resting water close by, and that could mean caves. Or something. They were tired of arguing.
Mokoya put an arm around them.
“They should be looking for us by now,” Akeha said.
“We should go,” Mokoya murmured.
So they packed up and continued on the path. It was alarming how fast the aches returned to their bodies. Mokoya was limping, heavily favoring their left leg.
“Are you hurt?” Akeha asked.
“It’s just blisters.” They stopped. “Keha—look!”
Mokoya pointed. White mist was lifting from the crags and hollows of the earth. In the distance, the path vanished into a slender mouth in the rock.
They’d found a cave. Against all the odds, they’d found it.
Mokoya picked a branch off the ground and tugged at fire-nature to light it. The mouth of the cave was steep and littered with sharp rocks which skinned Akeha’s palms as they scrambled up.
“Keha. Look.”
Mokoya held the improvised torch aloft in the cave mouth. The roof yawned fifty yields above their heads, thick with the chittering of bats. Somewhere in the vicinity, water ran, echoing off stone walls. Step by small step, the two children moved inward, sheltered in the torch’s circle of safety.
“It’s strange,” Akeha said.
“What is?”
“The floor is clean.” With all the bats singing above them, they should have been walking across a carpet of droppings. But their circle of light showed nothing.
Mokoya looked up. “There’s a barrier,” they said after a while. “Slackcraft.”
“Someone else comes here.”
“It has to be.”
“You think they live here? In the wild?”
“I don’t know.” Mokoya frowned. It was too late to turn back. “We’ll find out.”
As they ventured farther in, the walls of the cave opened up into a space huge enough to kill echoes. A breeze lingered around Akeha’s neck, its cold breath raising gooseflesh. Mokoya sucked in a breath. “Look.”
The dim shape of wooden crates, stacked upon one another, populated the cave floor. Akeha sent a cautious tendril out through the Slack and discovered warm pinpoints that responded to their slackcraft. A string of sunballs. Akeha tensed through metal-nature, and their glow filled the room.
“Great Slack.” Mokoya put the torch out as hundreds of heavy wooden crates, reinforced by tempered iron, revealed themselves. “What are they?”
Several years’ worth of dust coated the boxes. Akeha left long finger streaks across the top of one. It wasn’t labeled. As gray clouds danced around them, Akeha lifted the hinged lid. It was heavy, but it wasn’t locked.
The crate was stacked with lightcraft in the shape of lotuses, like the kind Akeha had seen some of the senior acolytes use in aerial sparring practice. Unlike the weathered equipment back in the monastery, these hadn’t seen much use. They looked thicker and stronger, too. Akeha touched one with slackcraft. There was barely any charge left, and whatever threads of metal-nature had been used to weave the energy in place had long since frayed.
Mokoya had pried open another crate, a long boxy one the shape of a coffin. “What are these?” They reached in and pulled out a long, thick metal rod, like a cudgel. The black carvings across its surface caught the yellow light as Mokoya experimentally twirled it.
“It looks like a weapon,” Akeha said. Mokoya had had the same thought, moving into a fighting crouch, cudgel balanced in two hands. It was too long for them: an adult’s weapon.
The cudgel hummed as Mokoya charged it with slackcraft. Neither twin had seen anything like it before. Mokoya swung it above their head with practiced ease, despite its length. “There must be hundreds of these,” they said, as they tilted it back and forth, examining it. “Why?”
“They’re war supplies,” Akeha said.
Mokoya blinked. “War? What kind of war? There hasn’t been a war for years.”
“Does it matter what kind? There are no good kinds of war.”
Mokoya looked troubled by this, and started swinging the cudgel again.
“Be careful,” Akeha warned, as the cudgel missed one of the crates by a fingerswidth.
As Mokoya swung the cudgel through another rotation, one end clipped Akeha in the shoulder. “You oaf,” Akeha spluttered, and kicked up the sand on the cave floor and sent it sweeping in a wave toward Mokoya.
The assault through water-nature sent their twin staggering. Mokoya fell, but was back on their feet instantly, growling. They jabbed the cudgel in Akeha’s direction.
The cudgel caught the thread of Mokoya’s slackcraft. It hummed, glowed, and a bolt of electricity arced from it and struck Akeha in the chest.