Val folded her arms on her axe, leaning forward on it as she looked down at the smaller workers, male and female, each with small horns around their chins. She was careful with her words to avoid unravelling a compulsion but their mute attempts at talking back to her with their hands were going nowhere.

  “I don’t speak your language,” she repeated again, holding back frustration from her words as one worker gestured at her, “I’m seeking passage down the mountain, through your colony.”

  Their carefully masked exasperation told her they got what she wanted perfectly, and she was the problem at the moment.

  A female, much younger looking that Lee’to, had bought her a clay cup with water to drink and gestured for her to sit as they bought out furniture from their homes carved into the stone for her. Val shook her head and remained leaning on her axe, although she felt rude not to take the offered drink. The water was icy cold, and had a mineral bite.

  The walk through the dark had been surprisingly relaxing, the blue glow lined most surfaces in these mountains, so she was never in the dark. Her new wolf fur cape had the warmth of life so she never felt chilled, or alone. As she worked her way deeper and lower through the tunnels, trusting her instinct and the feel of the sloping ground, fissures of light occasionally emerged lighting her way and letting fresh air in. The roof was never so low her horns did not fit, the older generations of Alates before her must have been as tall as she was and sung their home to fit them. She did not know how much time had passed, nor how deep she had walked.

  The sight of taller soldier horns over the group elicited a welcome sigh of relief from her lips. The band of workers was now up to almost thirty, milling around in curiosity when she had stumbled on their farm underground. Farm was the closest word she had for it, growing strange branching mushrooms in the dark from rotting wood they must haul from the surface.

  The soldier pushed through the group, and then stopped blinking in confusion at the sight of her. Hesitantly he began to sign and she grunted once again, “I don’t speak your language. Can you talk?”

  Their shocked confusion at her admission was quickly masked, “Your command, Alate. Welcome home from your travels, should I get a drone?”

  “Get Za’kel, he knows me.”

  “Your command.”

  “Can I come?” she asked.

  The soldier blinked again, “Your command.”

  Val hefted her axe back onto her back, returning her cup to the little worker who had served her and signing her clumsy thanks. Then began her march after the soldier.

  Here in the deeper tunnels the passages widened into highways and towering caverns. Signs of the Laons and their lives were everywhere she looked - charms and ribboned trinkets hanging from the walls, discarded tools, newer structures built from hewn stone. Great sand timers she could not read stood on pedestals at major intersections, slowly counting down the passage of time in places only the blue light reached. She was joined by several other soldiers, and just as she wondered how large her retinue would grow, they passed through an archway into open spaces.

  Hewn into the rock, the city rose in terraces, leading upwards to the central palace decorated with the white stone of stalactites glowing dim blue. The cavern above was so high, Val could not make out any details of its surface, disappearing completely into darkness and blue glow.

  Within the roads of the city, more Laons than Val could have ever imagined worked and moved, to her great surprise there was even the occasional child, their stumpy little horns in various states of development. Ribbons and embroidered fabrics decorated door fronts, woven baskets and mixed goods from the surface passed between merchants, craftsmen with worker horns spilt their workshops onto the street, making beads and clothing and armor. Pens with the white goats were arranged at the base of the city, troughs of greenery from the surface filled for them to eat, and small black hounds with large eyes darted between the populace barking excitedly in high pitched voices.

  “Ibex, Alate.”

  Val turned stiffly towards the soldier at her side who had approached with two white goat steeds, holding the reins of one for her. Not wanting to seem more useless than she probably already seemed, she took them. Giving the creature one pat between the eyes to assess its temperament, she studied the saddle and watched the soldier mount his own. The height of the stirrup was far too high for a human, or the worker and drone Laons, but for herself or a soldier, it was a comfortable step up. Grabbing a knob at the front of the saddle, she stepped up and swung her leg over the ibex’s back, nervous as it shuffled beneath her.

  Several other soldiers mounted with her, and without her needing to know how to steer it, her Ibex followed the others once they began to move. Her escort thinned as they began to weave their way up the terraced roads of the city, workers and soldiers watching her curiously as they passed.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, nervously leaning around her steeds back to look after the soldier that led her.

  “To the palace,” replied the soldier simply.

  “Is Za’kel coming?”

  “He is on his way down now, you caught him off guard…”

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  Val snorted a hint of amusement, imagining the drone's expression at being told she was here given how they had parted. It was not long before she got the satisfaction of his wide eyes as he approached them on the back of an ibex, his own escort of soldiers in tow.

  “The wolf god favors you, compared to when I last saw you,” he commented, toothy grin wide as he looked her up and down.

  Val patted the pelt of the massive cloak that was currently acting as most of her coverings, her attention suddenly drawn to it. Za’kel still wore his own wolf pelt cloak, but it was nowhere near as long nor plush as her own, and lacked the mantle across the shoulders hers had. Most of the other soldiers wore a scrap of fur if anything at all. She gave a noncommittal grunt and replied, “I think he likes anyone that will put up with him. I have come, not to stay,” she preempted, “but to pass through before I return to High Haven.”

  “You intend to return to your hume?” asked Za’kel, raising a black eyebrow over his dark eyes.

  “I intend to do as I like,” replied Val testily, eyeing Za’kel’s expression as she did so. Then she sighed, and relented, turning the unfamiliar reins in her hands, “At least a little more than I used to.”

  Za’kel pursed his lips, then tugged at his own reins, wheeling his ibex to her side and beginning to sign the soldiers orders, “Come,” he invited.

  Val followed his lead, tapping her own heels to the goat as she had seen the other Laons and fell bull riders do. “What normally happens?” she asked, somewhat sheepish but glad Za’kel at least knew her circumstances.

  Za’kel finished his signed orders to a soldier walking at his side before turning in his saddle to her, scratching the moist black ash that appeared freshly painted on his chest.

  “Depends how long you wish to stay. We have rooms set aside in the Palace that are exclusively for your, or any other Alates, use. I would like… if you could meet with our Matriarch? She has grown steadily weaker, her time of death nears. Normally, we may have then celebrated an Alate’s arrival but I fear that we will be busy instead with a funeral,” Za’kel’s voice seemed unusually gentle.

  “I won’t intrude. I only intend to pass through. I will meet your Matriarch though, if you wish?”

  “I do wish.”

  Val paused, sniffing slightly, and looked away from the drone who kept on evading her ability to understand him. “What do you call your city?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “Kal’gah,” Za’kel signed the name as he spoke it for her, using the same sign for Kal that Lee'to had used for Kal'fall, “If you were born here, you would have been raised in the creche with the other children. When your horns budded, you would have been taught our histories and our martial arts, given access to time and encouragement to master your songs. No child grows with more care than an Alate.”

  “Not even a matriarch?” asked Val.

  “Matriarchs are not clearly differentiated from maidens until they reach sexual maturity. Alates are always easy to identify.”

  “Don’t we have chin horns, like a worker?” she asked.

  Za’kel gave her a sly grin, “No worker sings fire, Alate. They tend to be compulsive early as well, the workers who care for the creche are quickly obeying their every whim in ways that even the most powerful drones and maidens only learn to do much later.”

  Val frowned, “I don’t think I was like that.”

  “You were not raised correctly, and humes are so often deaf, a subtle compulsion would pass through their minds unheard,” replied Za’kel matter-of-factly, and Val felt her chin tighten at his words. Continuing without noticing he added, “The horns around your throat are not chin horns, they are ‘Geh’. The ones on your head, like the soldiers are ‘Yah’. My own are ‘Ibah’.” He made each gesture clearly for her as he spoke, each essentially just a hand placed to the head imitating the shape of each horn with the thumb and smallest finger around a clench fist.

  Val did not attempt to imitate the motions, but did gesture to her own broken one, “It would be good if you had someone who could clean mine up. Normally I would sand it smooth with the grit-paper carpenters use…”

  Za’kel nodded knowingly, “We will attend to you. Normally I would leave you time to bathe and rest from your travels before meeting the matriarch, but we have only borrowed time. After. How did you break it?”

  Val shrugged, still defensive of Dorius’ secrets but knowing they knew Fenris and had already aided them on their journey up the mountain, “Fighting the Dragon god.”

  Za’kel did look impressed, “I am surprised you lived.”

  “I almost didn’t. But she is awake. I would be cautious of her if she remains here-”

  “Save your story for the Matriarch, such knowledge is exactly the precious cargo Alate should carry with them. And you should not take such risks,” chided Za’kel, cautiously looking at her again as if he too was still struggling to judge her character. “No matter, you are still immature, your Yah will regrow quickly.”

  Val touched the base of her head, and drew her eyebrows together in a moment of thought, and thinking suddenly of Til’wane, “Immature? Do our horns stop growing with age?”

  “At full maturity, yes.”

  “I am full grown by human standards…”

  Za’kel laughed suddenly, his eyes glittering with amusement, “Humes are short lived. You are yet immature for a Laon.”

  Val would have come to a stop if she was walking on her own two legs, her mind racing over any past conversation she had had with a Laon, “What do you mean?”

  Za’kel looked back at her, his amusement slowly dissipating as he took in her expression. Cautiously, and suddenly a little guiltily, his expression dropped as he realized what she was figuring out, “Val,” he said, using her name for the first time she could remember, “You are not hume. Laons may live for a few hundred years, we only reach our final physical maturity in the second half of our first century. Your magic, strength, and body will continue to develop further.”

  “But I-”

  “The body and horns grow early, it may have given an appearance of aging on a similar timeline to a hume.”

  Val cleared her throat, suddenly fighting off a million overwhelming thoughts, “How long will I live?”

  “Likely to six hundred, you will outlive every hume you currently know. We persist, they have diminished.”

  https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/117130/aquila