The Primeval Era-Chapter 105: Blue Flames I

Masamuk had lived for a very long time.

Long enough to watch Sacred Mountains shift their positions across the Lands of Stone. Long enough to understand that the Lands operated on cycles that most beings were too short-lived to perceive.

In all that time, he had never met a human quite like this one.

The Sacred Human Shaman flew beside him on a cloud of blue flames that burned beneath his feet, his dark hair whipping in the wind, his dark blue eyes fixed on the horizon with an intensity that seemed disproportionate to his cultivation level. He was young. Absurdly young by Masamuk’s standards. And yet he had accomplished something that healers ten times his age and a hundred times his power had failed to do.

He had healed Tiaret.

Masamuk’s obsidian body pulsed with warmth every time he thought about it. The love of his life, freed from that cursed scar that had been slowly killing her for the last three years. The woman he had watched wither and fade, now restored to her full glory.

Because of this human.

This strange, quiet, flame-wreathed human who spoke in riddles and made promises that should have been impossible to keep.

"I never bothered to ask before."

Masamuk’s voice carried across the wind as they flew, his crimson eyes studying the young man beside him.

"But who are you? What is your name and bearing?"

The human glanced at him with those unsettling dark blue eyes.

"I am... Tokoloshe."

"Tokoloshe?"

Masamuk blinked.

He turned the name over in his mind, searching through years of accumulated knowledge for any reference to such a title or lineage. Tokoloshe. It sounded like something from the old stories. The very old stories. Tales that Beast Shamans told their young to make them behave.

A Tokoloshe was a spirit creature. A mischievous ghost that caused trouble and confusion wherever it went. Some versions of the stories painted them as malevolent. Others portrayed them as simply chaotic, neither good nor evil but existing outside the normal rules that governed behavior.

Why would anyone choose this as their name?

Was he saying he was a troublemaker? A spirit? Something that existed between the boundaries of normal existence?

Or was he just being deliberately obtuse?

Masamuk studied the human’s profile and decided it was probably the latter. This "Tokoloshe" had the bearing of someone who enjoyed being mysterious.

How annoying.

How very, very human.

But the Tokoloshe didn’t seem inclined to elaborate. His eyes remained fixed on the horizon, his expression distant, as if he had a great deal on his mind and no interest in sharing any of it.

Masamuk could respect that.

He had his own thoughts to process, after all.

The Inkanyamba flew beside them, its massive serpentine body having shrunk to a more manageable size for travel through the dense territories ahead. Storm-clouds still crackled around its mane, but they were subdued now, more habit than threat.

It looked at Masamuk with ancient eyes and asked respectfully.

"Have you sent word?" 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

The question was quiet, meant only for Masamuk’s perception.

Masamuk nodded calmly.

"I have put all others on standby."

The Inkanyamba’s eyes flickered with something that might have been relief. The Primal Surge that had been rolling toward the human territories had been artificial from the start, triggered by that Imperator’s attacks on their Sacred Mountains. Now that Masamuk had given the order, the remaining beasts would hold their positions rather than continuing the rampage.

No more innocent tribes would be flattened today.

At least not by their forces.

"The Beast Lords will want an explanation," the Inkanyamba rumbled.

"They will get one," Masamuk replied. "Eventually."

For now, there were more pressing concerns.

Like figuring out exactly what this Tokoloshe was and why his flames had been able to accomplish something that should have been impossible.

---

They crossed the forests past Mount Vorrath in relative silence.

Masamuk used the time to observe, both the landscape below and the human beside him. The Veiled Forests stretched out beneath them, a vast expanse of green and shadow that had existed since before any of the current powers had claimed their territories.

The trees here were ancient.

Some of them were Ancestral Pillars, those impossibly tall giants whose canopies merged with the clouds. Others were different. Wider than they were tall, with trunks that bulged outward like swollen bellies and branches that reached toward the sky like grasping fingers.

The old stories said these trees had been planted by the First Beasts, markers left behind to guide their descendants through territories that shifted and changed with the movements of the Sacred Mountains.

Between the trees, Masamuk could see the remnants of civilizations that had tried and failed to establish themselves in these lands.

Stone circles overgrown with vines. Burial mounds half-swallowed by the earth. The bones of creatures that had died so long ago that even their species had been forgotten.

The Veiled Forests did not welcome permanent residents.

They passed over a river that glowed faintly silver in the afternoon light. The Sleeping River, some called it, though Masamuk knew its older name. The waters there were said to carry memories, fragments of the past that could be glimpsed by those with the sensitivity to perceive them.

He had drunk from that river once, years ago.

He had seen things that still haunted him.

Beyond the river, the forest began to change. The trees grew shorter, more twisted, their bark darkened by exposure to something that had nothing to do with sunlight. This was the edge of the Threshold Lands, where the influence of the Sacred Mountains began to fade and the territories became contested.

Massive webs stretched between some of the twisted trees, silk that shimmered with captured Mana. The Primal Spiders that had woven them were ancient things, patient hunters who had learned to trap power itself rather than mere prey.

Masamuk had known one of them once. A creature called Grandmother Silk who had offered him wisdom in exchange for secrets.

He had declined.

Some knowledge was too expensive.

After what felt like hours of flight, they left the forest behind.

The trees gave way to stone.

Flat expanses of gray rock stretched out before them, broken only by occasional outcroppings and the distant shapes of Ancestral Pillars that had somehow taken root in this barren landscape. The air was drier here, the Mana thinner, the sense of ancient power that had permeated the forests notably absent.

This was the Plains of Shattered Bones and Stones!