INSIDE THE TENT, an old woman sat at a collapsible desk. Her face was long, the candlelight highlighting the depth of the lines that age had drawn into her skin. Her black hair, streaked with gray, sat in a loose bun on her head, falling off to the side as Clea's entrance urged her to her feet. Her fingers adjusted the broken spectacles that sat across her crooked nose, eyes lighting up with a childlike joy as she bustled over to Clea.

"Oh my." She cupped Clea's hands and shook them both with such vigor that the hair fell loose from her bun. "What a pleasant surprise, a young Veilin woman! It's so nice to meet you. My name is Althala, Althala Batrice." The name struck Clea as familiar, though she didn't understand why.

"My name is Clea. It is nice to meet you," she replied, and not a second later, she was ushered farther into the large tent and down onto a cot.

"A beautiful Lodain name! Here, here, sit!" Althala said. "Oh dear, you must be exhausted."

Althala gestured to a pot at the opposite side of the tent before rushing to fix her a bowl of stew. The simple act of service flooded Clea with some strange sense of relief. She was in the presence of another human that spoke her language, and at last it felt like she could relax.

"It seems you've had Veilin visitors before." Clea yawned, rubbing her bloodied hands on a piece of damp cloth one of the Kalex had given her.

Althala nodded as she spooned stew into a wooden bowl. "They recognize the glow of your skin like they recognize the sunrise. I'm sure you've healed about thirty people today."

"More like fifty." Clea chuckled, and Althala turned from the pot.

"I'm sorry, dear. I've told them about a hundred times!" She thrust the bowl and spoon into Clea's hands. "You Veilin need your ansra to defend yourselves in these forests. No use spending too much on us when you could be out fighting evil!" She laughed and wrestled her seat next to her desk before she sat down. "Kaletik mutations usually protect camps like these from being recognized as a source of prey. Beasts don't like the taste of Kalex. To them, it's like eating part of the forest. Sometimes Veilin come in for a brief moment of shelter, but are always surrounded by requests for healing instead."

Clea smiled as she inhaled the aroma of the stew. Warm stew couldn't have tasted better. "I wasn't sure what to expect when I came here. I was happy that they accepted me so quickly."

"It's not always the case, but this group is more generous than most. When I left Loda to study with them, they took me in as one of their own." She grinned, flashing two rows of yellowed teeth.

"You're from Loda?"

She showed Clea the faded tattoo on her wrist. "I left nearly seven years ago to finish a book on Kalex and The Decline."

Both of those topics were unpopular in Loda. Now Clea remembered why she recognized Althala's name.

"You were excommunicated because of that book," Clea said, paying closer attention to the books and papers lying in open trunks around the tent. Maps and trinkets hung on the tent walls. She recognized the unique stitches of a Lodain quilt folded in the corner.

"Yes, though I'm sure they'd have me back now," Althala said, reaching for a mug of tea that sat steaming across a pile of books on her desk. She was almost jittery in all of her actions, seemingly just excited to speak to Clea as Clea was excited to speak to her.

"From what I understand," Althala chattered on, "Loda has now come around to the reality of The Decline. At the time, even my pursuit of legends was seen as rather controversial, as they contested Loda's current understanding of the histories."

Loda had at last publicly acknowledged the reality of The Decline five years ago. Clea had been at her father's side when he made the public announcement to the Veilin still going through the training academies.

"You were pursuing legends?" Clea asked, this note piquing her interest. Clea currently had a legend hanging around her neck.

"Ah yes, legends." Althala slurped at her tea before cradling the steaming mug in her lap. She wore layers of clothes like blankets, hiding the thinness that her fragile wrists exposed. "There are so many blank spaces in the pages of history due to the chaotic nature of the great war between the Veilin and Warlord."

Clea was relieved to be able to eat as Althala talked, enjoying the woman's willingness to fill the silence on her own. Clea so dearly missed talking.

"All that fills those spaces are legends. I thought maybe if I explored those legends, I could reveal the true face of history. The only way to investigate them is to trace them to their origins, and most originated from these Kalex groups in the forest. They're exiles, just like me, but many of their ancestors witnessed much of history without as many reasons to tell the tales in the Veilin's favor."

Althala's blunt retelling of her efforts masked a long series of trials and tribulations. Clea knew that being exiled from Loda could be a public and humiliating process. She only vaguely remembered Althala's exile by the controversy it had stirred. In Loda, exiling a human being who showed no sign of being a Kalex was rare. For Kalex, exile was seen as putting them in their rightful place, but for a human it was as close to a death sentence as one could get.

"I see," Clea said, distracted by her own thoughts of Althala's suffering, and feeling pangs of guilt for the practices of her family's city. On her next breath, she hoped for some redemption. "Would you tell me what you found?"

"What?" Althala asked, as if she'd never considered anyone might prompt her to share. Her body was still at last, eyes blinking curiously behind her glasses.

"Your discoveries. I would love to hear about them. Loda was too rigid then, but maybe there's a chance now they could listen," Clea explained, feeling some responsibility to bring more than just the medallion to Loda. She wanted to bring her learnings from the world as well. She didn't know if it was possible, not having even considered life after making it back home. It had seemed like such a distant dream that discussing it with any permanence filled her with a hope she ached for.

"Oh, you couldn't have made a more exciting proposal!" Althala exclaimed. "I will gladly tell you what I know!" Laughing, she added, "You were in Virday too long, weren't you, good girl?"

Clea knew it was a good-humored jest, but at the suggestion, Clea felt the resurgent uncertainty at straying from her city's rules. She laughed uncomfortably and ate a spoonful of the stew as Althala took another loud sip from her mug and sat there in silence.

"What's the most surprising thing you've learned?" Clea prompted her.

The inquiry catapulted the old woman into a fit of excited rambling.

"I will start with our dear war as it sets the foundation of our history!" She nearly threw the tea out of her mug as she talked; Clea dodged steaming spits as Althala's arms wagged and waved. "Before the Warlord of Shambelin arrived from the north with his beasts, our country was being torn apart by power-hungry warlords, capitalizing on the chaos that erupted when cien appeared. Unlike the other warlords, his army had enlisted beasts." Althala could no longer sit in her chair. She bounced around the tent as she spoke, pulling maps and books, pointing at images and drawings in the pages that demonstrated the path of her story.

"His generals killed so swiftly and so thoroughly that the only proof we originally had that it wasn't the plague were the wounds on the bodies left behind," she said, opening up a book that seemed to have a triangle depicting the warlord and his two generals. "To survive this threat, humankind united under three Veilin. The first, Oliver Padren, used what resources he had and built a stronghold on a rocky hill in Northern Shambelin. That stronghold grew to become what we now know as Virday."

"Helina Hart then took forces south to fight the warlord," Clea concluded, watching Althala's flurry through the tent, pleased she could offer some evidence that she wasn't completely ignorant of the tale.

"It was the first full-scale battle in which humanity's forces collided directly with the warlord. To this day, the battle is called The Battle of the Lords," Althala stated, gesturing to more images that by then Clea could no longer follow. A stack of opened books threatened to topple over on Althala's desk.

"And on that battlefield, the city of Loda was later built," Clea finished.

"Exactly," said Althala. "Loda's history states that Helina's forces killed the warlord and the third great Veilin, Vanida Riggs, led forces that drove his generals off toward the coast, where Ruedom was later founded. Ever since then, the Veilin have been fighting their war against the scattered remains of that army."

"And that's the end?" Clea prodded skeptically.

Althala's eager expression told her otherwise. "Not according to the Kalex." She had an almost mischievous expression on her face as she settled at last back into her chair. "According to these Kalex, the cities were founded much earlier, and the warlord's army laid siege to the humans who had to build up their city's walls. The humans and beasts fought both day and night. The siege never ended."

The long pause that ensued assured Clea that Althala's final sentence was in fact the end of that part of the tale.

"What?" Clea blurted out. "That's it? If it never ended, we would all be dead."

"The humans had children and died inside the walls," Althala replied. "The beasts wasted away outside, but from the carpet of their bones grew the forest. They say that you can see the bones of the warlord's army in the ancient roots of a fallen tree. It's why the forest grows dead and seeks to draw us out by the light of the sun. The forest and the beasts that dwell within it are what remains of the army."

"And the warlord?"

"He haunts the woods in search of a solution that will free the world from the stalemate." Althala looked at her withered hands. "For the longest time, I didn't understand that there could be more to it than fantastical legend. Our history in Loda is all reasoned out, but in the strangest way, we've reasoned all the truth out of it. Many don't realize that these stories are symbolic of truth and not to be dismissed so easily for not being factual."

She removed a sheet from a large folder on her desk and handed it to Clea. It was a map of Shambelin. Althala had drawn gray arrows all over it, but there was one red one as well, and most were concentrated in one area near the ocean.

"I've tentatively recorded sightings of the warlord's army from historical records and other Kalex legends. Those are the gray arrows. I have found only one sighting of the warlord, and it's captured in poetry. That is the red arrow and nowhere near any of the established cities. They describe him as a creature, 'With eyes crowned by the moon, pushing and pulling the tides with but a glance.' It's almost...well, mythical, which would have led to doubts of his very existence, if the generals hadn't been so conclusively documented."

She gestured back to the map, returning to her former topic of conversation. "The warlord is a ghost—a ghost who haunts the forest, and his soldiers are among us, maybe not the trees, but their beasts. Does this not more accurately describe our situation than us living in the wake of the Veilin's seeming victory? We've been teetering on a stalemate for centuries."

Clea gripped the bowl in her hand, shaken by the magnitude of Althala's conviction and research in presenting such a radical idea.

"And if the warlord is searching to end the stalemate," Althala rushed on, "other Kalex legends tell of an item capable of doing just that. It's an item that carries the entire problem in its name."

"The Deadlock," Claire said without thinking. Her hand drifted up to her chest to confirm the medallion was still hidden under her shirt. She resisted the urge to look around, the eerie timeliness of the tale making her feel like someone had orchestrated it.

"The Deadlock," Althala nodded. "You're familiar with it. That's very quick of you. I can only imagine Kalex legends are exactly where the item got its name."

"And you think the Warlord of Shambelin...is looking for it?" Clea asked.

Althala nodded with little understanding of how her answer impacted Clea.

"In a way, well, yes."