The Lost One

By Kyle Richtig

She tried to save them from the prophecy, but they wouldn't listen. She embarked into the wilderness on her own. Who she found, she wasn't prepared for.

Cloud was the leader of the village of Sephim. She was well respected by her villagers, and was the spiritual Seer for all of the children of the mountain. She held these positions until Jonas appeared on the mountain. In an attempt to save her people, Cloud went against their doctrines, and was cast out.

Offered a silent place amongst her people, Cloud decided that she would rather leave the safety of the villages than be an outcast among them.

Settling in the forbidden land of Auktai, Cloud must battle both the isolation and her own spiritual punishments. Dissatisfied with life on the fringes, she sets out again, into the unknown...

The Lost One is book two of the Children of the Mountain series. Book one is Bakkai.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781304756572

Book preview

The Lost One

The Lost One

Kyle Richtig

Copyright © 2014 Kyle Richtig

All rights reserved under International Copyright Conventions.  Published in 2008 by Inkko Publishing.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Richtig, Kyle

The Lost One

ISBN: 978-1-304-75657-2

For REN, you have always believed in these people as much as I did.  Sometimes more.

-          Kyle

Table of Contents

Sephim

Auktai

The Brunn

The Mountain

Sephim

Auktai

Foreword

The Lost One is a journey.   Cloud was born on the mountain, and grew to become not only the leader of Sephim, but also the spiritual leader of all of the villages.  She was held in high regard until Jonas arrived.

Cloud made a mistake when she feared that the outsider, Jonas, would fulfill the prophecy.  She was sure that the way of life she had enjoyed on the mountain was in peril.  She thought that she was protecting her people.  Unfortunately for her, the people of the mountain did not feel the same.

When Cloud broke the tenets of her religion, she set in motion a series of events that spun out of her control.  After she was found guilty of breaking spiritual law, Cloud was forced out of Sephim.  She was stripped of her titles and shunned from society.

She was given a choice, live among her people in silence or leave our villages. 

Embittered, Cloud could not be silenced.

Sephim

Cloud was frantic.  She clawed through her possessions as the men stood guard at the door.  She found her book from the Exodants and threw it in a bag.  It was a frenzy, as she tried to figure out what she couldn’t leave behind, and what she could carry.

Cloud had turned her back on her beliefs, the beliefs of her people, to try and save them.  They had no gratitude, and even she wished she could take back her actions.  Now as she packed for her exile, she held back her tears so that the men would have nothing to tell the others.

Only yesterday I was the leader of this village.  Cloud thought to herself as the men lead her to the path out of the village.  The people, her people, turned their backs as she approached.  Once the spiritual leader of all the villages of the mountain, Cloud was now being ousted to the wilderness.

You are no longer part of Sephim.  You are no longer welcome in our villages.  We leave you to wander.  One of the men said, one of the men that Cloud herself had tutored herself in the ways of the monks.

Cloud stood outside the entrance to Sephim as the men turned their backs on her, and retreated into the village.  Cloud stood and stared back at the tower looming above her.  She had become The Seer in the tower, and now as she looked at it, she realized she would never meander up it again.  In the safety of her solitude, Cloud began to cry.  She fell to her knees and beat her fists into the dirt.  She fell onto the ground and sobbed into the Earth.

Hunger and thirst eventually pulled Cloud off of the ground.  High up on the mountain, little grew, and Cloud had to be resourceful.  She had not brought any food or water with her, which did not bode well for her.  She waited until darkness came, and she snuck her way around the village to the terraces where the food was grown.

Cloud slid herself into one of the terraces, trying to stay low under the light of the moon.  She found some vine fruit and ate heartily.  She ate as many as she could before carrying an armful back to the path.  Cloud gave one last look back at the tower, and started down the steep path away from the rise of Sephim.  Cloud knew that there was only one place that she would be welcome.

Auktai

The night was cool on the mountain, and walking down the exposed side was difficult in the dark.  Cloud was happy when she finally reached the border of the forest, as she knew that the terrain there would become easier.  She was apprehensive at first to enter the border of trees, even though she knew that nothing that had survived The Great Extinction could hurt her.  Something deep inside her gut warned her that darkness meant danger.

You’re being stupid.  Cloud said slapping herself on the stomach.  Calm down in there.

Cloud stepped into the forest, which even though the moon shone, had no light to offer.  She felt her way down the path, arms out for branches, feet feeling for obstacles.  It was difficult moving in the darkness, and even though her head told her there was nothing to fear, Cloud’s heart was pounding.

As the sun began to rise, there was enough light for Cloud to make her way down the path easily.  She was able to make much better time unencumbered by the darkness.  She traveled for a few hours before she found the old forks.  The path she traveled cut straight through the forest to Sedii.  The old forks connected this path to both Bakkai and Auktai.  After the destruction of Auktai, the path had been left to go wild.  Weeds had crowed in the path, but had not made it impassible yet.

Cloud turned toward Auktai, and started down the remnants of the path.  What’s one more transgression in my life?  She said walking into the forbidden territory.

When Auktai had been destroyed, the leaders of the time forbade their people to enter this area again.  They assumed that the fires of the people of Auktai had generated the smoke that led the invaders up the mountain.  They did not want another assault from the east.

Cloud pushed through the golden weeds and ferns down the path.  The abandoned forest sang with birds.  They flew in red waves and yellow waves through the canopy.

Echo always loved the red birds.  Cloud said to herself wiping away a tear.  She missed her son, even though he had turned away from his destiny.  Now that she had used her power to try and hurt the ones Echo had loved, she wondered if he would ever speak to her again.

Cloud pushed the memories of Echo from her mind, and stepped out of the forest onto the plateau where Auktai once stood.  The plateau was still home to the remains of the charred huts, burned until they were only black piles.  New growth pushed up from the remains, and brought life back to the desolation.

It was an unfamiliar sight to Cloud to see this type of carnage.  She had heard her whole life about the horrors of Auktai, and how the villagers tried to move on without them.  Though she’d never known anyone from Auktai in life, she had been acquainted with some of their spirits in death.  The sight of the ruins brought tears to her eyes.

Cloud’s emotion was fogged by thirst, so she dropped her belongings beside the entrance to the trail and began to search for water.  The layout of Auktai was strikingly similar to that of Bakkai, Dargon and Sedii, and Cloud’s familiarity with those villages sent a chill down her spine.  With those villages, however, they relied on the river for their water.  With no river running on this side of the mountain, Cloud thought of her own village and of Tashi.

Both Sephim and Tashi have always collected the rain for water.  She said scouring the ruins for such a device.  But where would that be here?

Cloud walked amongst the charred logs, now rotting away with time.  The huts had encircled a large common area, which in the centre had held the storage hut.  Vines trailed from the storage hut from where the seeds of long forgotten vine fruit had grown.

I thought the vine fruit had to grow by water.  Cloud smiled to herself.  She plucked a fruit and ate it as she meandered through the ruins.

Partially quenched by the juices of the vine fruit, Cloud began looking through the remains of the huts for useful items.  Pottery shards were littered throughout the burn sites and insects had consumed all the cloth long before.  Cloud found a few useful pots, some broken furniture, and tools that she piled in the centre of the village.  She found no signs of water in the village.

Scouting the edges of the village, Cloud found the old berry patch, which was ripe with fruit.  With a blackened pot in tow, Cloud gathered enough berries to feed off of for a few days.  As Cloud went to return to her piles of goods, she noticed a duck fly down past the berry patch.  Elated, Cloud ran to the edge of the berry patch, and climbed through its thorny arms.  Scratched and bleeding, Cloud made it to the edge of the plateau, and saw a terrace beneath.  The terrace had been carved out into a large cistern, catching all the water the sky had to give.

In the years since the cistern had been abandoned, it had accumulated new residents.  Ducks had come to swim in the waters, which were sheltered from the wind.  The cistern had gathered debris over the years, and kept the ducks fed.

I can’t drink that.  Cloud said walking down the path to the cistern.  I’ll need to make a fire to boil the water.  I’m already dead, so I’ve nothing to lose I suppose.

Cloud sat down beside the cistern and wept.  She wept for her life.  She wept for the chaos she’d caused.  She wept for all the people she’d never see again.  Most of all she wept for the growing hatred inside her.  She hated Jonas and Crow for taking her down in front of the monks.  She hated Quill for taking their side and punishing her.  She hated the other leaders for taking Sephim away from her.

Cloud looked at the ducks swimming around the waters.  They had no fear of her and swam only a few feet from her.  She touched the cold water with her finger, and walked back to her keep.

For the remainder of the afternoon, Cloud sat amongst the ruined items.  She sated herself with berries, and for the moment left the water to itself.  Having found food and water, Cloud lost the drive to push herself any further.  The last thing she did before the sun went down was start a fire.  Though it hurt her to do so, Cloud burned