The young man tried to keep his breathing steady, but the darkness pressed in around him. The firebrand in his hand brought some respite, but he could barely see the stone beneath his feet. Here and there the flickering light would highlight something for a moment before the darkness rushed back in to seal it away; a cobweb, a drawing in charcoal on the wall, a femur stripped of flesh. The man hastened on until he felt he had walked far enough, then sat down on the stone - much warmer than he had expected for the early spring. He brought the firebrand in front of him as he had been taught, then dropped it and screamed.
He couldn't actually see the woman opposite's face, but he got the strong impression of a level, unamused glare before she turned her attention to the firebrand. The burning piece of wood had fallen, not to the bare stone as expected, but into a bowl of some sort of brilliant, shining stone - thin as a wooden bowl, but traced with lines like a cobweb. The young man managed to stop screaming and stared at the woman in rapt amazement. She looked to be some twenty winters, and her clothing was spun of some dull grey variant of screamer silk. The man looked down at the silk snare tied at his waist to compare, then back up at the woman.
Her face was covered almost completely by long, dead-straight grey hair. Quite apart from that, he found he could not even look directly at where her eyes would be for very long before a growing sense of dread forced his eyes away. He could just make out her lips, but that was all. He was therefore quite surprised when her voice sounded entirely normal.
"What is your name?" she asked.
"Marius," replied the young man, a little more quickly than he'd intended. One corner of the woman's mouth curled up slightly. It wasn't really a smile.
"Hah." It wasn't really a laugh. "Good name."
"Um, thanks. Are you...?"
"Yes," said Valeia.
"Right. Does this normally-"
"No. Be grateful."
"That it's happening to me, or that it doesn't normally happen?"
"Yes." That was definitely a smile. "What are you afraid of?"
"Well, lots of things. Wolves, nightmares, spiders, falling off a tree, fear itself-"
"Don't waste my time." And the smile was gone again. "Those things concern you, you are not afraid of them. You do not run from them-"
"No, I really do run from wolves-"
"If you interrupt me, I will kill you where you sit."
Marius said nothing.
"Better. You do not run from these things when there is no reason to. You do not panic in the face of them. You have fought wolves, you have ignored spiders. You look like you can handle a tree. Nobody fears fear, even if they should. You are a warrior, yes?" A pause. "You can answer that."
"Yes, like my father and brother."
"Your father did not die well, did he?"
"Surely you should know-"
The firebrand burst, spraying hot embers onto Marius' lap. He hurriedly patted them out as the stick of wood went back to glowering.
"Not the sort of question you're supposed to answer. Your father did not die well, did he?" A pause. "No, and though that haunts you that isn't what brought you here, is it? Men come here to face fear, to be strengthened by it. Did you come here to face fear? Did you come here for strength?"
The firebrand went out. Darkness fell like a curtain. All around Marius, spiders began to chitter softly in the hundreds.
"Or are you just running from your fears outside? Think carefully, Marius; this is definitely the sort of question you're supposed to answer."
The chittering started to grow in volume. Soon enough they would begin to scream. The darkness pressed in again, harder than it did before. Marius ran through answers in his head, trying to find the right one to placate the mad deity before him. Tiny legs started crawling over his skin. He looked blindly for the goddess in the dark, felt the place his eyes did not want to see and forced himself to look right at that spot before he spoke.
"Yes."
A pause.
"Hah." That... might or might not have been a laugh. It was followed by another, a moment later. Then another and another, until the goddess was laughing like one of the dogs from the southern savannahs. As she laughed an ember glowed somewhere in the dark, followed by another and another as the darkness drained away from the chamber. Marius' eyes adjusted to their new surroundings; a wide open cavern with a flat basin - more tunnels led in other directions, still dark. Dotted around the chamber were stone bowls of similar design to the silver one in front of him, each burning away on some anonymous fuel. The bowl in front of him remained dark, though; an inky black fluid lay within the curve of the bowl.
"Good answer. Now tell me what you meant by it, in case you think smart words will get you out of this."
"I don't want to be chief. I am, I have to be. I fear - I am
concerned by what would become of our people if my brother took control of the clan. He is rash and his judgements are motivated by a need to prove himself, no matter the cost. I need the strength to lead my people, to carry out my father's legacy. Varus, my brother, has the will but not the wisdom. He would lead our people out against the clans who hunted our grandfathers, away from the protection of the forest, take on battles too great for us to overcome."
"That is what needs to happen, Marius. The Latia cannot remain in this forest forever, or they will have traded an open plain for a cage. Would you choose safety or power?"
"I would choose both! I do not oppose us reaching out, but there is a difference between running away because you are scared and retreating because to do otherwise would be suicide! Varus would take our strongest out to fight, pit them against tribes like the Tomani for the sake of glory, and not stop until he or all of our men were dead."
"There, then, is your courage." Valeia let the revelation sink in, then continued. "You wished to be both safe and strong, and you are wise enough not to abandon your home because it
can be a cage. My word to you, then, is to both leave the forest and remain within it. Each year take a seventh of your strongest, those who have survived my test. Send them out into the world to prove themselves, or else to bring back tributes or defend against the greater foes. Let them stay away for a year, then return. On that day, send out another seventh. The rest remain to watch and keep the forest. In this way, you will keep your tribe strong. Have them explore, have them learn. Do not be isolated; take what you can from the other tribes, not only in food and treasure but in their means and ways.
"And each year, when the testing has been done, you will receive a gift as this one." Valeia lifted the silver bowl from the cavern floor and placed it in Marius' open hands. "That is your fear, your strength as well. It is the shadow that lies between courage and terror. Lay a bowl in my sanctum, and those who pass the test will find a gift as this. Have each of the chosen seventh spread it on the outskirts of the forest, where your enemies might wait for you to emerge, but keep a seventh of the fluid safe with them on their travels. When they find a place as this, a cave where fear might dwell and the worthy might be tested, have them burn the liquid as they would firewood - the fire will sanctify that cave and there also my will may be known.
"A final warning; do not drink the fluid within. Even one who has passed my test has much to fear from what lies within. Now go, you must lead by example. You will be the first to venture forth, spreading six-sevenths of this shadow upon the ground and finding a new home for the seventh. Your brother will rule in your stead, and if you do not care for what he does in your absence then you will find you have grown stronger from the year away.
"Now go."
Darkness flooded back into the chamber. Marius found himself unable to see a single thing, but he could feel the silver bowl in his hands and hear the faint sloshing of the liquid within. He felt his way to the entrance and emerged to the dawn light.
When morning came, he delivered the news to his people and placed them in his brother's care. He journeyed to the edge of the forest and there scattered the black liquid across the earth with his fingertips, spraying it finely along the ground. Marius tipped the last seventh into a stoppered gourd and carried it alongside his waterskin as he set out into the world.
A year later...Varus stood at the edge of the forest, watching the horizon. A year ago, in this place, his brother had scattered the goddess' blessing on the ground. Where the shadow had fallen, trees had risen in their place. They seemed tangled, more knotted and treacherous than the rest of the forest, but the trees had nevertheless grown some twenty years of growth in one.
Valeia instructs the leader of the Latia to go into exile for a year and face the world, that he might inspire others to do the same.
She instructs him to institute a system whereby a seventh of able-bodied adult males engage in this trial, once every seven years, to keep the tribe strong and avoid becoming too insular. Conquest and tributes are encouraged.
She gifts umbrine to the Latia.A black liquid that gathers in receptacles placed in any of Valeia's sanctums during a test of courage. Umbrine has some particular properties.
- If scattered on the ground near existing trees, it will force the growth of new trees at an accelerated rate. Mature trees will appear in a year of growth, allowing the Latium Forest to grow at a much improved rate. The trees are tangled, but those who live within the forest should have time to adapt to climbing them - ideally to produce better conditions for ambushing and hunting.
- If burned with any fire underground or in a sealed building, that location will be consecrated as a new Sanctum into which natural light (except firelight) will not penetrate. The new sanctum will produce umbrine during tests of courage as the original sanctum did, and attract spiders and Screamers where they exist.
- If drunk, the umbrine forces the drinker into an intense hallucinatory state that will almost certainly kill them from the psychological impact of facing every fear they have, simultaneously. The survival rate is less than one in a thousand, but anyone who makes it through will probably be genuinely fearless.