Back when the world was still new, and the grass was a lighter green than it is today, and the center sands were farmed by elves of the plains, things were calm, and all the world spoke the same language. In this speech, time did not exist, and all things were in harmony. The elves could ask the sun to grow their plants and predators knew to take the weak and the old and emboldened the strong. Majik, for that was what the force was that sustained this balance, flowed through the land like milk, sustaining and maintaining these life forms.
And then, at some point, for time did not exist, a white ship made of bone and iron with white sails arrived at the edge of the land, and off of it walked humans with swords and beards and concepts of time. On the far side of the land, they began to build and multiply. They began to spread. The Fae, delighted and puzzled by these new visitors, invited them in and tried to teach them many secrets of the land, to include how to work with majik.
For Fae, time did not exist in the way it did for the humans, changing the way matter interacted with time did not challenge them, for they were outside of time. The humans did not exist in time this way, and found exercising majik much harder, much to their frustration. They sent their best warriors to train with the elves, but they did not have the right focus. The Fae sent them back, humiliated. The humans, whose white bone ships had deposited ever more humans in the west, were dismayed that the Fae harbored this power over them and began to march eastward to make war upon the plains. Elves, who were unaccustomed to warfare, could only fight with majik, and were torn asunder, never having had to destroy with their life force before.
Fewer and hurt, the Fae retreated to the forests and mountains of the land, content to wait for the humans to leave, and as they waited, they trained. They insulated. They experimented. But as they waited, the humans multiplied and spread, and gave the land an age and wrote it in time, and the land began to change, as it was now bounded. The language that existed out of time became a language that defined the potential, the possible, the once was, and the what might be, and it became a way to channel the disturbances in time that became known as majik. Finally, as the Fae martialed themselves under the elves once more, they attacked, and destroyed many human cities, being majikal, more graceful, stronger, and generally more naturally physical than the humans, the destruction was horrible. They slaughtered women and children too, for Fae women fight, and children grow up. This did not make sense to the humans, who swore vengeance.
This bloodshed went on for several long decades, until an elf came forward with an idea. A treaty was formed wherein a human monarch would take a crown and parley with the Fae ambassadors, who owned the forests and the mountains. The humans were free to make their places in the remaining land but were not to touch the Fae occupied areas. And so, the houses of men chose a king of the farmland in the center of the land. Alturan came to rule, and the land knew peace for centuries. Cities grew, Fae and humans worked together to build a canal for the shipment of goods across the land, and they worked too, to create the Great Stone Way, bound for safety and goodwill. Fae and humans came to respect each other, work together, and share the land that now aged. Even as humans died, Fae lived on, sustained as different life forms, by the majik of Icaria and the difference in their blood.
In efforts to learn majik, humans established the Citadel on the island to the west, past which the humans had sailed in so many years before. To be admitted, an applicant had to pass several trials, which tested strength, character, intellectual skill, and grit. The Fae instructors did not wish to pass their secrets on to just any humans. Human life was so short. It made the search and endeavor for legacy unstable and impulsive. Witches, as these initiates were trained to be, were strictly forbidden (and indeed, not taught) any martial majik. To do so was to risk expulsion, and expulsion meant death.
To protect these witches, a second order was trained. These were the warrior nuns, a sect of sterile recruits who wore their heads shaved and were heavily tattooed to show their tolerance for pain and their commitment to the order. Each witch was partnered with a nun after a process in which they bonded. Once they finished, they were changed, majik ran through them differently than other humans; they were conductors, no longer insulators. They were powerful, and almost immediately, cult-like followings sprang up around the earliest graduates who ventured back into the world. Some relished in this and used their powers for good. Some were manipulative and were found and struck down by Fae.
From many of these early witches and nuns sprang religious orders, groups dedicated to living by their words and in their example. Things in Icaria flourished for a long while, a relative harmony once more winding through the arteries of the land. Then there came a new king. He was kind, but foolish, and his son resented his softness. His son set out to tour the land and found and met with all the people who had come to live in Icaria. Charismatic and charming, he was praised and exalted as the soon-to-be king. Along his travels, he came upon the Sakjeden, the oracle trees, who were here long before us, and will be here long after. They know glimpses of what could be the future, and for the right people, they will share their visions. While the young man did not ask for a prophecy then, it gnawed at him when he returned to his castle. His father, aging and decrepit at that point, died shortly thereafter, and the new king assumed the crown.
For a while, he was a benevolent king, and the land flourished. But soon, he could not sleep, and he made the trek back down to the grove for a prediction. Before he could ask for his personal prophecy, a young sapling spoke.
Thinking this to be his prophecy, the king thanked the trees, and began to march back north. As he rode, his mind twisted the prophecy, and began to fear for his life. His father’s reign had not been bad, per se, but it had been marked with restive religious fights; a martyrdom in the south had set two factions at each other’s throats, and there were rumors of upstart magic users. His rule then, needed to be peaceful, for him to continue to rule, or he would be killed. Killed by whom? As he returned to his castle, his mind began to unravel, and he summoned his most trusted allies.
Bring me my witch, he said, bring me my witch and my nun, for all great courts and villages housed a witch and a nun for their cities. And they could not give him an answer, though they cautioned him that prophecies are not moored in time. That prophecy was not necessarily his, as he had not been given a personal prophecy. His mind had already grown too loose, and the king dismissed them.
The king then hatched a plan. He would find and bend all the witches in the land to his will, and through them, he would build and subjugate an empire. Witches that did not bow to him, would die. And so it went, through the land, burning, pillaging, subjugating. The witches that bowed to him were sent back to cities and attempted to force the cities to submit. Some succeeded, but many failed as new magic was rampant among the humans, and they fought back for their freedom. The witches and nuns who would not submit, the king used his new puppets to torture until they lost their identities, and became wraiths, Goasch, shadows of their former selves. Not born with majik as part of their being, the energy that they had taken in to sustain each other warped and left their spirits in a trapped, hollow existence, floating between time as they were not majik, but no more were they human. These wraiths he promised death if they did his bidding, and for a while they did, but as his grip on the continent slipped, so too did his grip on the wraiths, terrors in the night, who fled and terrorized majik users for no other reason than they were drawn to that warping of the world. As the witches couldn’t contain many of the cities and were killed, the wraiths deserted him, and factions arose in the chaos. The mad king lost control of a once peaceful land, and threw himself off a tower, but it was too late. The land had fallen into shadow.
The flames of the small fire Thorn had allowed flickered in his eyes as he finished his tale. Letti shivered violently. Candor stared at the embers, mind racing. She was certain Thorn had left pieces of the story out, but much of it rang of a hard and desperate truth.
“What are the Sakjeden?” Candor finally asked. She knew her questions would be limited tonight; Thorn had offered more than he was comfortable.
“Humans call them The Cast. They are a grove of trees deep in the southern forest of the Uradov that are blessed with foresight.” Thorn did not raise his own eyes from the fire. “They offer two types of prophecy. Personal, which is bound to you, and they cannot repeat it. And general, which are not tied to any specific time or place or person, and are usually twisted, usually by humans, to the end of some grim fate.”
Letti’s eyes were as round as the drying plate. “So, Icaria has just been fighting? For a hundred years?”
Thorn nodded heavily. “Longer. There’s more to the story—” I knew it! Thought Candor, “but that’s the relevant part regarding the mad king.”
Candor unclenched her muscles; she did not realize she had been holding her body so still. “Thank you for telling us, Thorn.”
Thorn’s face softened, and he nodded. “It’s not a pleasant story.”
“It’s not a pleasant history.” Candor corrected. Something tickled in the back of her mind; there was something Thorn was deliberately not telling them, something relevant to the account, and likely to them.
“Let’s end this evening.” Thorn quenched the fire and tossed the remnants out the small opening in their tied tent. “Let’s take a breath.”
Together, the three descended onto the Way and breathed in the cooler night air. The darkness reminded Candor of something.
“Thorn,” she called softly, for he had wandered further down the path. He turned.
“On our first night in the teeth, I think a bat sort of, spoke to me?” Candor recounted the way her vision had changed for a brief moment, and the flash of images that offered her the creature’s name.
Thorn listened intently before considering. Candor could not see his face by the light of the moon, so she waited.
“This does not surprise me.” He finally said. But he said no more.
The next span of days passed relatively quietly. Candor and Letti could feel the air becoming drier, a sure sign they were nearing the edge of the Kotemor. “The Way had to be accessible to the plains as well.” Thorn explained. “So, it winds a bit through the eastern mountains.”
As the trio crested a particularly vicious peak, Letti and Candor gasped. Stretched before them, as far as they could see lay great beige plains. As they gazed southward, large dunes broke the horizon like gigantic magenta waves in the evening sun.
“Twins above,” Letti breathed.
Thorn squinted into the distance. At the far edge of the plains, a small trail of dust, nearly invisible, wafted into the air. Thorn threw down his pack and began rummaging inside it. He drew out a pair of metal cylinders, hinged in the center with glass on each end and placed them to his eyes. For a moment he twisted some dials on the side of the contraption, then grunted. He handed the odd glasses to Candor, who peered at the dust cloud.
Taking a moment to focus on its origin, Candor noticed what seemed to be a small smear of light blue, snaking its way across the plains.
“What is that?” Candor asked, passing the ocular device to Letti.
“Those are mercenaries.” Thorn answered thoughtfully. He took the lenses back and pressed them to his eyes again. “Mercenaries clothed out of Durevin.”
“If they’re clothed and of a city, wouldn’t that make them soldiers?” Candor asked.
“Hardly.” Thorn stored his oculars gently within his ruck and slung it once more over his back. “Soldiers fight for a cause greater than themselves. Their purpose for violence is righteous, be it good or evil, they are committed with every fiber of their being. Fighting soldiers is not like fighting mercenaries. Mercenaries fight for money and reputation. Nothing more.”
“What about soldiers who are conscripted?” Letti asked. She had not taken her eyes from the plains. They reflected in her dark eyes; an infinite horizon mirrored in their depths.
“Conscripts are not soldiers.” Thorn waved his hand dismissively. “Conscripts are torn from their home and their families and employed in causes they don’t believe in.”
Thorn turned and began the steep decline down the backside of the mountain, shielding the plains from view.
“You always want to fight with soldiers and against scrips and mercs.” Thorn continued. His voice dripped with disdain.
“Been in a lot of fights against them, have you?” Candor tried to glean a few morsels of Thorn’s life.
“A few.” Thorn’s voice suppressed dark laughter.
Letti trailed after the two, still stunned at the enormity of the plains. Though filled with a deep admiration for the monumental flatlands, she much preferred the dark and eerie forests. There weren’t enough mysteries, Letti reasoned, when the whole earth opened up for you. Only the trees and the mountains offered the unexplored, secrets forgotten by modern memory.
Lost in her thoughts, Candor was surprised when her arm rose and met a strike from Thorn. They had reached their tower for the evening, and Thorn had attempted a sneak attack. He fought without dropping his ruck, as did Candor, the bulk causing her balance to shift. She maintained her stance, but was not as fast as she normally was, resulting in a nasty bruise to her left thigh.
Grimacing, she retreated, her forearm burning. She had not fought with her old sword for nearly a span; its weight taxed her muscles, now accustomed to the indigo sword. Thorn charged again, and again Candor defended.
Earning a slice to her right arm, Candor retreated within herself. She watched Thorn’s balance, the twitch of his back foot, the way he compensated for the imbalance of his pack. She noticed how his sword hand dipped as he accounted for the weight of the blade, and she pounced, teasing him to lunge forward, dropping below the blade and kicking at his ankle. Collapsing, Thorn withdrew his sword, but Candor had already flipped her sword tip to the rear, using the heavier grip to strike the outside of his left knee with her knuckles. Now on his knees, Thorn grunted as Candor came up to stand in front of him, blade held backhanded across his neck.
Thorn grinned. “You must learn to fight with that calmness always.”
Candor stepped away, suddenly exhausted. “I used to be able to. I was on guard at any time I was at home.”
“You knew you would be attacked by someone who would not do you harm.” Thorn rubbed his joints. “I am trying to teach you to be aware of all threats at all times, threats that would end you.” Thorn winced at his ankle. “It will inspire a different kind of fatigue, but this is the best time to instill a mental muscle memory.”
“Are you ok?” Candor asked, concerned that the big man remained on his knees.
“No.” Thorn grimaced. “It will mend.”
Sure enough, a few moments later, Thorn stood and shook out both limbs. “I heal quickly,” he said to Candor’s questioning look.
Handing Letti her blade, Candor took the packs up to the turret and strung the snakeskin between the pillars. She wished, not for the first time, she had a similarly waterproof item.
Returning to watch Letti learn, Candor took a moment to observe their surroundings. The forest looked much the same as it had near the village. Candor could detect that most of the trees boasted leaves that were a slightly lighter green than the trees near her old home, but she could not identify any of the patterns of life they had seen when they’d been walking underneath the canopy.
With a small shiver, Candor wondered what beings stalked the mountains under the branches that hung quietly away from the Way. She didn’t like to think of what whoudl have happened if they hadn’t found Thorn. Between the Baitrae and the water… she shuddered.
Turning her attention to the sky, Candor listened to the sharp clang of sword against sword. She found it curious that Thorn had started teaching Letti with a sword; Mo had begun training Candor with sticks. Then again, Candor blew out softly, she had barely been able to walk. Roughly, Candor pushed away the memories. She did not want to think about how much she missed Mo and Lola, or how guilty she felt at wanting to escape from their warm home in the first place. She also avoided examining a small spark, deep in the back of her mind, that told her to try to seek their attacker, instead of going to the Citadel. Candor shook herself.
Frowning, Candor noticed that her stars, the stars that Thorn had not seen seemed to have shifted slightly to the south. She checked again, rotating her thumb between the horizon and the points of light beginning to shine above the southern horizon. Yes, they were further south than they had been than when she searched for them in the village. Perhaps, Candor thought to herself, they simply look different, like the constellations Thorn mentioned.
Ignoring this oddity, Candor returned to watching Letti and Thorn spar. They did not take long to finish, and the three limped up to their camp for the night.
The next morning, the group trouped off, disheartened by ominous black clouds on the horizon. “We’ll practice in the rain tonight.” Thorn announced. “You must learn to fight in all conditions.”
While Candor and Letti were not overly enthused about this proposition, it would allow them a small shower to cleanse themselves. Neither girl enjoyed the summer sweats without a sea nearby. Thorn did not smell much better, but he seemed accustomed to his own filth, which the girls found amusing.
Sure enough, as the day grew older, the clouds grew closer until finally they spilled over the Great Stone Way and its passengers. Candor slipped once with her old sword—she had insisted on fighting with both every night now—and performed perfectly with the indigo sword. She found that she rather enjoyed sparring in the rain. Letti did not fare as well but retrieved her sword every time it was flung from her hand. She did not complain, biting her lips and concentrating harder. Candor admired her immensely, and even Thorn seemed impressed.
“Go up and change.” Thorn directed the girls. “Hang your clothes on the outside of the tower, and make sure you tie them. The rain will clean them.”
“How?” Candor asked.
“By beating itself against the stone.” Thorn growled. “Now go, I’m wet and tired.”
A reasonable reason for grousing, the girls did as they were bade, huddling in the small stairwell as Thorn took his turn to change. They ate a small meal and laid down to sleep.
“Are we getting close to getting off the Great Stone Way?” Letti asked sleepily.
“No.” Thorn mumbled back. “We still have a couple hundred span at least. Which means, depending on how fast we walk, at least two more rotations.”
“Oh.” Letti replied in a small voice. “I was just wondering.”
Thorn did not reply. He began to snore softly.
Candor stared at the ceiling of their little tent, listening to the rain drops strike the snakeskin. She wondered what they would face when they did exit the Way, and what they would have to endure to reach the Citadel’s island. Candor was skilled enough on small seacraft, but they had never fished further than a few lengths from the shallows off the coast. They hadn’t needed to; the village never overfished. Candor’s stomach began to burn hollowly with dread. Forcing herself to think of nothing but the tarp in front of her eyes, Candor drifted into an uneasy sleep, full of invisible fish digesting their prey and ghost ships carrying skeleton sailors.
“Stones below!” Letti swore, waking Candor from her restless doze.
“What?” Candor asked, sleepily.
“It’s still raining.” Letti grumbled, rolling her blankets.
Sure enough, heavy patters still echoed in their makeshift room. The prospect of hiking tens of span in the rain did not hearten Candor either, but she also had no desire to spend an entire day in their small tent.
“Nothing for it.” Thorn said, almost cheerfully, chewing on something dried. Letti was beginning to hate dried food. “At least both sets of your clothes will be clean!”
Candor had to smile at that. It was unlike Thorn to look on the bright side. That there was no actual bright side today only made his irony sweeter. She giggled to herself.
“Do this.” Thorn paused them in their packing. “Put your instruments in the Calenthari stomach. That way they’ll stay dry. Put your food in there too. The other of you, carry the wet clothes.”
Letti volunteered to take the clothes. Quickly, the girls exchanged items, and soon they were off again, rain spattering their faces. Thorn, the girls noticed, wore a long piece of fabric with a hood that he pulled down over his face. It did not stretch to his feet, leaving much of his trousers to soak in the downpour, but it covered his pack, flapping off the back like some drenched bird.
“What’s that?” Candor asked enviously.
“Pancho.” Thorn grunted.
“It’s not snakeskin.” Candor observed.
“No, it’s not.”
“Well, what is it?” Candor asked, annoyed.
“It’s majiked to be water repellant.” Thorn shrugged, cascading water down his back and front. “It’s just fabric.”
Candor resolved to find something of the like whenever they had a chance. A piece like that would be invaluable if ever they travelled again. Candor’s stomach sank thinking about their future lives as nomads. This, she reasoned with herself, was likely their path for a while. Even if they spent some time at the Citadel, doing what, even the twins did not know, Candor was sure, it was not as if she and Letti could simply return to their village. There was nothing left. Candor was not certain she wished to settle regardless but walking endlessly now seemed like a lonely life.
The rain did not stop by the evening, and both girls were grateful Thorn did not make them spar that night. He even allowed them to dry their clothes carefully over the same sphere of heat he had produced for drying the fruit. They had dried his alternate trousers and tunic as well, and after a quick change, all their clothes were dry once more and packed. Exhausted, all three fell quickly to dreams.
Mercifully, the next few days were clear and dry, allowing for swift marches and long spars. Letti, though not good, would no longer be a liability in a fight. Candor was pleased, as was Thorn, though he did not say it. That night they rested on the side of a rather flat mountain.
“Why didn’t they put this tower on the top of the ridge?” Letti asked.
Thorn shrugged. “The incline here isn’t that steep.”
“Comparatively.” Candor agreed.
Having no more to say on the subject, they ended the evening. The next day saw Candor, Letti, and Thorn trekking up the side of the not-so-steep Kotemor. At the top, Candor tugged her water skin from her pack and drew a sip. After a moment, she realized Thorn had frozen.
Letti did not seem to know what to do. Candor followed the large man’s gaze, and sucked in her breath. Several hundred lengths to their front, at the far end of the soft slope, the Great Stone Way seemed to erupt. Each side rose up in a terrible facsimile of a twisted wave. The trees to either side of the destruction were gone, the ones around the perimeter of the emptiness a dull and twisted black.
“What happened…?” Candor breathed.
Thorn did not respond. Candor glanced up at him, but his face was hard as stone. He was calculating.
Without warning, out of the cloudless sky, a bolt of lightning struck the center of the broken Way, flashing up the undersides of the shattered path. Letti drew closer to Candor; it was an immense power that had caused so much devastation. Letti did not find that thought comforting.
Candor followed the grey of the Great Stone Way on the far side of the break, but her eyes quickly lost track of it.
“Twins above,” she whispered, “It’s gone.”
“It’s not gone.” Thorn finally spoke. “It’s grown over.”
Candor squinted and discovered that Thorn was right. As far as she could see, the Great Stone Way bore mosses, leaves, and greenery. Its stones were barely visible in the light of the day.
“Marda.” Thorn threw his pack down, much to the girls’ surprise, and plopped himself down on top of it. Thinking better of this, he stood, squatted, rummaged, and pulled out his pipe, lighting it with a less than well concealed word.
Candor raised an eyebrow at Letti, but neither girl said a word. Both dropped their packs. Despite the situation, Candor found Thorn’s volume control amusing. Lola always lost hers when she was frustrated; beyond the gifts of louder majiks, Candor boasted exceptionally good hearing, of which she spoke to no one, not even Letti.
“What now?” Candor finally asked after several smoke rings had disappeared into the sky.
Thorn inhaled before answering, blowing a thick crimson smoke as he answered. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen this.”
Candor frowned. “How did you get to the north?”
“I came along the coast.” Thorn replied. “I got a tip the monster I was tracking was moving through the northern forests by the sea. I came from the violet villages.”
While interesting, Candor did not find this information particularly useful. “When was the last time you travelled this way?”
“A half century ago? Maybe less?” Thorn scratched the back of his head. “I don’t particularly enjoy this part of Icaria.”
“I wonder why.” Letti muttered.
“To affect the Great Stone Way…” For the first time since they had crossed paths, Thorn seemed unsure. Uncertainty was not a reassuring look on someone who seemed to know so much about the world. “This isn’t possible.” Thorn finally muttered.
“Yet…” Candor added helpfully.
“Yet, here we are. Someone has broken it. A safe passage through the land, a vestige of the old peace, destroyed.” Thorn seemed near tears, and Candor and Letti exchanged panicked looks.
“We can just go around, walk in the woods, close to the walls, and when the damage stops, get back on.” Candor offered a plan.
Thorn shook his head slowly. “This kind of majik, this magnitude leaves traces, effects that even the sagest of witches wouldn’t be able to predict. This is the worst kind of nightmare. This is why we’re so careful to whom we teach majik.”
“We?” Candor asked sweetly.
Thorn ignored her.
“Even so,” Candor continued dubiously, “this seems deliberate. It doesn’t seem like an accident. Think of the power such an amateur would have to be able to wield to affect such a tightly, deeply majiked thing.”
Thorn nodded. “You’re right. I don’t find this any more comforting.”
They lapsed into silence. Finally, Thorn stuck his hand in his pack and extracted a small, bound piece of parchment. Unfolding it, he balanced what appeared to be a map across his knees.
Muttering, he pointed to things on it, shuffling it, as if it bore crumbs. Finally, Thorn looked up, grim.
“We’re going to go straight south.” He announced.
Candor was sure she hadn’t heard him correctly. “We’re not returning to the Way?”
“No.” Thorn held out the map and pointed. “If we try to skirt as far around this disaster as I think we’d need to escape any possible residual majik, we’d be in the mountains for much longer, and its possible that the rest of the Way is as ruined as this part. If so, it is highly unlikely that its majik will protect us from anything. Letti paled as Thorn continued. “If we head south here,” he pointed at the map, “we will hit the ghosteaters in a week or so.”
“Ghosteaters?” Letti asked.
“A small civilization of humans. One of the older groups of man.” Thorn did not elaborate. “We can stay there, replenish, and continue moving south across the sea plains, here.” Thorn pointed once more at a section of the map.”
It was Candor’s turn to ask a question. “Sea plains?”
“Aye.” Thorns accent tinted his speech. Candor worried at how nervously he spoke. “When the land was still inhabited by Fae, the land south of the mountains used to be flooded entirely with seawater. It bore no tide, and all manner of small creatures lived just under the surface of the water. Elves used to harvest them, and their inhabitants. They were like large coral gardens.” Thorn shook his head as if escaping from a bee, “Less important. We have to make it there before I give you another history lesson.”
Candor nodded. “Are there any creatures between here and the ghosteaters?”
Thorn ground his teeth. “Yes.”
“Shouldn’t you inform us of their nature?” Letti’s voice pitched higher than normal.
“I shall tell you as we cross into their likely territories.” Thorn replied. “It does me no good if you’re jumping every time a stick breaks.”
“Yes, because we wouldn’t want to be on the alert for just anything, now would we?” Candor asked, sarcastic.
Thorn fixed her with a sardonic glare to match her own. “This is not going to be the same as our travels so far. I need you to be able to sleep and to keep watch. I do not need you looking for all the monsters in the dark when you could be looking for specific fiends when I tell you to do so.”
Chastened, Candor made a face, but did not argue.
“Before we embark, let’s have a look at your packs.” Thorn bade them unpack their rucks for a small inspection. “Take off your boots.”
Both girls did as they were told, and Thorn asked for their socks. Muttering a spell, he handed them back, warm and dry and clean. Both girls were surprised.
“We will not be removing our boots for some time,” Thorn stated grimly. “I will need you to be able to run at a moment’s notice.”
Eyes wide, both girls tucked their socks and boots back on.
“We really need to find you additional socks when we find humans again.” Thorn gazed once more at the great rending in the Way. He shook his head.
“Back we go, and down.” He faced the girls and waved them towards the way they had just trod. “We’re not going any further here.”
~.~
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