The Hunria-Sathi

"Shhhh, don't worry your head about it, little one. Just lay your head back now." Caras had to guide the boy's head back against the blankets that had been wrapped around him. The boy's gold-brown hair stuck to his scalp in darkened shades, the fever breaking and worsening by the hour as the medicine ran its course. "You're going to be alright, you just need to get some rest."
"But what if the visions come again?" The boy's voice was trying desperately not to whine, but it had been broken into shards by week after week of crying and screaming in the pain of the sickness. The cure he had been given didn't yet feel like a cure, only a different kind of fatigue.
"They won't. You're too old to be having visions when you close your eyes, you know that." Caras forced a laugh as he tucked in the boy's blankets. "Or should I say not old enough? I passed by your great-grandmother's room on the way here, she was actually snoring. Snoring, can you believe it?"
That managed to coax a tiny smile from the fatigue of the boy's expressions. "She's been sleeping at night for almost a year now. Mama says she'll go to walk with Avandra before long."
"Well, I've never known your Mama to be wrong about a thing like that." Caras finished tucking the boy in, and took the cloth from his head to cross the room and soak it again. He stirred the water with the cloth briefly to circulate some of the spices that had been infusing the water and make sure some of the aromatics made it onto the rag. "Has she told you that you're going to go walking with Avandra soon?"
"Well, no . . ." the boy's fear and uncertainty fought in his tone, neither certain which was foremost.
"Then you've nothing to worry about." Caras grinned, returning to the bed to apply the cloth.
"She does tell me I'll be taken off by the Hunria-Sathi if I don't take my rest and my medicine as I'm told, though." Fear momentarily won the battle for control of his tone.
Caras's face turned much more serious, and he sat back on the floor near the boy slowly. "She told you about the Hunria-Sathi?"
The nod that answered was solemn and slow. "She said it . . . it lives up in the mountains, but once a season, it makes an exception and comes down from its home to scour the camps. She said no one sees it, but it sees everyone. Everything. She said it feasts on skulls and collects eyes . . ."
"Your mother needs to keep her imagination in check." Caras leaned back against a nearby wall, adjusting the pack at his side to let him sit comfortably, arms laid over his raised knees. "The Hunria-Sathi is a story your grandfather used to tell your mother and me when we were bad. Only he told us it feasted on little children's tongues if they talked too much. Your grandfather liked to keep things quiet out on the trails."
"So does it?" The boy shrank down somewhat in his blanket, looking concerned.
"Does it what? Eat tongues?" Caras pressed, letting out a sniff of a laugh at the boy's frightened nod. "Oh it is . . . it's a bit more complicated than that, Kailan." He watched the boy settle in out of habit, waiting for the story he knew was coming, and smiled faintly, hoping he'd be able to get the boy into his evening meditations smoothly. He needed the rest. If a story would accomplish that, then Caras had just the story that would suit. "You see, the Hunria-Sathi isn't like the horses your aunt Midra keeps, or my Springsteps, or the hunting hounds your great-grandmother still keeps. It doesn't go hunting for just one thing, and doesn't eat just one thing when it finds it. It doesn't . . . eat . . . at all, so far as I know." He leaned in a little against his knees, watching the boy fall under the spell of the unknown. "When the Hunria-Sathi is hungry, it goes to the offering hall in its lair, and selects from its prisoners the meal that it's craving on that particular day. People could stay there for days, or years, or maybe just the few moments between when they're brought to it and when it gets hungry again."
"Brought to it? But Mama said . . ."
"The Hunria-Sathi never leaves its lair. Your mama is misinformed." Caras's head tilted to one side, eyeing the boy with a small, mysterious smile on his lips that Kailan couldn't quite read. "The people who are taken to the Hunria-Sathi have a long, long journey to think about what they've done, to try and come up with a way they can make things right again wherever they've been taken from. Naughty children. Naughty adults. They're all the same to the Feast of Many Eyes." Caras let that linger a while, watching the appropriate thrum of terror move through the child. "Sometimes the Feast leaves out the bodies of those it's eaten when it's done with them, dried-out husks of people that can be taken back down the mountain to be burned or buried in the Wild. Sometimes nothing is ever found." He shrugged. "There are only two ways to be safe from it. One, is to find and shroud yourself with vines of crystalcrown leaves before you approach. It hates crystalcrown, and it won't come near you if you're covered in the stuff."
When Caras didn't immediately go on, Kailan took the bait. "What's the other? You said there were two ways to be safe from it. What's the other?"
Caras got up with a groan and a creak of the leather jerkin he was wearing, leaning down to kiss the boy's forehead. "Listen to your mama and do as she tells you, so you won't be one of the naughty children that gets sent to the Hunria-Sathi in the first place. Hm?"
Kailan gave him a weak glare, but was still trembling a little as Caras pulled away. "Are you leaving again? On the trail?"
"Only for a few days this time." Caras assured him from the door. "I have an errand I have to run that I'm not looking forward to, but I'll be back before the leftovers from your mama's divria root soup are gone. Don't eat my share before I get back."
Kailan shook his head in confirmation. "Be safe, uncle Caras."
"Unlikely, boy, but I'll try. You just rest and feel better. Your horses aren't going to keep themselves." Caras watched long enough to make sure the boy's eyes began to glaze over with the rigor of meditative rest, then closed the door as quietly as he could, proceeding down the steps outside toward the ground level of the hidden complex.
"He's resting. His fever will take a while longer to finish coming down, but I think he's past the worst of it." He reported to the woman on the ground, standing near a massive silver-furred Springstep Elk that was walking in slow, practiced circles around the anchor tree of the home. "Has he said anything else?" Caras demanded in a very different tone once his feet were back on the ground.
"Not a word." His sister shook her head, her eyes never leaving the bound man blindfolded and restrained on the back of the elk. "Maybe the ride will give him a chance to think a little more about what he wants to say."
"At this point, I doubt it." Caras got the Sprinstep's attention and swung himself up onto its back, letting it continue its walk, to keep up its momentum. "I won't be long. See what you can get for these if Mahodri is going down to the Rinian groves any time soon. They always seem to find a use for it." He pulled a coiled length of vine from one of the saddlebags between him and the bound prisoner behind him and tossed it down to his sister. Each leaf of the vine glittered and shimmered in the moonligt as if it was adorned with a tiny, faceted crown, its leaves otherwise deep green and vibrant even after many weeks cut off from the ground.
"Don't stay long." His sister reminded him as she caught the vines. "You know what happens to its guests."
"I have no intention of becoming one of them." Caras promised with a nod, then led his Springstep away from the house and off into the trees, letting it have its head to run as it pleased. The beast knew the way.
Caras knew the place when he arrived two days later, but that didn't make it any more comfortable to visit. The final approach up the path to the overgrown cave entrance was a little more difficult carrying another person, but he knew he was far from the only person to have made such a trip.
"Last chance, my heavy friend." Caras grumbled as he ascended the steps. "Just tell me who hired you to poison my family and you can get down and walk from here, anywhere you like. Just give me a name and make me believe you're telling the truth."
The man whimpered, but kept his silence, prompting another sigh from Caras. "Of course not. Living would be too easy, wouldn't it?"
When he reached the top of the stairs and pushed through the screen of vines, he tossed the man down on the carpet of blood-stained moss, holding his ground just inside the curtain. No one was welcome more than a few steps into the creature's domain, and Caras had no interest in exploring further than he had to.
All he could see from where he stood were small blinking reflections coming out of the darkness inside the cave, approaching from every direction at once. Dark vines carried small, winking at him in the dappled light coming through the leaves behind him. Each one opened and closed, writhing near the floor, up the walls, hanging down from the ceiling to intertwine with the others wriggling up from the floor. Each orb that blinked back at him was an eye of a different color, a different shade, maybe a different creature. All were unified. All looked at him together, seeing every angle of him and the gift he had brought at once.
"Antivenom." Caras demanded, once the eyes had stopped their motion to watch him. "For the Nokrina serpent."
"This was given already. Did the child like the taste so much that you come all this way for more?"
"It was given in exchange for the first of his assassins. This is the second. If more were harmed by their actions, I wish to be prepared to undo the harm they've caused."
"Ahhhhhhh, to be prepaaaaaaaaaaared." The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, crawling into Caras's ears as the eyes began to crawl closer to their victim across the moss.
"It's not real, it's not real . . ." the man was muttering to himself, over and over again, his eyes closed against the stone. "It's not . . . it's not . . . just a story . . . just a story . . ."
A thousand eyes laughed around the chamber, chilling the blood in Caras's veins, making the sunlight at his back seem too far away for comfort. "The gift is acceptable." A stalk came down from the ceiling of the chamber directly over Caras's head, and deposited a vial of black glass in his waiting hand. "A pleasure doing business with you, woodsman. As always."
Vial in hand, Caras turned and left the cave as quickly as he could, ignoring the strangled sounds of pleading that came from the cave above, as the Hunria-Sathi claimed its price.

Summary

The Hunria-Sathi is said to be a twisted manifestation of the Wild's all-seeing nature, consuming all life that is brought to it and offered freely, watching all things and remembering all it has seen. It is said to be a relic of the early days of the Wild's creation, a physical manifestation of its early awareness that has managed to gain a sentience of its own. It is said to consume the life experiences of its victims, taking in all that they have seen from birth to death, in order to grow stronger from all that they saw in life.

Historical Basis

Most of those who go looking for historical evidence to support the myth of the Feast of Many Eyes do not return from their field research. Those who do, have yet to receive from the Hunria-Sathi an account of its own creation that agrees with any other account it has ever given.

Spread

The myth is widely known, but while it is considered both unlikely and unreasonable among city-dwelling people of An Riav, it is best known and most widely verified among those who live deepest in the Wild. There have been several rumored homes for the creature, but all appear in the foothills of mountains, at the edge upon which the best view of the lowlands can be gained.

Variations & Mutation

Some believe the Hunria-Sathi to be some form of vampire or a succubus from another plane, but these are outlying cases and only occur near cities, where it is more comfortable for civilized people to tell themselves that the dangers of the Wild must not be native to their own world.

Cultural Reception

For all its malevolence and horror, there are no documented instances of the Hunria-Sathi being actively malevolent or hunting outside of its lair. As such, it is regarded as a kind of guardian over that which is forbidden. Some have come away from its lair driven mad by knowledge they received from the visit, and in such places, the myth is regarded as a cautionary tale against too much curiosity where the Wild's own nature is concerned. In others, it is considered a morality tale about what can be expected when bargaining with creatures so much more powerful than elvenkind. It does not figure in founding myths or legends of any ethnic groups or civilized locales, but exists as a backdrop of society, helping, narratively, to define the boundary between knowledge that is healthy and knowledge that is destructive.

In Literature

The tradition of the Hunria-Sathi is almost entirely an oral one.

In Art

Many depictions of the Hunria-Sathi exist in artwork, even inside of cities, but no two agree completely, and the artwork is invariably derived from the Wild rather than being an original creation.

Date of First Recording

As an oral history, an exact date of original encounter or telling is not available.

Date of Setting

According to the legend of its creation itself, the Hunria-Sathi is as much a part of the Wild as sunsets or sunrises, and will perish when they do.