My nose crinkled with confusion. “No, a man. At least I think it was a man. He looked more like you than me. He said something about guarding the gateway—the doorway you mentioned.”
“Guarding it why?”
“He said...” I paused, straining to recollect. “People can cross through the gate, but no one should ever come back.”
Zira looked away at the ground, in thought. “How did you leave the temple?”
“I woke up.”
“Where did you wake up?”
“In the tank.” I winced as the memory clawed its way back—the stifling heat, the odor of sweat and urine so entangled into the rusty walls that it had become an integral part of them.
His eyes narrowed. “Were the people in there alive when you woke up?”
“Yes. But… a child was taken out. I think they meant to eat him.”
Zira said nothing, staring at me. He was working through something, but I wasn’t certain what. Finally, he asked, “Do you remember anything else?”
I shook my head. “Just you, pulling me out. I can barely remember that.”
His eyes searched my face, the way Akani’s had whenever she thought I was being untruthful. Did he think I was lying? “What is it? Why are you—?”
“You should rest as much as you can,” he interjected, not allowing me to finish. “The rover is solar-powered and we won’t be able to travel much at night. At least not very far. There’s a trading hub north of here, maybe a day’s trip with our new mode of transportation. I’ve made contact with the OSC and they’re working on a way of getting us out of here from the sorry-excuse-for-a-port at the hub. Sit tight. It’s almost over.”
I barely heard him. “What happened to the people in the tank?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
I looked at my hands, falling silent. They were dead, obviously.
How had they died?
***
Laith couldn’t remember.
It was difficult not to seem relieved once she made that apparent, especially with the fear in her expression when she realized all the other captives were slain. She prodded me for answers, but when I refused to give her any, she cast a stoic gaze at the fire and said nothing else. My attention left her momentarily to recount the supplies we had remaining in the cache. By the time I looked at her again, she had fallen back asleep. Good.
With a heavy sigh I reclined on my back, the hardpan as cold as ice against my uniform. I clutched a stone in one hand until it was completely gone, the vertigo of exhaustion from all the recent excitement began easing up. I closed my eyes, wishing I could sleep. I should have slept, but that was dangerous. The bodies of the slain soldiers were gone—who or what took them was uncertain. That uncertainty served as a warning to stay awake.
This was almost over.
I looked at the stars overhead, the usual overcast curiously absent. The constellations were foreign, though attica quickly identified them for me. Without civilization there was no light pollution to hide the cosmos. There were far more red giants in this galaxy than I was used to seeing. They marked the age of the galaxy, like rings on a tree trunk. Areas this old were typically inhabited by machines, nothing else.
It wasn’t long before I felt cross-eyed, my lids leaden; I couldn’t remember the last time I was this tired. Against all better judgment, I bent to my own physiology and closed my eyes once more.
*
It had felt like mere seconds since I’d closed my eyes, but the sky’s dark hue was mottled differently, the moonlight had shifted. The fire was now a smoldering pile. It’d been hours.
I wasn’t immediately certain of what had roused me, but then the nearby sound of ruffling fabric pricked my senses, and I was up in a flash.
Laith was knelt in front of the cache with her back to me, murmuring something unintelligible. She didn’t even turn as I loomed over her, mid-strike, quelling my scythe last-minute from releasing and subsequently eviscerating her. I strained to hear her over my pounding heart.
Attica couldn’t identify the language. I didn’t know what she was saying.
That was impossible.
“What are you doing?” I rasped.
At my inquiry she finally turned and looked up at me, clutching the armor to her chest. Laith spoke more gibberish, the inflections making it sound rhythmic, like a poem. Energy danced along her body, flitting high frequency sparks. Her kinetic pattern jumpstarted my adrenal system. She was, quite literally, radioactive.
The skin between her eyes and across her cheeks shined phosphorescent blue in the moonlight. All of these inexplicable phenomena came second to the translucent tendrils that extended from her back. They weren’t entirely tangible, but formed instead of high-frequency UV. There were six of them, drifting through the air like a jellyfish through water.
I stepped back, confounded.
“This isn’t the point,” she said, confusingly. “None of this matters, Zira.”
My eyes caught movement beyond us; a twitching shadow beside the rover. Caliginous as it was, the way in which it moved was all too familiar. The Augur.
The disfigured, bandaged corpse-woman danced toward us, spinning her glittery spooled threads. They were secured to an unknown source, trailing off into the darkness.
I took another step back, beginning to question reality. The Augur had made it closer to Laith, who was now screaming:
“This isn’t the point! None of this matters!”
The bonfire suddenly roared to life beside me. I jumped, finally feeling threatened enough to release a scythe. The Augur was now right behind Laith and I screamed her name, hoping to snap her out of whatever trance she was in, torn between attacking the creature or seeing how it all unfolded.
At the sound of her name Laith’s eyes disappeared, as if her skull sucked them in, leaving only black recesses in their place. Her jaw opened wide enough that I heard it dislocate, and she craned her neck, looking to the sky. The Augur wrapped her twine around Laith’s neck, still dancing, still crooked and horrible.
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t move.
From Laith’s mouth poured a sound that throttled my eardrums—that noise; the white noise I’d heard on the river, in the otherplace. But the frequency was off and it was so loud that my brain threatened to rupture and leak from my ears. I fell to my knees, holding my head with the only intact hand I had.
The Augur danced towards me.
I felt her twine slither across my neck.
XVIII
WARMTH BEHIND MY EYES SINGED BLACK CIRCLES INTO my lids. For the first few seconds I couldn’t open them, nor could I move. My limbs twitched as I tried to fight my way out of sleep-paralysis.
“Zira.”
The sound of Laith’s voice, soft and sullen, made me freeze. The invisible fist clenched around my body relented; now it felt like I was melting.
When I could finally open my eyes I was met directly with the morning sun, its glare slicing through my retinas like a chainsaw. I squinted, turning my head, settling my gaze on Laith as she knelt beside me with a look of concern. When the knifelike sensations at the back of my head subsided, I realized I was laying on the hardpan. I’d fallen asleep all night.
I shot up, looking around in alarm. The Augur was gone. No, she’d never been here. It was a dream.
But it wasn’t a dream—it was something else. Something that I had no control over, all because of attica’s upgrade. We’d integrated our resonance with the shards, and now they were puppeteering me. Laith, too.
I curled inward, massaging my head. All the confusion, frustration and exhaustion had taken its toll, so much so that I no longer cared if Laith saw this weakened state of mine.
“Zira, are you alright?”
None of this made any sense. It had to be more than a coincidence that I was here, dealing with a shard-activity situation; the first ever encountered outside of alpha-Insipia. I’d never been much for the idea of metaphysical planes, but
this was certainly testing me.
Laith tugged on my arm after I failed to respond. “You’re scaring me.”
“I’m fine,” I muttered, shaking her off and forcing myself to a stand. My façade was a poor one, and I gave myself away when I staggered. “I fell asleep when I shouldn’t have.”
She looked around. “Well, we’re fine.”
“How long was I out?”
“I don’t know. I only woke up a moment ago.”
I nodded, not at all satisfied with that answer. We’d lost most of the morning, by the look of the sun’s position. I cursed under my breath and moved to start packing up. “Come on, you’ll have to eat in the rover. We’re late. Grab your stuff.”
I bent down to grab the cache, then froze mid-reach.
The cache lay open. The elite guard armor was splayed on the ground in front of it. The image came flooding back; Laith clutching it to her chest, the Augur’s twine around her neck as her mouth opened and her eyes disappeared.
I winced, shaking off the chills that followed.
Laith regarded me with caution, clutching her satchel. “What is it?”
I pointed to the armor. “Did you take this out?”
She looked at the armor, then back at me. “No. I slept through the night.”
I stared at her.
“I didn’t,” she insisted, a spark of anger behind her eyes. “I’m not lying. Why would I?”
“Well I didn’t do it,” I snapped. “So how did it get here?”
Laith licked her lips, hesitant with a response. “You were… not sleeping well. Are you sure you didn’t move it in your sleep?”
“Are you sure you didn’t move it in your sleep?”
“No, but so what? Why does it matter if one of us took the armor out of the cache and laid it on the ground?”
She was right; I sounded insane. “Never mind,” I sighed, shoving the armor back in the bag and fastening it closed. I threw it in the back of the rover. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Then get a move on.”
***
Zira was incredibly moody today; more so than usual, anyway.
It was clear he was going through something, but he’d never tell me. I knew him well enough by now to also know that he fought his battles alone. It hurt a bit, as I’d felt we’d grown closer after the abandoned outpost; close enough to converse, to share bits about ourselves before I fell asleep each night. And now he’d withdrawn again. I couldn’t help but feel like it was my fault.
What had happened to the people in the tank?
That question kept circling my mind, no matter how hard I tried to think of other things. Truth was, there wasn’t much else to think about. The constant bombardment of memories of my imprisonment at the outpost, intermixed with the unfairness of Zira’s treatment churned rage and despair within the center of my chest until it felt like I couldn’t breathe.
Ever-so-slowly, I turned my attention to him as he steered the rover. He wore a stoic frown, eyes trained ahead in a slight squint from the midday sun’s intensity.
I was surprised by the sudden, irresistible urge to hit him as hard as I could.
No, not just hit him.
I wanted to claw the side of his face; I wanted to draw his blood.
That fury switched to fear as I looked away, mortified by the barrage of murderous thoughts. What was happening to me?
…What had happened to the people in the tank?
Tears blurred my vision and I couldn’t hold it all back anymore. I cradled my face and cried. I didn’t know for how long—but when I finally put myself back together and wiped the tears from my cheeks, Zira didn’t look angry anymore. He’d kept quiet during my fit, but our eyes met when I looked toward him, humiliated. He seemed concerned, and for that I was thankful.
“Have you noticed the scenery?” he asked.
I hadn’t. The hardpan was receding, patches of mottled grass and trees were becoming more frequent. It was very underwhelming scenery compared to where I was from, but the sight of any sort of greenery on this world was… astounding.
“Is there water nearby?” I asked.
“Most likely. Let’s hope it’s not radioactive, or toxic.”
I didn’t know what radioactive meant, but didn’t ask. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound good. Instead I stared out at the terrain blurring past, more and more green replacing muddy-brown with each passing minute. I looked through the windshield, and over the valley there were strange rock formations. They were blade-like, whitish-brown, jutting from the ground in rows. Some of them looked almost like man-made abodes. There were so many in the valley that it seemed like a village; but there were no people around.
And then I saw the remnants of horned skulls, scattered across the bladed rocks, which I now knew weren’t rocks at all. This wasn’t a village; it was a graveyard.
Zira studied the bone escarpments with a sullen frown. From his expression it was clear that he, like me, wondered what had killed such enormous creatures. The visor materialized over his face, swirling luminescence while he continued to stare at the bones as our rover passed over the valley.
“A hundred and fifty years,” he remarked, the visor disappearing moments later. “No immediate threats, at least.”
“What?”
“Those remains are a century and a half old,” he explained.
“How do you know that?”
Zira threw me a sideways glance, and nothing else. I took this to mean, ‘Because I know everything, stop asking me stupid questions.’
“I have to use the toilet,” I confessed.
“No toilets around here,” he said.
I glared at him, until he sighed. “Use one of the empty canteens; we don’t have enough time to stop.”
“No,” I said, horrified.
“Laith, we—”
“I won’t. You will not degrade me like this.” The ligar, the squatting in garbage-ridden corners—all other pieces of my dignity had been stripped by him. Whether or not it was for my safety, I wouldn’t have it. Making me use the canteen as a toilet in clear-view was my limit.
Zira’s eyes shifted left to right, battling his conscious.
“I’ll be quick,” I pleaded.
“Can you hold it for a while longer?” he asked. “It doesn’t feel right here; I don’t want to stop out in the open.”
“What about the bones?”
“They might collapse on you.”
I wouldn’t be able to hold it for as long as Zira wanted. For all his knowledge, he obviously didn’t understand lesser functions, as he put it. Before I could object, he nodded ahead.
“There.”
I followed his gaze. Beyond the valley was a cluster of trees, dense enough to actually be considered a little forest. I relented, murmuring a ‘fine’, and he increased the rover’s speed when I started squirming in my seat. Each bump sent shooting pains across my bladder. I’d had the urge to urinate since the morning, but Zira’s behavior had made me too scared to mention it. If I ended up soiling the seat, it would be his fault. Surely he wouldn’t see it that way, though.
We reached the treeline and he slowed our vehicle. I snatched my satchel and leapt over the door before we fully stopped, darting for cover through the tall grass and shade. And then I heard him:
“Wait!”
I froze, then spun. Zira was leaning against the passenger side door with his arms crossed. “What was the name of that Evgan death god you mistook me for?”
I blinked. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, tell me.”
“Can’t it wait until—?”
“No.”
“Enka. Can I go now, or would you like a lesson of the entire pantheon?”
Zira waved me off. “Don’t get lost. You’ve got two minutes.”
I muttered something unlady-like, disappearing into the trees.
*
Moments later I was squatting behind a tree several feet from the clear
ing, mentally counting down the seconds while also urging my overloaded bladder to release. The shade felt good; the slightly damp, mossy smell sent waves of unwelcomed nostalgia through me. I closed my eyes, giving up on counting, revisiting the Twin God’s Tree instead. I remembered the smell of incense, the sound of birds at sunset, the babbling brook…
And then I remembered I would never see it again.
It was so easy not to think about everything I’d lost while I was with Zira, when every moment was a literal life-or-death situation; but little pockets of solitude—of quiet—gave way to memories. To processing. To grief.
I opened my eyes as my bladder finally decided to cooperate, feeling sick and relieved at the same time. When done, I reached for my satchel to clean up, but my hand caught empty space.
I looked, confused, seeing my satchel no longer resting at the other side of the trunk. It was gone.
I’d brought it. I knew I had.
Distressed, I glanced back at the clearing. It’d already been much longer than two minutes, but I couldn’t leave without my satchel. Zira would be furious if I’d lost the rest of our water supply. And my Kenlila idol. My blade. No.
Laughter permeated through the shade, coming from deeper in the forest. The laughter was young, child-like. I scanned the scenery, and then saw half of a child’s head poking out from one of the tree trunks several yards away. I couldn’t tell their age or gender, but they were very pale—paler than Zira, even—with red markings on their cheeks and chin. Their hair was silvery and untamed, flowing to their shoulders and the upper-half of their body was naked. Before I could assess anything else, the child darted out of sight.
They’d taken my satchel.
I followed the sound of their footsteps, calling softly for them to wait. Each time I thought I’d caught up to them, they vanished into thin air, their laughter suddenly coming from somewhere else. Before I knew it I could no longer see the clearing, nor was I sure from which direction I’d come. I realized I’d walked into a trap just seconds before a dozen or so people emerged from behind the trees, surrounding me.
Covenants: Elegy (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 8) Page 16