* * *
From there, things changed. They left Cavonia and saw new plant life, and the animals they hunted for food were not the same as before. The uniforms differed with every subsequent border, until they no longer knew who was fighting whom. But the sounds in the air—gunshots, cannon fire—those were consistent. They exercised great caution to cross unnoticed. They met only death.
Jean remained rattled for some time after the incident at the formations. She tried to hide it, but the countless deaths—however unintentional—bothered her. And eventually, like before, they reached another conflict in a rifted valley, where two sides fought in open battle, and also barred their way.
“There are ridges in the terrain,” Flynn observed. “We might be able to crawl through.”
“I would take this avenue,” Poe said. “We have marched for weeks as it is. Every morning I wake, fearing Einré Maraius may take my delay for death and pass my destiny to another.”
“Thought you were chosen, mate,” Shea replied. “Not chosen, not really destiny, is it?”
“As I understand, my qualifications for godhood are exceptional, not unique.”
“You won’t be replaced so easily,” Zella assured him. “Even so, we shouldn’t endanger ourselves if we don’t have to.”
“A detour would only prolong our journey,” Poe argued. “Or is your intent some cowardly aid for the Reahv’li?”
Zella scowled, but softened upon looking to Jean. Flynn said nothing, but he worried for her.
“Jean?”
“Huh?” Jean startled, as though waking from a stupor. “Just … let’s avoid shit, okay?”
Though Flynn preferred expediency, he seconded her vote. The gunfire was playing havoc on Shea’s nerves, and neither Chari nor Zaja thought the risk worth it. Poe groused, but the numbers were against him, and he wasn’t willing to go it alone. A great hill walled the southern edge of the battlefield, its northern lip obscuring the conflict raging on the other side. As they hiked along it, in hopes of finding another way around, Poe did nothing to hide his discontent, and happened by Jean long enough to comment.
“There are breeds of gutlessness I’ve come to expect—even accept—among my allies.” He shook his head in disappointment. “Not from you, Jean.”
For a moment, she looked as if she were about to apologize. Then she hardened. “Fuck you, man.”
At least she sounds like herself, Flynn thought. If only for a moment. It did not diminish the weight she seemed to be carrying, even as the slope of the hill itself plateaued. From here, they could see the remnants of a small town in the southern basin, recently leveled by cannon fire.
“What’re they fighting for?” Zaja asked. “Food? Resources? Land? I’d understand if one side has something the other needs, but all I see is death. No one’s taking anything.”
“Don’t know, here,” Shea replied while lighting a cigarette. “Just are.”
The gunfire picked up in intensity.
“We’ve yet to see or even hear of a land on this world free from war,” Zella said. “There are too many at play to believe they occurred naturally.”
“If the circumstances are right, an entire world can fall to war,” Flynn replied. “I know Earth suffered several. Perhaps more than are remembered.”
“Global wars have global causes, common enemies and allies,” Zella replied. “I once believed Keltian culture to simply be too hawkish, but we’ve heard tales suggesting the greatest bloodshed for the pettiest of reasons.” When she paused, gunfire could be heard pocking the other side of the hill. “Tell me, Flynn … how many centuries ago was it that Earth fell?”
He was reluctant to admit, “I don’t know.”
Zella glanced askew at Poe. “Perhaps with a reigning God of Eternity, you would.”
Flynn wanted to ask what she meant, but the gunfire on the other side of the hill seemed to be climbing up. “Someone’s prey is retreating in our direction. We should—”
The next shot rang the loudest.
“ZAJA!” Flynn shouted.
She had been struck in the back, and cried in pain as she tumbled off the road. Poe raced after her, leaping over Zaja in order to intercept her. As Chari quickly pursued, Flynn and Jean both readied for some unseen attacker. Shea was tightly gripping her still-sheathed cutlass as she clenched the cigarette between her lips.
“The hell did that come from?” Jean demanded.
As if in answer, several more shots punched the other side of the hill, and another arced over, the ball of lead burying itself at their feet.
“Think we should fall back,” Shea suggested as another landed, then swiftly took her own advice. Zella followed, while Flynn had only made it a few feet down the hill when he realized Jean wasn’t following. He looked back up, saw her standing there—shoulders tense, her spiked mace stained with old blood.
“Jean,” he called softly.
“They hurt my friend.” She was tense with anger.
Flynn climbed back up and took her other hand. “You don’t want to fight, do you?”
“I’ve gotta. Get lost, I’ll catch up.”
Two more pellets struck near them.
“You’re afraid,” Flynn intuited. “That you’ll lose control, like back in the canyon.”
Jean nodded reluctantly. Another shot struck near her foot, and she didn’t even flinch. A bit closer, Flynn realized, and she could have died.
“If I’d kept my cool then, we’d be across that field now. If I’d kept my cool back on Breth…”
Flynn wanted to help her cope with all her insecurities and anxieties, but there was no time. The dueling armies gave no signs of coming closer, but their stray shots continued to rain like hail, and as he gave a sharp tug on Jean’s hand, this time, she yielded. Their friends were already further downhill, making for the battered town below, as clouds of dust kicked up with every shot that pelted their way. And for every one that connected, Flynn feared it might hit Jean and she would run no more.
* * *
Even as night fell, the conflict showed no signs of abating. The war fires burned so bright that the crest of the northern hill was singed red with a glow that would not fade until morning. In the wrecked town at the base of the hill—which Shea had identified as Convive from her map—they found one home that had largely survived bombardment, and made it their shelter through the night. Flynn watched from the window, surveying the debris of splintered wood and shattered glass, where signs of mangled bodies sometimes revealed themselves beneath.
“Please remain still—I’ve yet to finish ministering to your wounds.”
Chari was addressing Zaja, who sat on a stool facing the wall. She shivered from the cold, her blue backside bared as Chari finally began closing the injury after having removed the offending shot, which sat on a nearby plate, tinged with green blood.
“Not like I’m gonna die,” Zaja groused, before reluctantly adding, “…from this.”
Flynn watched as her wound mended into a faint scar. However cool her demeanor now, Zaja had cried out in pain when Chari had plied the bullet from her flesh. The healer moved on to tend the lesser bruises Zaja had suffered from her fall.
“Your condition’s getting worse,” Flynn observed.
Zaja tensed. “Why? Is there something on my back?”
“Just one.” Chari dragged her finger across a narrow blemish crossing Zaja’s spine. “Here to here.”
“Oh.” Her tone conveyed neither disappointment nor relief. “Not much I can do about it now.”
Flynn wished he could offer more. “Just keep close to someone tonight. We can’t start a fire—someone might see.” He made his way upstairs, vaulting over several broken steps, to find a single lonely room. There were three occupants: one was Jean, leaning by a bullet-pierced window. The others were a deceased mother and child, the par
ent struck in the head, the baby dead in her arms.
“We need to talk about what happened. Back in the canyon. Back on the hill.”
“Think she died protectin’ her?” Jean asked of the dead mother. “Or was it just, ya know, stray shot? Pow, to the head?”
“You lost control in the formations, and your nerve along with it,” Flynn replied, intent on staying on task. “What happened that has you so scared?”
Jean clenched her fists; she wanted to exit, but took a deep breath and relaxed her hands slowly, pressing them against the wall. The house remained still. “I’ve got no self-control.”
She ached in admitting it.
“You have some—”
“Bullshit,” she snapped. “I did, might not have lost Mack. Wouldn’t have run off to beat the crap outta Arronel.” She stroked the scar running through her forearm. “Wouldn’t have let the fucker spear me back on Terrias. Broke the damn bridge in that blizzard on Oma—”
“You’ve made your point,” Flynn interrupted. He was trying to help her heal, not enable her to keep beating herself up.
“Wouldn’t have gotten captured back on Earth, thrown in Civilis,” she concluded. “Wouldn’t have met, you an’ me.” She closed her eyes, thought back further. “Wouldn’t have lost my mom, either.”
Flynn stood across from her, the moonlight piercing the darkness between them. He was certain he’d found the root of her problem. “What happened?”
She looked at her open palms, her hands both perfectly still. “When I was small? Hands used to shake like a rattler’s tail. Couldn’t even keep a damn fork straight, so Mama had to feed me every night. Hardly was able to do a thing without her, since everythin’ my mitts touched buckled an’ broke.”
For all her misfortunes of birth and circumstance, Flynn felt a flash of envy. He’d been born normal and at least had a stable home; she had grown up on the run, vilified as a ‘half-human’ on an Earth that despised her kind. But there was love. He didn’t share this envy, knowing it would only come off as insulting.
“Ya know the kind of life half-humans get,” she went on. “My mama coulda had a real one. But she held tight to me, tried to find some place safe for us together. And there were places … they just never panned out. Had to keep me from people, and I think some found out, and she…” Jean cut that line of thought; whatever sins she believed her mother had committed, she couldn’t bring herself to slander the memory. “Then, one day, she leaves. Supply run, nothin’ major, s’posed to be back before bed. ’Cept she doesn’t show. Day goes by. Two. Three.”
Abandonment, was Flynn’s first conclusion. Scarlet Carolina had left his father the same way. “She didn’t come back?”
Jean shook her head. “Had to go lookin’. Mama said never to follow, keep away from folks. Followed anyway, started askin’ around. An’ ya know? Someone had seen her.” She shuddered at the recollection. “Dunno if they were tryin’ to make her spill where I was or if they just grabbed her for her…” Her tone turned to painful disgust. “The shit they did to her.”
“I can’t imagine losing a parent like that,” he said sympathetically. It was a mournful portrait: some abandoned building with boarded up windows, Jean’s mother bound to a chair or hanging from a beam.
Jean spoke with soft terror. “She wasn’t dead yet.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before continuing. “Ran in and cut her free and was so glad that I hugged her. I hugged her,” she repeated in a stunned whisper. “Why did I hug her? I knew better. I felt her bones break, felt her quake in my arms. An’ I just … I got scared. So I hugged tighter.”
By the time she finished, Jean could only breathe through quiet, choking sobs. It was an old wound, but it still hurt.
“I can’t relate,” Flynn admitted. “My parents are alive, and even if they’d died, I never had any attachment to them. They never loved me, and I never loved them.”
Jean looked up at Flynn, her eyes red and raw. “Ya ever loved anyone?” she asked pointedly. He could only shake his head. Jean nodded in acknowledgment, saying, “’Least my mama loved me.”
“At least she did,” he agreed.
Jean didn’t catch the envy in his voice.
* * *
A night’s wait turned into a day’s, and then another night to follow. Poe stalked the grounds of Convive, listening to the gunshots on the winds. They had softened in volume, frequency; the opposing armies were dying, but it didn’t matter who won, so long as the victors kept out of his way.
A nearby rustling disrupted Poe’s attention, and he drew the Searing Truth as he moved to investigate. A fowl, over half his size, startled at his nearing and ran off into the woods. Poe smiled in anticipation, then took off in pursuit. As he vaulted over the bushes, ducked the branches, and leapt from stone to stone, his prey tried frantically to escape. These woods may have been its home, but Poe, too, had grown up in a forest, and was adept at stalking within. The moment he was within range, he thrust his blade forward, spearing the fowl, which wrenched the blade from Poe as it tumbled.
Poe knelt beside the wounded creature as it struggled to breathe. “Yours is a necessary death. A contribution to my allies, in a place where the hunt has been slim. And to myself, to sustain me on my path to godhood.” He placed his hand on his blade, preparing to draw it free and let the dying fowl bleed out.
“You’ve changed preferences.” He turned to find Zella Renivar standing in the brush. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed. You haven’t drawn your other sword since our landing on the Red Coast.”
“It nearly killed me,” Poe replied dismissively. “Were it possible to bear a grudge against an inanimate object, then that may be what I now feel for it.”
Zella knelt beside Poe and took the Searing Truth in hand. “Poor creature,” she cooed as she carefully removed the blade. “At least put it out of its misery.”
Poe bore no sympathy for the dying fowl; if she wanted to end its suffering, she would have to do it herself. Poe expected her to further complain or fetch Chari in a futile attempt to heal the thing. To his surprise, her other hand found the grip of his blade, and she lined it up against the creature’s neck. She raised the sword up, but before she could bring it down, Poe caught both her forearms above her head.
“You’re going to miss like that,” he told her. After adjusting her stance, and moving her closer, he whispered. “Now.”
She struck, and the fowl was no more.
“It’s, ah … it’s a fine blade,” she admitted, fighting off her unease. “The Searing Truth, yes? Blessed to never dull, a keepsake of the Guardian family?”
Poe accepted his weapon back from her. “You know its history?”
“Mine was a privileged childhood, and the fairy tales I was raised on were unconventional, to say the least.” As she spoke, Zella purposefully faced away from her recent kill. “I admit, I’ve found your carrying it to be something of a paradox. As Guardian to Heaven’s gates, it’s a natural weapon; yet out of your element, it should pose as many dangers to you as to your opponent.”
Poe wiped the blade clean, giving her a perplexed look. “As a boy, my father’s sword was far too heavy for me to wield. When I obtained the Dark Sword and bound it to my soul, that weapon became weightless, as though an extension of my arm. Were the Searing Truth blessed similarly, I’d have never relegated it to secondary.”
This time, Zella was confused. “I feel as though we are having two different conversations.”
“You suggest my father’s sword is somehow unreliable. Even without its singular blessing, it is a fine blade.”
Zella pondered this for a second, and began pacing before she spotted the dead fowl and quickly turned away. “It is this: the Searing Truth is a blade that judges living souls. It is true it never dulls, but it was only meant to cleave the wicked. The blade passes through the innocent as though they we
re mist.”
The tale unnerved Poe. “I have never heard this.”
“I’m sorry,” Zella apologized. “It’s just … I thought you already knew. You are the Guardian.”
“Was,” he corrected. “I have vacated my post.” Poe examined the blade more closely. Its gilded handle gleamed as though new, its blade razor sharp as ever. “The Searing Truth has tasted considerable blood, yet never once cut and rent no wound. My father used it more judiciously than I, but even for him, the effect was the same.”
“Odd,” Zella mused, as Poe sheathed his blade. He lifted the dead fowl by one leg, then signaled Zella’s attention. She looked at it with disdain, though he suspected it was more for herself, for her part in the killing.
“I could use some assistance,” he lied. Zella nodded rapidly, then took up the other leg, averting her gaze back toward Convive. As they dragged it through the forest, Poe said, “And with our return, you may pluck its feathers.”
“I’d prefer not.”
“Then you’re waiting until we gut it to contribute?” Zella looked sick at the prospect, but Poe was inwardly amused. She still had a long way to go.
As they shuffled along, something cold touched Poe’s nose. He looked up to see a faint snowfall sidling through the forest canopy.
“Perhaps, when the meat is prepared, you’ll help cook it?” Poe asked incuriously.
“Perhaps,” came Zella’s eventual agreement.
* * *
By the next morning, a light snowfall had settled in and the battle had finally ended. Flynn led his companions through the wreckage of Convive, returning to their vantage point of days prior. A numbness had set in over their journey, for a field littered with the dead was no longer a new and startling sight; even so, a slew of bodies was scattered around them. Many of these snow-dusted soldiers had died with expressions of terror on their faces, wide-eyed disbelief that they weren’t the ones to live.
“There are people out there,” Zella said. “Perhaps they’re helping the survivors?”
“They’re scavengers,” Flynn replied after a moment’s observation.
Killers, Traitors, & Runaways Page 27