“The kingdoms of Gnirean and Allovast,” answered Orn.
“Allovast?” Xala repeated. “I’ve never heard of such a place.”
“It hasn’t existed since the War,” said Orn. “Much of the world was different then. The desert we’re on now was probably teeming with jungle. But the weapons the two cities used were so terrible that they destroyed not only Allovast, but most everything else.”
“How is that possible?” asked Anaxis. “How could any weapon do that?”
“They were horribly careless in their abuse of technology,” Orn said. “They split the very universe open on top of each other. With weapons of such immense power that they killed hundreds of thousands, leveled cities, turned rivers to deserts.”
“We’ll come upon the ruins of one such city tomorrow,” Laquin said.
“What was the War fought over?” Mills asked, licking from his barkplate the last of its goop.
“Revenge. Hatred,” said Orn. “Ideas. Nonsense, really, like almost any war. When all was said and done, Gnirean was the only city left on the planet. Those that didn’t agree with their ideology were forced to flee, forced to live in the scorched remains. People like yours.”
“So the Gnirean are the real monsters after all,” said Mills.
“From a certain point of view,” said Orn. “Those that fled their dominance were not forced to. They chose to, because they disagreed with how the Gnirean chose to operate their society after the War.”
“I would have, too, if they caused such destruction,” said Mills.
“It wasn’t just them, Mills,” Laquin said. “Allovast used the same weapons. They just lost, is all.”
“So why does Gnierean continue to scour the desert with their Silver?” Mills asked. “There’s nothing left.”
“They want to keep it that way,” Orn said. “There was an attempted revolution, a rising up of the people dispossessed, some five hundred years after the war, one that nearly destroyed Gnirean, too. Gnirean offered peace, and the revolutionaries accepted the peace, were allowed into the city, and then launched an attack from the inside-out. And so Gnirean distrusts anyone from outside their walls now. They keep mostly to themselves and send out their drones to make sure no one ever attempts another move against them. The whole system is automated.”
“So we have to live in the dirt because of the decisions people made hundreds, thousands of years ago?” Mills asked.
“Yes,” said Orn. “Unfortunately.”
“Well, we don’t need them,” Anaxis said. “Whatever Gnirean has, we can discover for ourselves. We can rise up out of the desert and be whatever we want to be. There’s nothing they understand or possess that we can’t, if we put our minds to it. Nature is the blueprint.”
“That’s my boy,” Xala said proudly.
“Until their drones come around and blow it up,” Mills said.
“Then we’ll start again,” said Anaxis.
“All hope is not yet lost,” said Orn. “The coming of the spacecraft that we found crashed could be the end of this horrible stasis.”
“Why is that?” asked Anaxis.
“Because it’s proof of our real heritage. That’s been lost or suppressed for so long. That could set the blind citizens of Gnirean and everyone else on this planet free,” said Orn.
“I knew it,” said Anaxis. “There’s no way back now.”
Boulder mounds started to grow up out of the scrubby desert soon after the team began their hiking the next morning. At first the mounds were low and easy to traverse, but soon they grew so large than they necessitated scrambling over, and keen assessment and plotting to avoid reaching an area where progress was impossible.
“No, back the other way,” Orn said unhappily when he reached such an impasse.
“Boooo,” Mills griped.
“Sorry, but I’ve never been over these outcroppings before. And there aren’t any markers or a guidebook,” said Orn. “We’re all making this up as we go along.”
“Ah!” Laquin shrieked.
“What? What is it?” asked Xala.
“Oh, nothing, just some sort of lizard,” Laquin said, shaking her head. “Just startled me, that’s all. Watch out for that pocket in the boulders there. He looked nasty.”
The team crawled back down to where another option forward presented itself, and Orn did his best to survey a new route.
“I think this way will work,” he said with a shrug. “But only time will tell.”
Thankfully, the second route did work. At the top of the boulder mound, it was clear that there was a long stretch of level ground ahead.
“Thank goodness,” said Anaxis, relieved. “My legs are killing me.”
“Yes, but just think how healthy this all is!” Xala exclaimed happily. “We’ll all be the better for it.”
Mills grumbled something nasty under his breath.
Spiky cacti were scattered over the coarser sand comprising the new stretch of desert. Fuzzy little insects buzzed about the cacti, seeking what little nectar they could sip from the muted flowers that grew on the undersides of the plants. Strakes occasional slithered in front of the team, appearing like mirages glowing in the rising sun. There were a few birds, too, very small ones that didn’t sing or chirp and flew very low to the ground. Despite being an arid wasteland, the desert was fairly alive with activity.
“Life thrives,” Laquin observed. “No matter where. If it can at all, life thrives.”
The day grew hot, intolerably hot. There was little discussion, as every member of the traveling party was trying to conserve what little energy they had that the heat didn’t sap from them. There was one stop, for the last water the team had, and during it no one wanted to address the fact that they had run out.
“Yes!” Orn shouted out of nowhere an hour or so after the rest stop.
“Oh great, he’s lost his mind,” said Mills.
“No!” Orn shouted. “Look! Look!”
He raced toward a new plant that had sprung up in the distance, a squat, bulbous-bodied cactus with fuschia needles.
“What’s that, Orn?” Laquin asked.
“We’re in luck!” Orn said. He took a knife from his belt and cut into one of the cacti, being careful to not cut himself as he did so. Despite his best effort, some of the pink needles made their way into his hand anyhow.
“What’re you doing?” asked Laquin.
Orn excised the needles and then started to suck the blood from where they had punctured his skin.
“Don’t tell me we have to drink our own blood now,” Mills said.
“No,” Orn said, using his boot to knock the top off the plant he had cut into. “Look!”
Crowding around the cactus, the others could see its body was hollow, and filled with water.
“Woohoo!” Laquin shouted. She dipped her cupped hand into the cactus carefully, then tasted some of the liquid inside. “It’s sweet!”
“The desert provides!” said Xala. “What fortune! Though I think I have a better way to get their tops off.”
She went into her bag and removed a swinging blade, which she unfolded to three times its length. She swung it at one of the watery cacti and the top popped off and landed, spinning, in the nearby sand.
“That’ll do much better than my knife, I’m sure,” said Orn, who was wrapping his wound in a piece of cloth.
Xala went around lopping the tops off a number of the cacti as the team members followed her and each got one of their own to drain.
“This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Mills said happily as he drank and drank.
“I’ve got a ladle, we can fill our canteens,” said Laquin.
“We really lucked out,” said Orn. “I was pretty worried about our water situation.”
“We still don’t have any food,” said Mills
“You can survive a lot longer without food than you can without water,” said Anaxis.
“It’s true,” said Orn. “We’ll make it
to Haven before the need for food becomes a serious concern.”
“If I don’t get food today, I’ll be concerned,” said Mills.
“You’ll be hungry, but that’s just a warning signal. Your body can use the fat stored on your bones to keep you alive. And then, it will eat the muscle.”
“So I can eat myself?” asked Mills.
“Basically,” Laquin answered.
“I tell you,” Mills scoffed, shaking his head.
“I would love to see some clouds,” Anaxis said. “If only for the shade.”
“It would be nice,” Laquin agreed. “But the sun will go down, eventually. As long as we’ve got water, and this slight breeze, the worst thing we have to worry about is sunburn.”
“That’s why we’ll keep wrapped up tight,” said Xala. “The desert may be harsh, but it allows for life, if you follow its rules.”
Just before sundown, after crossing over a rather difficult stretch of boulders, a strange sight came into view.
“Is…” Anaxis started, rubbing his eyes. “Is everyone else seeing that?”
Down in a valley, far from where the team stood, were the crumbling forms of ancient walls and the wasted outlines of city streets.
“Oh, good, you see it, too,” said Xala. “I was worried the heat had overtaken me.”
“No, no, I told you we’d come to this,” said Orn. “These are the ruins of Allovast.”
10
The travelers made their way around the rim of the ruined city’s valley. Below, half-fallen walls loomed like tombstones over the mounds of rubble and rivers of cracked pavement.
“It’s really horrible to look at, isn’t it?” Mills remarked.
“It is hard to believe it was once a place of renowned beauty,” said Orn. “And that all of it was lost over the course of a few weeks.”
“All of this happened in weeks? How is that even possible?” asked Anaxis.
“The weapons Allovast and Gnirean used were so powerful that they could reduce a city block to dust,” said Laquin.
“What is a city block?” asked Anaxis.
“See how the streets are in a rough grid?” asked Orn. “The squares of buildings between them are city blocks.”
“How many people lived on a city block?” asked Mills.
“Thousands,” answered Orn.
“Those poor people...” murmured Xala.
“What happened here is certainly tragic. But, Allovast was actually the first to use the horrific weapons that were eventually their demise. And when Gnirean plead for peace, Allovast only responded with more violence. These things do not justify Gnirean completely wiping Allovast off the face of the planet, but it is important to remember that Allovast was the initial aggressor. At least, in terms of using weapons of such caliber,” said Orn. “We’ll turn into the valley now.”
“Down into the ruins?” Mills whined. “Can’t we just walk around it up here, like we have been?”
“We can’t afford it. Cutting through will save us a day’s travel,” said Orn. “I know it looks bad, but there’s no need to worry. There’s hardly anyone living down there now.”
“Hardly?” whimpered Mills.
The scree falling down the rim of the valley to the wasted city was fine and loose, and so the travelers were able to more or less ski over it down to the bottom. Anaxis couldn’t quite get the hang of the glide, and so rode down the rocks on his bottom, which was easy despite it ripping a number of holes in his pants.
“Do you need any lotion for that?” Xala asked, trying to stifle a laugh when she saw the ragged state of Anaxis’s rear end.
“No,” Anaxis said bitterly. “I’m just fine, thank you.”
“He’ll be the only one of us to get sunburn on his backside, that’s for sure,” said Laquin.
Anaxis frowned and dropped to the back of the group to avoid mockery.
The team started onto one of Allovast’s fractured cobblestone streets. Metal streetlamps and rebar that had been melted in the extreme heat of the city’s death twisted and wound about the stone waste like strakes. Beads of glass were scattered overtop and throughout the broken remnants and made the place sparkle in the harsh mid-day light.
“If we were to remain here too long, we’d get sick,” said Laquin. “Even to this day, hundreds of years after the wars, the site remains charged from the weapons that tore it apart.”
“The residual effects of the use of such technology caused many mutations in the flora and fauna of the valley,” added Orn.
“Mutations?” repeated Mills.
“To explain it without really explaining it, the charge that the weapons left in the air was so strong that it changed the very makeup of the things living here, at their most basic level,” explained Orn. “Or, mutated them.”
“I didn’t even know that was possible,” said Mills.
“Unfortunately, it is,” said Orn. “Or, fortunately, in some cases. There’s a plant that we rely on for much of our s quotients, which, prior to the war, was a weed with hardly any nutritional value. Certain patches of it growing here and other places the weapons were used were so changed that their seeds now have the largest s quotient of any known plant on the on the planet.”
“That may be, but I wouldn’t want to eat it,” said Mills.
“Ah but you do, all the time,” said Xala. “He’s speaking of truache. Aren’t you, Orn?”
“Yes, I am,” said Orn. “How did you know that?”
“I have a strong interest in the strange and unusual,” said Xala. “And a history that showed me many things which...”
“Wait,” Laquin said, holding her arm out to stop the others. “Listen…”
Low grunting and the noise of crumbling gravel came from somewhere nearby. Laquin waved the team under a fallen wall. Into sight stepped a hairy creature looking something like a human, but larger, with parts of it looking as if they were straining to break free from the others. The creature had bulbous shoulders and spindly legs, and when it turned to see another of its kind come near, the travelers in hiding could see that its face looked as if it were melting. The nostrils appeared as two narrow, gaping slits, the forehead sloped over its eyes, and rubbery, flapping jowls hung down over its jawbone, exposing cracked and horribly misaligned teeth. The creature dug at a pile of rubble with a stick and found a plant growing within it, which it pointed out to the second creature. The two worked together to clear away the rocks and dirt atop the plant, exposing it better to the sunlight. When their work was done, they grunted to one another and continued on their way.
When it was certain they were gone, Orn crept out of hiding to survey. After a quick check, he waved the others out.
“What were they?” asked Anaxis.
“Humans,” said Orn. “That’s exactly what we were talking about before they showed up. Mutation. So twisted by the charge here that we hardly resemble the same species.”
“What do they do here?” asked Mills.
“It looked like those two were gardening,” said Xala. “Clearing away the debris so the plant could grow.”
“What a horrible life,” said Mills. “Living in ruin, digging out weeds.”
“Is it really so horrible, though?” asked Laquin. “So different than your life, or mine? Every creature strives to survive.”
“I suppose so. Just, they looked so… monstrous,” said Mills.
“That’s most likely because they look different from us but so similar still,” said Laquin.
“Do you think they’re dangerous?” asked Anaxis.
“Well, let me ask you this, would you kill a strange beast roaming through your village?” asked Laquin.
“Probably,” said Anaxis.
“Then they probably would do the same to us,” said Laquin. “We are the strangers here. The monsters. We should leave as quickly as possible.”
“Right she is,” said Orn. “Quickly now. Let’s make haste.”
The strangers to the wasteland had no othe
r encounters with the valley’s citizens during their trip through the ruined city, though at many times it felt as if they were being watched. They exited Allovast before sundown, and made it half-way up the mountainside before stopping to set up camp for the night.
“Do you think those things can reach us up here?” Mills asked as he helped Anaxis set up a tent.
“What things?” Anaxis asked.
“The mutated people.”
“No, I don’t think so. Why would they want to reach us, anyways?”
“I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t make any sense to think they would.”
“We’re safe here, as safe as we are anywhere in the desert,” Orn said. “And it won’t be long until we’re out of the harshest desert. We should all be proud for having made it so far.”
“How are Anaxis and Xala and I going to get home, once we reach wherever it is we’re headed?” asked Mills.
“We’ll be able to get you back home expediently, don’t worry,” said Laquin. “And then all of this will be like a strange dream.”
“I don’t know that I want to go home,” said Anaxis.
“Why is that?” asked Xala.
“Because this has been the most exciting few days of my life. And everyone hates me there, anyways” said Anaxis. “For messing up the Hunt. And a million other things.”
“I’m sure your parents will just be happy to have you back,” said Xala. “They are good people, maybe strict, but they care about you.”
“Well then maybe I don’t want to go back for more selfish reasons,” said Anaxis.
“Like what?” asked Mills.
“Like nobody ever understood me there, anyways,” said Anaxis.
“I don’t think that’s entirely true,” said Xala.
“Well, apart from you two,” Anaxis said, nodding to Xala and Mills. “Everyone else in Talx treats me like an alien.”
“And what would you do if you didn’t go home, if you had the choice?” asked Laquin.
“I’d see the rest of the world! I was so often told that I couldn’t, that life outside the protection of the village would mean certain death. But it looks like they were wrong, weren’t they? There’s so much to see now, so much I would miss if I just went home and carried on with how I had been living,” said Anaxis. “How could I do that? Now that my eyes have been opened?”
Legend of Alm -The Valor Saga Pt 1 - Falling Star Page 9