by Lea Tassie
"I'm tired now. It's been a good life, killed lots of squishies. Sometimes wish they were still here, shouldn't have killed them so fast, I guess." He glanced up into the tree. "See, there on that branch? A thousand and seventeen leaves on that branch. But who cares about that anymore?"
What was this feeling of emptiness? Trained to do only one thing, he'd had a purpose and it had been clear who was the enemy. Now he spent his days wandering around in a fog of memories, and there was no one left who could understand what he had experienced.
He looked down at a patch of skin that was on fire and snuffed out the flame. His living armor was old now, pitted and scarred, and the left leg enhancements failed him often so that he walked with a limp. Part of his left arm was gone and the shoulder plating was cracked and often bled. His combat unit's fighting insignias were all faded and mostly covered with the blood of many kills. "I don't think the scientists knew when they converted us that we would live so long. Guess they expected us all to die in battle. Sure, that's what General Harris wanted."
Three hundred and twenty-eight years of life, of day-in and day-out boredom. Most of it, anyway.
"When Dal and I joined, I was twenty. I've seen burned out cities and towns recover from the invasion, but all from a distance. Over three hundred years of talking to myself. I want it to end."
The morning gave way to afternoon as Charger's new dog friend rose to all four feet, wagged its tail, stared intently at him and whined. He flung his long gray hair back and stared at the dog. Its gaze was now fixed on Charger's leg and he looked down. There was quite a fire burning on that leg. Funny he never noticed. When he moved it into the shade, the flames died down.
"You think I should move out of the light, I guess," he said to Rin Tin Tin. "It's nice that you care, but look around, the sun has burned off all the clouds now and I have no hope of escape. Kind of how the Shillelaghs must have felt after my upgrade. We destroyed all of them, you know. Bet the aliens didn't expect that."
He reached down to pet Rin Tin Tin, hoping that remembering this event would somehow justify his kills. The dog didn't seem to care.
"It's two hundred and thirty-five years ago to the day since I had to kill Mac," Charger said to Rin Tin Tin. Leaning forward to find some new shade, he felt his long gray hair catch on some tree bark. It fell away easily now from his head. Hardly seemed reasonable to keep it long because so much fell out every day.
"I really like dogs, did I mention that?" he asked. A pause. "You do know that I will have to end your life today, don't you? Those pups, too. You should have died two hundred and thirty years ago, when the rest of them did." He wanted to hold the small scrap of a dog close to him, to feel its warmth, and enjoy the wetness of its tongue licking his cheek. But the years had been so long maybe he couldn't feel much of anything.
It had been decreed back then that all dogs be put down because the risk of Lycan offspring was just too great, and the best part of all humanity would have to carry that burden. He really hated humans then.
He found more meat in his pack, gave it to the dog and said, "There, there now, let me tell you a bit more about Mac and Jill, we've got time. All day in fact." He sighed, scratched the dog's ears and talked on.
"We did win in the end," he said, after another string of war stories. "Our fighting forces were every bit a match for the alien invaders. And we did go to squishy town." It had taken seven years to build ships capable of traveling to that world.
"Humanity scavenged the alien ships and deconstructed them, then reconstructed the hulks," he said to the dog. He'd gone on one of the ships, taking some of Dal's armor, and Chang's, even Ben's stuff, along with Mac and Jill.
The dog was still listening. "Their world is so different," Charger said. "It's this one, you know, this one we're on. The planet's surface was black, like our moon, pitted and wrecked, and astronomers would never have thought to look for life on such a world. We thought we were in the wrong place, that this couldn't be their home, that the calculations used to determine their point of origin were flawed." The idea that advanced life could be so close to Earth had been mind-numbing.
"Then one of our ships discovered the entrance. They lived deep underground, they lived inside out," he explained. "Take Earth and turn it inside out and you'd get this one. They lived on the inside of their world and it was green and lush, not like in the movies where mole people live in drab holes. Inside their planet were big, vibrant green spaces. Well, there still are, because of that fake sun up there. This is where the new humans live."
Charger stared at the dog. "But how did you get here? I thought you were all dead."
The trip to the alien world had been a relatively brief one, a few years. And when they'd landed and looked around, there was nobody. "Then Command figured out that every last alien on Neo Terra had gone to do battle with Earth. Except they never found out about the Valley of Shadows; they never found the little people." He shook his head. "I guess they're human, but they're different. They're peaceful. So they can't be human."
"I really hate humans," he said again. "The aliens' technology was far in advance of our own, yet familiar. That's because they were us. Not aliens at all. I guess if I'd known that, I wouldn't have been able to kill them."
A vine from the tree they rested under brushed against Charger's side and he shoved it away. The grass was turning wet again, the day was slipping back toward night.
"Jill sensed what was going to happen, you know. A hundred years of joined minds can do that. Mac grew old fast. When the order came down to kill all Lycans, Mac acted like he welcomed it. He went quietly at my hands, looking almost relieved. He had destroyed so many of the aliens that when he learned who they were, it seemed to wrench his spirit from him. Jill fought me at first, then resigned herself." In the end, he'd been responsible for the destruction of all the vampires and Lycans.
Charger brushed another vine away and shifted over to avoid the fading sunlight. A fire on his shoulder vanished with the move. He remembered the last thing Ben had said just before they engaged in the battle. "Fair dinkum, mate, remember, if you can't kill 'em, ask them to dinner, we can cook 'em over the barby then." He figured that was Australian talk for kill everything not human. Well, he'd been doing that for a long time. Except that the ones he killed always turned out to be human.
But tonight would be different. Tonight would be the end of him. Come the dawn, he would be no more.
He pulled the vial from his pack and drank the last of the plasma, then shared the last of his meat with Rin Tin Tin, and stood up. "I spare your life, dog," he said. "But mine is at an end. Release will be sweet."
He stepped into the fading light and his body burst into flames. He didn't feel pain; he was only annoyed by the fact that yet again, he had scraped his tongue on the broken fang. As the smoke rose, so did Rin Tin Tin.
The last thing Charger saw was the young, powerful man he had been so long ago, walking toward him. Maybe that was his death, he thought. When they merged, it would be over. He took a couple more steps towards his young double and spoke.
The dog watched as Charger's massive body began to burn. Under the coolness of the leafy oak they had shared, it stood, shielding its pups from drifting smoke. Then, satisfied, the dog trotted into the forest.
Chapter 13 The magic city
Deleray went out late one summer afternoon, the year she turned twelve, to pick flowers. She wanted to put them in a small copper jug on the table where the family ate their meals. By the time she reached the corn fields, she had enough flowers for the jug. As she turned to head back, she glanced up and saw, high on the opposite hill, in the shadows of a large oak tree, a man sitting with an animal. Deleray stared; she had never seen the man before. The animal was strange, too.
Then the man rose and she realized he was huge. Her mouth fell open in amazement as he burst into flames which burned brighter than the morning sun. Terrified, she raced back to the village and told the elders. When they climbed th
e hill, they found a great black demon lying dead in the grass near the oak tree, burn marks on much of his body.
That night, sitting around the hearth in the village hall, the elders wove a new story, one about demons living in the forest, a tale to frighten the young into obedience.
***
Six years later, on the morning of her eighteenth birthday, Deleray rose very early, for the people of her village staged extravagant celebrations for all children who reached this threshold to the adult world.
She was highly favored among the villagers because she had spent countless hours reciting the history of their people and the important achievements of their heroes, just as she had heard those stories from the elders. Long had been the existence of the Kung families, so the tales went, tracing their ancestry back fifty generations to the time of the great king Asmos, whose direct descendants still lived in villages some two days ride away by horse and cart. She had once asked why there were no drawings of the people long gone, no diaries or relics. The elders shook their heads and said that such things were frivolous, that the long-established custom of reciting oral histories was all they needed.
Telling stories in the evening brought Deleray the most praise. She would gather the children around the central hearth in the village hall, and tell them about the day she witnessed the great god Haspha burst into flames under the tall oak tree.
Now, on this celebration day, Deleray braided her thick, lustrous black hair and wound it in a crown on top of her head. Then she dressed in her finest leather riding gear, for now that she was eighteen, she was expected to ride the great horses. These were horses twice the size of the ordinary field horses, and had been ridden into many historic battles. During these days of peace, they were ridden only by children who had come of age.
Deleray was very excited, for she had picked her birthday horse some three years back and, though she fed and cared for the great stallion, was not allowed until this morning to ride the huge beast. From her small bedroom on the top floor, she raced down the stairs past her younger brother, knocking him off his feet.
"Hey, you big lumbering bear, look where you put your feet!" Oppsy complained.
"Oh, you will surely live to steal my stuff tomorrow," Deleray replied cheerfully, hurrying past her mother on the way to the back door.
"Now, young lady, an apology is due, and if you wish not to offend Haspha, you'll be quick about it," her mother said, catching Deleray by the arm.
Stopped just short of escape, Deleray turned back to face her younger brother. "I am the most apologetic of people for my offence. Please forgive my transgressions." She bowed her head low, then lifted it slightly and winked at Oppsy.
"Very nice, Del," her mother said.
To which Oppsy cried, "Hey, mom, she winked an eye at me." However, his words were too late, for Deleray had made her escape out the back door and was hurrying to the center of town for the celebrations.
She shared this birthday with five other kids from the village. Demm was a tall, lean young man, not very bright, but good at sports. Deleray really liked him because of his long, shining black hair. Hers was black, too, but thick and curly and, no matter what she tried, she couldn't get it to look smooth like his. Bosh and Dwain were twins, boys always in trouble for raiding gardens. They were heavyset and dark-skinned, with fat bellies often full of stolen vegetables. Jalen and Chloe were cousins, pretty and competitive girls, each trying to gain something the other did not have at the expense of any boy who found them attractive.
These six young scamps gathered at the village oak tree on the hill just outside the town. This was the same tree where Deleray had witnessed the vision of the great god Haspha. As was customary, most of the village people were there. Many long-winded speeches were made, telling of the lineage and long ancestry of the villages of Hamerca, and how the great king Asmos conquered the tribes of Mexca and Canda, forever binding the peoples to live in peace and harmony.
After what felt like hours of talk and ceremonial feasting, the six were presented with their horses, which they had spent three years training and grooming. Deleray could hardly wait for the best part of the celebration. The six were to ride out from the village and spend a week in the forests, exploring where no one else had traveled before. Finally, as the sun burned at its midday brightest, the six riders mounted their horses and, to the cheers of family and other well-wishers, set off.
The adventure was a bit chaotic at first for every one of the group wanted to lead, and all in different directions, naturally.
After much complaining and arguing, Deleray said softly, "I know an old story, told by the peoples of Canda, about a place where a magical waterfall exists, though now the water is fouled by poison so we cannot drink it. But the water still feeds a wondrous garden which grows the tallest trees ever seen."
"Garden," Bosh said to Dwain. "I say we go there."
"Yes, never let it be said that we pass up any opportunity to garden," responded Dwain, rubbing his belly.
Because Demm liked Deleray, that made the vote four in favor, and the six set off in the direction Deleray had suggested. The goal was distant and they spent three days riding across the open plains of Saturne toward the smaller forest of Bell.
The people of the Bell forest were called Canda, and differed from Deleray's people of Hamerca only in being slightly taller. They also had a reputation for being kind and generous. The small troop rode into the village, acknowledging many greetings from the locals, as they made their way to the local market for breakfast and supplies. After eating well, Jalen and Chloe trotted off to a shop that offered trinkets for purchase. There they met an old, gray-haired man with a funny accent.
"Here, I have many things for pretty girls. Over here, this is the best stuff," the old man said as he directed to two cousins to a corner of his shop.
Chloe found a small, rectangular metal object with colored stones scattered across its face. They sparkled and shone, and she found it irresistible.
"Ah, that's a good buy," the old man said. "I found it some ten years back, not a day less. I decided it be magic, though others think it be black magic. 'Twas at the falls that it glowed and warmed, near shocked me to my grave, too." As the old man spoke, he rummaged through his wares looking for something to sell Jalen, but she seemed little interested and went on fingering this and that.
"The falls?" Chloe asked. "Do you mean the poisoned falls?"
"Bah, fools! They be not poison falls like people say," the old man said, still pulling objects from shelves here and there, hoping to entice Jalen into buying something. "The place is different, is all. The trees grow large and that be scary to the daft."
Jalen finally found an object that caught her fancy, as Dwain entered the shop looking for the two girls. "Here, look at this, I like this," she said to Dwain sweetly. "Be a dear and buy it for me. I would be so happy."
Dwain was quite taken with Jalen's attention and soon parted with his money to buy the object for Jalen. As it turned out, this object was almost identical to the one Chloe had bought, and both were a little annoyed.
With their bellies, packs and saddlebags full and their wallets empty, the troop of six gathered near the edge of town. "The stories say the falls are toward the Dark Side. If we ride all day, we should reach them by tonight," Deleray told the group.
On the world of Neo Terra, there was no such thing as north or south, east or west; there were instead points of darkness on the world's horizons. No one ever ventured too close to the darkness, for the elders said the world ended there and you would certainly die if you got too close. It was also said that you would have to ride for better than a year to reach the darkness. No one believed that it was even possible to ride so far.
Neo Terra's darkness had four corners to it, however, something like the point of a compass. They were: Dark Side, Gray, Black Shore, and the most dreaded destination, the Valley of Shadows. No adventurer had thus far been brave enough to attempt a quest into the Val
ley of Shadows, because of the stories of beasts that ruled that land, although one myth said a small group of mad ones had traveled there once upon a time.
The troop rode, as Deleray instructed, for a full day and, by nightfall reached the edge of a small plain. Across the plain lay their destination. They would camp for the night and cross in the morning. Tents were pitched and the group fell asleep after Deleray told her usual scary stories over a campfire.
***
The day started out wet and misty as usual. The plants were refreshed and the world clean when the sun started to shine on the awakening kids. Bosh was washing his pot belly behind his tent when Chloe, half asleep and looking for a quiet place of her own to wash, almost stumbled over him. "Gross!" Chloe said in a long drawn out breath, as she averted her eyes from the sight of Bosh with his wet rag.
Glad of a chance to pester Chloe, Bosh rubbed his belly hard with the rag, then rubbed his face.
"Ah, grossity! I'm gonna puke," Chloe said, then giggled. She really liked Bosh, but didn't want to let on.
Demm had restarted the fire from the night before and the troop gathered around its warmth to eat breakfast. Bosh kept up his antics, sitting next to Chloe with his wash rag now cleverly wrapped around his head.
"Gross. Go away!" Chloe pushed at Bosh.
The six laughed and talked for an hour, packed their gear and finally set off across the small flat plain. By midday they were deep among the trees, listening to small birds and insects celebrating the peaceful forest. They rode along an ancient, almost invisible path, and finally reached the legendary falls. The sight was impressive and beautiful, and the trees really were tall enough to touch the sky.
"Now remember, no matter what, don't drink the fall's water," Deleray cautioned the others.
"We know, mommy," they said in unison, followed by much giggling. They had only one day to explore this magical place, for tomorrow they must begin the ride home. The villagers would worry if they were late.