Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1)

by Matthew S. Cox

  She hurried to the door and compliantly stared at the ground, waiting to be taken as she tried not to faint. Thoughts of Den came with a gentle caress on her cheek. She smiled at him and he vanished. The touch of his fingers became a trickle of sweat dripping onto the hand she raised to him.

  This was a new complication. If another tribe took her, she may never see him again; the thought of it replaced obedient surrender with nauseous thoughts of resistance. Her gaze darted around the small chamber, looking for a place to hide. Finding nothing, she crept over to the former driver.

  The material crumbled through her fingers as she put a hand on his shoulder. “I know you can’t answer me, but what should I do?”

  Her touch caused the skull to tilt backwards and roll to the side, wedging between the seat back and the corner. The urge to cry welled within her as the thought of losing Den became more and more real with each bang at the ramp door. Althea looked away from the skull, and faced towards the increasingly loud noises. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a lever in the roof, right in line with where the skull’s empty sockets pointed. It looked like a small hatch to the roof.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Grateful for the low ceiling, she grasped the lever and pulled. Centuries of disuse had left it immobile, and turned her effort into a pull up. For a few seconds, she dangled, trying to use her weight to move it. She wanted to scream in frustration, but contained herself and dropped back to her feet. A creak from the back changed some of the grey to bright olive green.

  She squinted at the lever as her fright gave way to determination. They figured out how to work the ramp and would be on her soon. Althea concentrated on her magic. The sense of her own body filled her mind as her vision filled with the strand-shapes of the muscles in her arms. Focus sent more of her blood-presence into them, urging them beyond their capacity for a brief moment. With a grunt, she heaved, and the bar broke through the crud and slipped around. Planting one foot on the back of the driver’s chair and another against the wall, she shoved upwards.

  Decaying rubber flakes crumbled around her as daylight broke through the disintegrating seal. The air washed over her with a wintry embrace as her sweat-covered body slithered through the gap onto the roof. Her drenched shirt smeared a trail of wet across the sand-strewn surface. Flat on her stomach against the hot metal, she eased the hatch closed and lay still as a throbbing ache worked its way out of her arms. She had hurt herself inside making her limbs that strong, but it took only a moment to repair torn muscles. Seconds after the pain had gone, the ramp crashed to the ground, lofting a billowing cloud of dust.

  “Oi, c’mon out, you. We know yer in der,” shouted a man, while banging on the old vehicle.

  “Yar. You ours now.” A different voice followed it.

  Althea waited for them to walk into the green beast, and leapt to the ground. She had no idea which way Den had gone, but the Lost Place offered a better option than those men did. After a quick glance back at the boxy relic, she sprinted into the city.

  Free from the sweltering chamber, she darted down decrepit streets, embraced by the beautiful cool air. Althea cornered at random in hopes of eluding her would-be abductors. After several alleys, her stride slowed through a jog to a brisk walk. She wanted to call out to Den, but her voice would let everything in the area find her. Tall buildings surrounded her with various degrees of decrepitude, some spilling their contents into the street while others appeared ready to collapse at a whisper.

  Her gait faded further to a slow rotating creep as she looked up at the structures. Within the wasp-hollows, tables, chairs, and other signs of man gleamed in the daylight. Amazed at how people could have made something so large, she lowered her gaze to the wall at her left, and touched it. She traced her fingers over the rough stone and wondered about the powerful mystics who must have been here to make the rock so flat and perfect. Energy within the material called out to her. The building was warm against her skin as she pressed herself to it, resting her cheek upon the surface between her hands. Eyes closed, she opened her thoughts to the spiritual imprint. Her vision swirled through flashes of history etched into the concrete by pain, desperation, and terror.

  Althea gasped and jumped away, shivering, staring with an accusatory glare at the wall. The images of many people dying in this place changed the presence of the city around her. The wonder and awe at the towering structures drowned in pitiful sorrow from feeling the final emotional moments of thousands of lives. She fell into a squat, wrapping her arms around herself as she cried, unable to stop the overwhelming tide of loss.

  A mournful call from a distant bird brought her attention back to the reality of being lost, hunted, and alone. She flung her hair out of her face with a twist of her head and looked around at the destroyed city. The surge of raw emotion had subsided, her feelings were once more her own. This had to be the reason she felt uneasy; something in this massive tomb hungered for more blood.

  She bounded to her feet and yelled. “Den!”

  Her voice echoed, weakening into the distance and chasing a group of birds out of their roosts amidst the steel girders above. A man’s voice grunted in pain to her left. Concerned, she jogged towards it, rounding a corner. The sight of two men clad in patchwork armor made of panels of leather and scrap metal halted her. Tanned skin gleamed in the relentless sun, smeared with dirt and marked with many old healed wounds. What scared her most were the rifles across their backs. The one on the left doubled over, but she sensed greed―not pain.

  He was faking.

  “Thar you is.” The standing one grinned at her.

  She took a step back, toes gripping the pavement. No one else was here, no one to threaten if she disobeyed. Before they could say another word, she sprinted off.

  “Hey. You ain’t s’posed ta do runnins!”

  “Yar,” yelled the shorter one. “Wez knowz da Prophet’s stories.”

  They chased after her, but she bought a few seconds by ducking through a gap in a wooden fence they had to break through. She hurried along a strip of smooth black stone between rows of blasted buildings and dozens of old cars, left where they crashed. A pause to pick a direction was brief; the sound of them smashing through the fence kept her moving. The men were too close. If she tried to hide here, they would surely see where she went. Half a block down, she spotted a narrow metal opening along the edge of where a strip of white stone bordered the dark path.

  She rushed over and crouched, peering into a pit below the ground. The two came out of the alley and charged; their sudden appearance drew a frightened gasp and destroyed her qualms. She slid through the storm drain feet first, letting go of the rim just as a man’s hand slapped into it.

  “Gar dammit!”

  Althea fell to a painless landing in semisoft mud. Scrambling to regain her footing, she looked up at the two faces in the slot.

  “I am sorry, but I cannot go with you. Den needs me.”

  The sense of security afforded by a gap too small for men to fit through evaporated as a circular section of ceiling above her opened, showering her with dust and exposing the sky. The metallic ringing of the manhole cover tossed to the side faded below a roar as one of the men jumped in.

  Althea leapt through the opening of a white stone pipe and sprinted. The sound of her feet upon the dry surface echoed through the growls of the raider behind her. He could not stand at full height in the tube, allowing her to outpace him. After a dozen steps, her flashing legs faded from flesh to light grey. She came to a stop where the tunnel ended at a T-shaped crossing. To the left, it went straight as far as she could see, but to the right, it bent down after a short distance. Althea ducked right and reached the end in six strides, where a vertical shaft led down to a lower level. There, she crouched, listening to the raiders stumble along in the dark. They were not giving up, even though they could not see at all.

  She scrambled onto a metal ladder caked with soft muck, and descended through a square-walled
passage lined with a staggering amount of debris. Pipes, old furniture, boxes, and other machinery she had never seen before scattered about amidst liberal amounts of spray-painted words.

  At the bottom, she dropped thigh deep into water frigid enough to paralyze her. Althea clamped her hands over her mouth and swallowed a shriek, fearful of attracting attention. Seconds later, she sucked in a breath through chattering teeth and forced herself to move. Ripples spread from her legs as she walked, jostling the floating junk. Her natural reaction to such cold water kept her motion slow enough not to make noise. A layer of clammy slime squished through her toes as it gave way to the coarse texture of old concrete below. Althea advanced without hesitation, pushing the flotsam aside; she had stepped in worse things than this before.

  After several minutes, she jumped at a scream. The man, unable to see the ladder or the sudden end to the corridor, tripped over the first rung and came falling face-first into the water at the bottom. The wave of his impact sent frigidity up to the base of her ribs; she gulped back the urge to cry out. He broke the surface, slinging his head around with a series of wild cries at how cold it was.

  Only one of them came this way; Althea figured they must have split at the junction. Debris clunked against the wall as his splashing increased.

  “Where you goin?” he yelled.

  She made the mistake of looking at him.

  “Thar you is.” He looked right at her. “Ah chosed right.”

  Althea jerked her head away, and shoved a floating wooden box out of her path. Splashing, crashing, and banging resonated through the tunnel as the man, blind in the pitch dark, walked into everything. She fought the desperate want to look back, knowing he would see the glow. Arms held up over the water, she advanced through the junk clogging the sewer. Her small size and ability to see in the dark allowed her to navigate the black and white world faster and quieter. The raider yelled curses each time a part of his body found a solid object. When he made a genuine yelp of pain, she stopped.

  Her teeth chattered. “Are you hurt?”

  “Naw, it’s just a… Yeah… dammit mah leg’s off.”

  Sensing a ploy, she kept going. At the sound of her sloshing, he grumbled. “Damn, t’was too much, wadn’t it.”

  “Yes.” She stopped again. “You should go back. You can’t see down here, you’ll get hurt for real.”

  He did not reply, continuing to follow her.

  Althea glanced up as she walked under a low hanging pipe, an inch or two over her head. She closed her eyes and faced to the rear. “There’s a pipe. Be careful, or it’ll hit you in the face.”

  The splashing behind her lessened. She imagined him holding his hand out, but didn’t dare open her eyes and reveal the glow. A faint twinge of guilt at putting this man at risk faded as she heard Den’s voice in the air. The sound emanated from a round opening near the ceiling a short distance ahead. Her elation caused her to run carelessly forward. Something sharp caught the inside edge of her foot and she came to a hopping halt, gritting her teeth to muffle her yelp of pain.

  The passage was just out of reach. A nearby box served as a convenient stepstool, and she got her fingers over the lip of a protruding pipe. With her uninjured foot scrabbling at the wall, she hauled herself up and into a tunnel too small for her to sit up in. A line of dried muck colored the bottom darker grey than the rest of the world. The other end appeared to lead to another underground passage. Satisfied it was not a dead end, she crawled, smiling as she heard the man outside continue right past her.

  Twenty yards later, she peeked out of the other end, finding a huge round tunnel made of the same white stone as the first, with a tiny stream running along the bottom. Althea slithered forward, and slid hands-first down the curved wall, coming to rest at the bottom with a splash. With a moment to breathe, she sat cross-legged and pulled her right foot up to look at it before focusing her power into her body. The cut stood out as a clean black line through the red shape of her foot, tracing from below the ankle to the center of her sole.

  A warm tingle spread through the area as the cut foamed. A sick had gotten into the wound, but it had not infiltrated her body enough to come out in the usual manner. An ill-scented ichor dribbled down over her heel, directly from the closing injury.

  The dirty water had bad things in it. For a moment, she worried the man chasing her had found a sick as well; however, the pipe she crawled through was twice her height away at the midpoint of an immense round shaft. She could not climb the wall to go back, no matter how guilty she felt. Raiders with guns had come for her; now she knew what caused the dream.

  The Seekers must be warned.

  mid several inches of frigid water, she sat and rubbed her foot to chase away the phantom pain. No light pierced the gloom of this subterranean tunnel; it was hard to tell which dark smudges were blood and which were dirt when everything looked grey. Althea stood, feeling with tentative fingers on the sloped wall. The slosh of the disturbed water as she walked made her cringe as it echoed in both directions. Drops, falling from her skirt, reverberated like a herd of tiny buffalo, thundering as if to tell the man right where she was.

  The flowing water left the molded concrete free of slime, and offered sure footing as she crept ahead. Despite chattering teeth, she kept her feet underwater, lifting them just enough to slide forward without breaking the surface, so she did not splash louder. After about a hundred yards, the giant tunnel ended at a square chamber many times the size of Den’s hut. A spot of color caught her eye, glimmering from within a pipe protruding from the distant wall at the top of a ladder. The water in the space ahead was at the same level as the few inches she stood in. Grinning at the promise of daylight, she ran forward.

  Unfortunately, the chamber’s floor lurked much lower than the bottom of the tunnel. She closed her eyes and clamped her mouth shut as she submerged in old rainwater that had no business being anything but ice. A shriek filled several bubbles as she sank, paralyzed by the bone-chilling liquid for a few seconds before collecting the presence of mind to start swimming. She broke the surface with gasping breaths and wiped a hand over her face. The room looked different from that angle, but after three rotations, she oriented herself and paddled to the base of a ladder.

  She gripped the rusted metal and probed with a hesitant toe until she found the nearest rung. Althea climbed with great care, easing her weight down on each step, careful not to cut herself again. Two stories above the water, she sat shivering at the edge of another molded concrete tunnel, running her hands through the scraps of leather and squeegeeing the water out to make the burdensome thing lighter. Sluices of cold trickled down her legs, and for a fleeting moment, she wanted to be back inside the green beast where it was warm.

  She froze as Nalu’s voice broke the serenade of droplets rejoining the pool below. He yelled at someone to be careful. Hope filled her heart and she clambered to her feet, sprinting through the open pipe until she reached the source of the sound―another well like the one she had entered, illuminated in beautiful color by a narrow slot of sunlight. Althea leaned her face into the warm, reveling in its caress.

  She cupped her hands about her mouth and shouted, tiny voice echoing into the sky. “Den? Nalu? Help! I’m down here. Nalu!”

  A shrill squealing cry from outside was followed by the unmistakable clank of metal on pavement. She knew the hissing; immense roaches as long as she was tall. Nalu’s war cry made her shudder and back away from the opening. A squishing crunch brought the shrieking to an end.

  “Den?” She jumped up and down, waving her arms. “Nalu?”

  Jake’s face appeared in the gap. He blinked in astonishment. He ducked out and shifted to yell behind him. “Glow-eye got away!”

  The faces of Nalu and Den appeared next, looking down with anger and worry respectively.

  “No!” Althea stomped her foot. “Someone tried to steal me. I am running to you, not away.”

  The anxiety around Den grew more obvious as Nalu cal
med. His anger at her non-escape shifted to concern about other threats. They backed off out of sight. She waited in the damp space, shivering, wondering what they muttered about.

  Jake appeared again, sliding through headfirst. The others had him by the legs, and the look on his face would have been appropriate had they been shoving him into a grinder. He reached with reluctant hands, turning away as they grabbed each other’s forearms. Unfortunately for Jake, he was the only one of the Seekers small enough to fit through the gap.

  His reaction frightened her, reminding her of how most people reacted to Scrag Mystics. They were often feared, as few people had any ability to defend themselves against their powers. However, Mystics did not have glowing eyes, nor had any of them been known to heal―only inflict pain and enslave the minds of others. Althea was known throughout the Badlands for her ability to heal and unwillingness to cause harm. Even she understood she could not be a simple Mystic. Whatever she was had been the cause for adoration, greed, and as with this trembling boy, terror.

  Her toes clawed the moss from the wall as she tried to help them pull her up. As soon as her arms were in reach, two older hunters each grabbed a wrist. Jake clamored away as they lifted her out and onto her feet. She offered a pleading look as she realized they were not going to let go. When they gathered rope, she stared down at two large insects lying dead and offered no resistance as they forced her wrists together and bound her.

  “Hold.” Nalu held up a hand at them. “I believe her. She did not run away.”

  “She came seeking us,” Den snapped at the man holding the rope.

  Hearing Den object, Althea squirmed in their grip. “Two men came to the driving machine. They knew I was in it, and they chased me into the underground.”