Awakening

by Hayden Pearton

  *

  After several agonizing minutes, Barsch’s voice was heard from beyond the trunk.

  “Kingston! Can you hear me? I made it across without any problems, so come when you’re ready!”

  Still facing the dying wood, Kingston let out a breath that he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. He knew that he should have gone first, but Barsch had been insistent, and dissuading the youth would have taken time and energy that Kingston did not have. Instead, he had gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, and waited in agony as the youth made his way across. And now, it was his turn.

  Kneeling down, he heard a sharp popping noise in his knees, and not for the first time wished for the body of his youth. As a soldier, he had been forced to cultivate a figure made up of muscles, sinew, and more muscles. As a scientist, he had been trained to view the world through a hundred different lenses. And now, as an old man, he had neither. Mercifully, a lifetime of struggles had given him a body that few his age could dream of, and years of solitude had made him patient beyond measure.

  “My body might have withered, and my mind might have dulled, but I can’t give up here… not until my job is done…”

  Following Barsch, he gently lowered himself down, mindful of the long drop to the water below. Immediately he began to feel his body begin to tire. In spite of everything he had told himself; in spite of his words to Barsch cautioning a slow and steady pace, he knew that he had to move quickly, before his limbs gave out. Grunting with exertion, he half-leapt, half-swung to the low-hanging branch closest to him. His fingers curled around it in a satisfactory manner, so he hazarded another leap. This time, his fingers scrabbled furiously before finding purchase in the hard, slippery rock.

  He repeated this sequence of secure movements and lucky catches a dozen times, until he felt himself nearing the end of the trunk. From somewhere above, Barsch called out, “Kingston, are you okay? Do you need any help?” Kingston weakly answered that he was fine, and that he would be done soon. The end, he decided, could not come soon enough.

  “Kingston! Careful, that area is trickier than the rest!” Kingston looked up as he heard the words, and managed to catch a glimpse of the worried face of his young companion. In that instant, when his gaze was elsewhere, the treacherous earth made its move. A crumbling sound brought Kingston’s attention back to where it belonged, but he was too late to do anything but watch.

  What had once been a secure piece of stone had turned into a freelancer for gravity, detaching itself from the cliff wall and tumbling down towards its new master.

  Kingston, who had been anchored to the now-renegade rock, did not even have time to scream as he fell. His life flashed before his eyes, but they were blurry from the sudden change in speed, so he saw only vague blobs of events past.

  Time seemed to slow as he fell, robbing the world of its colour and allowing him one last clear thought, before fear and panic took over.

  “BARSCH!” his mind screamed, having decided that his voice was out of commission. He turned his eyes upwards, towards the heavens… and Barsch. However, his gaze found no friend or god, only a slim metal cylinder, which ended in a strangely shaped black box. Relying on decades old reflexes, he reached out, and managed to grab the mysterious object by its last few inches.

  From above, he heard what sounded like a scream of pain, but he dismissed it as an echo from his own agony-filled mind. As he watched, the silver cylinder was raised into the vision-obscuring leaves, taking Kingston along with it. Just before he broke through the emerald barrier, something warm landed on his cheek. At the same time, he became aware of a reddish liquid slowly snaking its way down the object of his salvation. Something in his brain put two and two together, but he dismissed the idea as impossible.

  A heartbeat later, Kingston was pulled through the leaves, and to his delight, found solid rock beneath his chest. Looking up, he began congratulating Barsch on his quick thinking, but stopped when he saw the boy’s hands.

  Barsch law sprawled on the warm stone, a long, black object clutched tightly to his chest. And although he had only shown Kingston the weapon a few hours before, its silhouette was impossible to forget. Barsch held the black blade by its razor sharp edge; his blood running down the mirrored surface to end at the hilt, where it now stained Kingston’s own hands.

  It was a bond of blood, a connection between saviour and saved.

  “Barsch!” Kingston shouted, this time using his voice, “Let go lad, I’m safe!”

  Using every ounce of his remaining strength, Kingston forced himself to stand and rush over to Barsch’s immobile form. Reaching down, he quickly pried the boy’s bloodied fingers from the glistening blade, before throwing it down on the path. In that instant, he swore that he felt a sense of disappointment from the vicious looking chainsword.

  Barsch’s face was pale, and his brow was sweat-slicked, but the brave youth wore a small smile on his face. “Sorry, Kingston… It was the only thing I could think of…”

  “It’s okay m’boy, you did what you could in a difficult situation. Thank you.”

  Although he spoke with a reassuring tone, he decided then that a warning was necessary as well, “But this time you were lucky, and the damage wasn’t too bad… But if anything like this happens again, and you think that you could be badly injured while trying to help me, Alza, or anyone else, I want you to take a deep breath, and stay away… do you understand?”

  The smile disappeared as Barsch processed his friend’s words, and his face hardened in anger. However, in a surprising display of maturity, the youth merely nodded. In the meantime, Kingston had recovered his pack from the side of the trail, and had withdrawn bandages and a canister filled with water. When he returned, he carefully took Barsch’s hands and used the water to wash away the quickly drying blood.

  “The Gods only know…” he swore, as he looked at Barsch’s palms. What should have been a pair of deep cuts were instead two thin lines of lacerated skin. For anyone stumbling upon them at that moment, it would have seemed like the teen had merely cut himself with a pocket knife; instead of a four-foot long blade. Kingston even crawled over to the discarded weapon and measured how much blood had been spilled, trying to work out how such a small injury could produce so much. Next, he checked Barsch’s arms and chest for any other wounds, and was actually disappointed to find none, as they would have helped in solving the mystery.

  “How?” he asked, although he doubted Barsch would have any ideas.

  “I don’t know, maybe I wasn’t gripping as hard as I thought? Or maybe I’m tougher than I look? My dad did always say that I healed faster than anyone he had ever met…”

  “Maybe… No, that’s simply not possible.” Kingston muttered, mostly to himself. “Anyway, I should bandage these. You don’t want to get them infected, do you?” he asked, rhetorically.

  A few minutes later, Barsch’s hands were rather clumsily bandaged, and they had recovered their things. Seeing as there was nothing left to do, they continued down the cliff-side path, while Kingston contemplated an impossibility, one that he hoped had not come true.