The Himlani had come around to ask me questions about what to do with the Humans, how to feed, clothe, and house them all, but I just kept my silent vigil. I knew I needed to care about this, to do what they expected me to do, to lead, but I couldn't make myself do it. The abyss in my chest was all-consuming, like an autumn fire after a summer drought. As the sun began its descent into the western horizon, I felt a presence next to me. I did not turn to see who it was. I kept my gaze fixed where I knew Etachs would be coming from. The person next to me hunkered down in the Himlani fashion, legs tucked up behind their armpits. They did not speak and neither did I. We just sat together in silence and watched the sky first dim into twilight and then darken into night.
"You knew I was going to come back right?" asked the person sitting next to me, and I blinked, snapping my head to the side. Etachs sat, eyes cast down to look at their hands clasped before them, a small smile on their face. Before I knew what, I was doing I had my arms around them, tears streaming from my eyes, cheek pressed into the curve where their neck met their shoulder. I held them against me, my hands curling into their hair. After a moment they wrapped their scaled arms around me, pressing me against them, whispering gentle words into my ear that I was too flooded with emotion to really hear. I don't know how long we stayed like that, but when I finally released them, it was fully dark, and the Humans were again sleeping in the grass around the building. From the other end of the roof, the others were hunkered down. All but Tarq were sleeping. Tarq had a portable terminal in their lap and was keeping a watchful eye on the machinations of this world, to ensure the safety of all.
I took a deep and shuddering breath and laid my head on Etachs' shoulder. "Where did you go? And how did you come back without me seeing you? Why didn't you say anything when you got back here? You just sat here and watched me mourn for you?" I felt Etachs' shoulders lift and fall with their own deep breath. Their exhale shifted into a low chuckle.
"I will explain myself, Ana, but not yet. I had something I needed to do for me. I didn't think you would understand, but I had to do it anyway, and now that I have, I am freer than I was when I left. These farms are not the only things we liberated, and they can't be the last." I sniffled and lifted my head to look at them. They turned to meet my gaze; eyes steady with resolve. "We need to rescue Tatiana. That's the first step, but we will have many challenges now that we have these Humans. Their bodies are fragile, and they are unaccustomed to activity. We will need to do many things that we do not have time to do, but we are going to have to find a way."
I nodded. "I can't help but feel like we are running out of time for Tati, Etachs."
"I know, and we will press on, but tomorrow. I need to speak with Tarq and you need to sleep. And once we have accomplished those things, with the dawn of tomorrow, we will begin to end this." They turned away from me to look out over the horizon again.
"Etachs..."
"Not now, Ana, we will talk about that when your world is free."
"No."
"What?" They turned back to me; their brow raised in surprise.
"There is no time but now, Etachs, and I have to tell you."
"I can't hear you, Ana, not yet. I'm close, but I just can't hear you yet."
"Why?"
"Because..." they trailed off. "Let me tell you about where I went and that will more likely than not answer your question. But not tonight, Ana, please." I sighed and leaned forward, touching my forehead to theirs. They lifted their hands, cupping my cheeks in their scaled palms, their claws resting gently on my skin, lethal but not a threat. Not to me. "I promise, tomorrow. Tonight, you need to sleep." I closed my eyes and drank in in their closeness for another moment.
"OK," I said finally, leaning back and getting to my feet. I extended a hand down and they took it, letting me help them to stand. I walked over to where my bag was and scooped it up as I walked to the ladder, giving Tarq a nod of thanks for everything they were doing. I descended the ladder into the soft grass and found a spot among the Humans. I set up my bedroll and fell asleep with the stars looking down into my face.
I got up at dawn and went into the facility. We had found storage rooms full of all kinds of things. There was a room in this place, like there had been in the facility I had found, full of fetal Humans. I had the room sealed off. When we moved on and brought this place down it would be the first to go. We had also found a basement full of cartons stuffed full of clothing, shoes, jewelry, and other possessions.
In the early days of The Devastation when the majority of Humans were still being caught in the wild, they had been stripped of everything they had. As soon as I found this cavernous space, my magic threatened to overtake me, the empathy that fueled it surging inside me as I looked at the boxes upon boxes of things that once belonged to people. People with dreams and lives and families, all now long dead. It had been over a century since the Devastation and the loss of these Humans by the billions still weighed heavily upon me.
Tarq said that from what they could find from the Himlani information they had been able to scrape from the networks, there might be fewer than two million adult Humans and maybe another 500,000 in the fetal tanks. Hydea, who had been an apprentice in the genetic tank labs before being identified as a defect, told me that some of the genetic material they harvested from Humans was taken from the fetal tissue, but most was harvested from the adults. The fetal tissue had been deemed too unstable due to its malleable nature. Hydea told me these days they mostly used the fetal tissue for experiments. They must have caught the look on my face when they said it because they lowered their gaze afterward. I didn't have it in me to comfort them, I just turned and walked away.
But now I was down here in this massive hall of lost lives, and dreams, and stories that no one would ever know, and I needed to give these things new life. I couldn't just have 8,000 naked Humans wandering around. Tarq and Cylvre had been working around the clock to get them up to speed on the things they needed to know, using their implants to transfer the knowledge to the group. The improvement in their communication was already dramatic. Most of them could talk almost as well as the Humans in the time before. They were already learning how to take care of themselves, a thing that they had never had to do. Their lives were their own now, and they were taking responsibility for themselves. I was glad to see that even generations of slavery could not tamper the rallying spirit of humanity.
I pulled a dusty carton off the first shelf and opened it. It was full of shoes. I sat down and began sorting the practical from the impractical. Some of the things that Humans did to their feet looked monstrous. I made a face as I pulled a dusty pair of red patent leather stilettos from the box and put them to the side. Impractical and painful looking. It was a wonder to me that Human women had never risen up to punish whoever had designed these monstrous things. If anyone ever told me I had to wear them, that would be the last words they ever spoke.
I was halfway through the fourth box when I heard the tapping of claws on the bare concrete floor. Etachs stood behind me looking over the pile of discarded useless shoes. The practical ones I had sorted and replaced neatly in the cartons. Without looking up at them, I gestured to the shelf I had pulled the box from. "I needed to take my mind off things and instead of staring out into nothing, I thought I would do something a little more productive," I said, inspecting a pair of hiking boots. The soles were a little worn, but they probably had a lot of life in them yet.
"Are you ready to talk?" Etachs asked.
"Yes but talk while we work please." Etachs walked to the shelf and pulled down a box and sat next to me, opening the lid and beginning to paw through the contents. We worked in silence for a few moments, and then Etachs began to speak.
"Do you remember when we met and I told you I had escaped with someone, but they were killed?"
I looked over at them. They were still going through the box of shoes, mechanically holding each pair up for inspection before either tossing them into the pile of
rejects or placing them into the carton of usable ones. They did not look back at me.
"Yes," I replied, turning my gaze back to my own box.
"Their name was Marx. Until the day we broke out, I never saw them, only heard their voice. The things that were done to them were... monstrous. Horrible in ways that I just can't tell you..." they trailed off. The images that had flashed in my mind while we were in the Glade and I had reached out through our bond slammed into my head. I shuddered.
"They removed one of Marx's legs at the knee, took three of their fingers total, blunted their teeth, rounded their ears, and damaged their scalp and skin so badly that their hair only grew in patches, while most of their scales would never grow back. Ozwa, with all their missing limbs, would probably know best what Marx suffered.
"Through it all, they remained ever kind to me. When I escaped, I didn't free anyone else. My only thought was to get myself out, but I came back, Ana, I came back for Marx." Etachs' voice— growing steadily more choked as they went on— finally broke. While they collected their thoughts and their composure, I retrieved two more cartons of shoes. Etachs was taking deep, steadying breaths when I returned and as I slid over a new carton for them, they nodded gratefully, then continued.
"I don't know what I was expecting when I opened that door, but when I did go back for them, I was not expecting to see someone so... destroyed. Through all our conversations, they never talked about what had been done to them, so I figured it was more of the same as what had happened to me. Scales being peeled away, torture, truth serums, being beat to the brink of death just to be brought back down to life again. Bones healed just to be rebroken. I was never expecting to find them in the condition they were in when I opened their cell. We made it out of the building, but..." Etachs had to stop again to regain their composure. I reached a hand out to them and touched their shoulder.
"Do you want to show me through the bond?" I asked quietly.
"Just this part, I want to tell you the rest," they answered in a raspy whisper. I nodded and reached out to them through our bond, my magic tugging on the thread between us. Instantly, I was flung into Chaos. Etachs had stolen two Rounders, but Marx couldn't hold theirs properly. They would need two hands to do it, but without one hand slung over Etachs' shoulders they couldn't run. Not that they really could run anyway. It looked a lot like Etachs was dragging them. They were trying to help, but they were too injured to offer much in the way of aid. Etachs' tears streaming down their face, getting shot time and time again as they ran, stopping only to hoist Marx over their shoulders and continue running. I could feel their muscles scream after such a long period of dormancy. Being forced to carry their own weight at a run as well as another, however diminished they might be, made Etachs' body protest by pouring what felt like battery acid through their legs.
Rounder charges bit into them, paralyzing parts of them, while some kind of other projectile dug into their skin, making them scream in pain. They were bleeding, their entire body was shrieking in agony, but they just kept repeating to Marx over and over that they were almost there, they were going to make it. And when they finally hit the trees, they had forced all their pain down into themselves and ran with Marx bouncing along on their shoulders. They did not know how long they ran. They only knew that they were pursued. After some time, they knew that they must rest, so they sank to their knees and laid Marx on the ground. They surveyed themselves, the continued stream of placations still pouring out of their mouth with every exhale. When Etachs finally looked at Marx, they stopped speaking abruptly. Marx was covered in blood and had been shot by Rounders and the other projectile multiple times. They were breathing, but barely, each inhale producing a wet sucking sound. The only places on them that were absent of blood or dirt were the small rivers of tears washing clean paths across their face.
Etachs floundered, unsure what to do next. They had no healing salves, no way to treat this. They started to panic, but Marx laid their mutilated hand on Etachs' face, leaving a bloody smear on their cheek and told them that it was OK, that if they had to die, they died in the open air, among the trees, with freedom in their lungs, and with the person they loved most in the world. The last words they spoke were of love for Etachs, and then they were gone, and Etachs was lost. We found them a couple of days later. The images retreated and I lifted my free hand to my face, not startled, but a little surprised to find the wetness of tears on my cheek. We sat together for a moment, in a silence that, while not exactly what I would call companionable, was at least not awkward.
"Why did you not tell me before?" I whispered into thaT silence.
"Because there is more yet to tell," Etachs whispered back. "And I had no idea how to say any of this." I nodded as Etachs got to their feet and retrieved more cartons of shoes. We had made progress despite the topic of conversation. They set the cartons down and slid one over to me.
"OK," they said. "I think I am ready now." I nodded and plunged my hands into the carton of shoes, sorting accurately, but without much thought. Etachs remained silent for another few moments, the only sound our breathing, and the muffled sounds of shoes being shuffled about.
"We were imprisoned together for quite some time, you know..." Etachs started finally. "I have no way of knowing for sure how long, but I would say probably three years, maybe more, maybe less. In that time, you are mostly in darkness, the only time it's not dark is when they take us for the pain. They don't take you every day, or even on a set schedule, so you never know when they are coming. The anxiety adds to the overall misery. But within the first few days I was in my cell, I heard something I had never heard before. I had heard Marx, singing. Himlani have music, kind of. We have tones that are put together to increase productivity and focus, to make purpose swell in us when we are entering a fight, and to lull us into calm and sleep. There is no music in the cells, and what Marx was doing was..."
They faltered for the words and spoke something in Himlani. I thought about it and then provided the word for them: "Composing."
"Yes, composing. It was a sad melody of loneliness and pain, and it spoke to a part of me that I didn't know was inside. The next day they spoke to me. Over the following weeks, they told me many things. They told me that they had been a Hunter, and had tried to hide their feelings, but that soon it had gotten the better of them. They told me that while on a trip to round up Humans they had turned their Rounder on their own company, freed the Humans and Fae alike, and secreted them away to the woods."
Etachs raised their hand and gestured vaguely around them. "These woods in fact. They found an abandoned lodge. One of the Humans had said it had likely been a hunting lodge in the time before, and there Marx learned the knowledge that the Humans had kept. He looked into them and found their souls, their Humanity, and that's when they fell in love with them, all of them.
"Marx spoke about Humans like a loving father, a devoted lover, a dear friend. Marx did their best to protect them, but they knew that there were others in captivity, and couldn't sit idly by. They tried to do what we just did, but without any success. The Humans they were with were captured and Marx was placed in the defect camp. The first 10 years of Marx's imprisonment they were made to witness as the Himlani first slaughtered all of their Human friends, and then other Humans caught in the wild. Humans without implants who were able to still feel, without the drugs or the dampeners. Humans still aware enough to cry and beg and plead. Marx suffered more in those days than I can possibly imagine.
"When I didn't come back it is because I went to that lodge. It's here, about 10 miles to the east. I stepped inside and felt their presence stronger than I have ever felt anything. It's important that I tell you these things, Ana, because it is important that you understand, while the Himlani have no way to procreate or join physically, I loved Marx as a mate, and I will mourn them until my time for life has ended. I found many things in that place, but I took only three."
Etachs reached inside the small pouch they had tied to the
ir waist and removed some folded papers. They passed them over to me without looking and I took them gingerly in my hands. They were wrinkled and stiff with age. I handled them gently, aware of their worth to Etachs. The first paper was a drawing. A small cabin-type building, presumably the lodge, with the silhouette of a Himlani and a Human on the porch staring off into the trees. It was done in charcoal, with broad strokes, and while not a masterpiece, it was beautiful. The next was a letter. It was short but every stroke of the letters that formed it dug a hole inside of me.
To whoever may find this letter,
If you are reading this then I have likely failed in my efforts to free the Humans from their enslavement. It may seem like a foolish venture, but in them I have discovered much of value. They are not lesser life forms. They are deep wells of beauty, bravery, and compassion. While they can be temperamental and sometimes even a little tempestuous, at their core they are all that we should be aspiring to. We, the Himlani, are doomed, unless we cease this occupation and end the enslavement of Humans and the Fae alike. If you find this place, know that there was love and connection here. Here we made music, here we created art, and loved, and lived, and thrived. Know that we gave this up in the hopes that we could offer it to others, but know most of all, that through all of this, we have a choice.
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