Destroyed

by Madeline Dyer

  He points ahead, and I narrow my eyes against the sun, pick out two shapes on the grassland. Deer. I don’t recognize what species they are, but Elf says they’re Southern red muntjac, barking deer. Small bodies, mostly grayish in color, though a couple have more browner tones, with dark heads and legs.

  Corin, Elf, and I group together, talk strategy in low voices.

  “The wind’s coming from that direction,” Corin says, pointing. “We’re best heading over from around there.”

  We finalize the plan—quickly—keeping one eye on the herd.

  I crouch down when I get to my spot, then turn my head. I’m the farthest to the left of the three of us, and the grass is long. Corin and Elf are only just in sight, partly visible through the grass stems. I tune into my Seer powers, see the glow of Corin’s red dots.

  A couple of minutes pass, and I watch as the bigger of the two muntjac lifts her head, looking in the direction of Corin and Elf. The other one looks younger, maybe her baby, four or five months old. My fingers shake as I ready the sling. I slide the loop on the edge of one of the pieces of fishing wire onto my pointer finger, then secure the knot at the end of the other piece of wire between the same finger and my thumb. The sling hangs limply down, and, with my right hand, I place a stone into it, then grip the leather section and the sling out, moving my left hand with the ends of the fishing wire backward, so the leather’s as far away as possible. It’s a bit short for my arm span, but it will do.

  I count to twenty under my breath and—

  Arrows fly through the air. The deer bark—their alarm call—and hurtle toward me.

  I stand, swing the sling in front of me in a short figure-of-eight and—

  Jana’s face. And Zara’s.

  They’re here.

  The deer—they’re not deer. They’re them. They’re… Jana and Zara.

  I jolt, and my vision swims, and then it’s just the muntjacs again, and I release the end with the knot. The stone flies out, and I know it’s off. My heart pounds, and I call on my powers, try to aid it, and—

  It goes wide.

  The deer bark again, skidding, change direction.

  Corin shouts, and another arrow flies.

  I reach into my pocket for the next stone, sling it forward, but I don’t get the momentum right and try to do an over-arm throw with the sling. It falls short.

  The animals have scattered. I turn, eyes smarting with the bright light. The deer are too far away for me now. I look toward Corin and Elf. They’re firing again, to their right, away from me.

  I know before they take aim, what the outcome will be though.

  Good. No more deaths.

  A dark feeling circles around me.

  I touch my head. My fingers shake, and my temples are hot points of pain. Why did I see that? Imagine that? Jana’s face. And Zara’s. The Stone Seers. Me hunting them… They’re already dead. Because of me.

  Guilt.

  It has to be guilt.

  “What the hell?” Elf’s voice is dark as we group up. “We didn’t get either?”

  Corin frowns, his jaw visibly tense. “We’ll get the next ones.” He looks at me. “We’ll swap. I’ll take the sling. Your powers might help you get a heart-kill with an arrow.”

  A heart-kill. Like I got with the leopard that tried to attacked Corin, up on the mountain. It feels like so long ago, years and years ago, not months.

  I think about it as we walk—how he kissed me for the first time on that mountain, after I killed that beast—but we don’t find any more game, and then the Stone Seers chase my thoughts, and I feel like I need to run.

  We return to the huts empty-handed, except for a few dried-up berries and some tender shoots Elf reckons are edible. Taras casts a critical eye over our meagre offerings but doesn’t say anything.

  “Who do you think used to live here?” Esther asks as we join her in the evening by the small fire. Her voice is bright, and her eyes have a sense of life in them that they lacked this morning.

  The ground’s only a little damp now, so we’re sitting on blankets. The heat of the fire feels good against my skin, but I try not to think about the flames too much.

  Taras is the only one not here. My eyes linger on the shack he’s in, and I want to go in, ask him what I can do to save Corin. Because it must be that which he is searching for. Why else would he spend so long meditating on Marta’s Lore? If he’d found something, he’d have come and told me. Wouldn’t he?

  So he can’t have.

  Maybe there isn’t a way.

  Maybe Raleigh knows that. And now he’s waiting for me to make the move.

  To seek him out.

  “Seven?” Esther waves her hand in front of my face.

  It takes me a moment to realize she’s asking me the question. The fire casts long shadows under her eyes.

  I shrug. “Can’t have been a big group. Only four huts.”

  “But you can’t feel anyone? Like their presence?” she asks.

  I shake my head. Hunger pulls through me, and I wish we hadn’t eaten the food packs so quickly. “Can you?”

  “I’m not a Seer.”

  She frowns. “I wonder where they went though, what happened to them. They left food and clothing—like it was all left for us.”

  “Maybe it was,” I mutter, but my thoughts turn to the Dream Land battle, and the Untamed Seers who didn’t make it out. Did I kill them? And now we’re taking over their home? What happened to their bodies?

  Corin shifts closer, and I lean against him, his arm around me. Safe.

  The word seems to hover in front of me. I want to reach out and grab it, stretch it around us all so nothing can get past the safe.

  My gaze slides across to Elf, and I frown. Sit up a little straighter. “What’s he doing?” I ask Corin, my voice low.

  Corin turns his head, shrugs.

  Elf’s staring intently at the fire. His gaze is like how it was at Nbutai, and tension fills me. No. He was doing better, so much better. Since his cleansing, he’s been more normal.

  Then I feel it. His powers. He’s exploring them, reaching out, feeling their shapes. He smiles slowly, and I see it—the euphoria in his eyes. How being in tune with his powers makes him feel.

  And you felt it too. Remember your elation when you…?

  “I don’t think he’s as put-together as he’s letting on,” Esther says. “Remember what he was like when we found him?”

  “He’s okay.” I nod at her, wonder how well she herself is coping. “Just exploring his powers.”

  “But when he’s alone…” Esther presses her lips tightly together for a moment. “When you and Seven were outside, this morning, he was just staring and shaking, and it was like he was speaking, but no words were coming out. He looked lost.”

  Lost.

  I swallow hard.

  “Maybe it’s a good thing he’s a Seer,” Esther says. “I mean, it gives him something to concentrate on, learning his new powers.” She sighs.

  Powers.

  I look at Corin. But even as I look again at Corin’s soul, I see how the red sections feel the same—they feel like his soul, like they’re really and truly part of him. There’s no seam around them, no change in their texture. To get rid of them, it’s like they’d have to be cut out. But they’ve become part of Corin’s soul, and ripping a soul up is something I know would not work.

  “Do you think he is going to bring destruction?” Esther asks.

  It takes me a moment to realize she’s meaning Elf, and I glance away from Corin.

  “Remember what Taras said,” Esther says. “Empyrean twins. The second death is always more destructive.”

  Corin makes a non-committal noise by way of an answer.

  “Not everything Taras says is going to happen though,” I say. I think of how he advised me and Corin to break up, how he says I should sacrifice Corin. “Anyway, there’s destruction all around us. One person can’t just bring more.”

  Unless it’s y
ou.

  I squirm, push that thought away, but it only gets stronger, holding onto my mind faster and faster.

  Because there’s going to be more.

  The Stone Seers were just the beginning.

  You’re going to destroy everything.

  “Taras talked to me again last night,” Corin says the next morning. “About how we shouldn’t be together. He still thinks it’s real.” He grunts, presses his lips together. But he doesn’t say anything about us. About how Taras is wrong and that we should stay together.

  I take a step back. We’re outside the huts, walking to the little creek not far away, two water containers between us. “Do you agree?”

  “No.” He reaches out for my free hand with his.

  I squeeze his fingers. “You still don’t believe it’s real, do you?”

  He shrugs. “I guess if two Seers still think it’s real, it could be.”

  “That’s not the same as you believing it though.”

  “Does it matter whether I believe it?” he asks, and my mind feels a little darker, because I know—I know he doesn’t believe me, doesn’t trust me. Corin sighs. “It’s not a case of believing. It’s about us not falling into any trap Raleigh may have set. But, whether it’s real or not, we should do the same thing.”

  My eyes narrow, and I kick a loose pebble, watch it careen in front of us, down the slope. The creek’s in sight now, and I’m glad. “Which is what?”

  “Nothing,” he says. “Even if it’s real, we don’t do anything about it.”

  “You’re still saying that? That we don’t do anything?” I stop, pull my hand from his. From my other hand, the empty water container bangs against my thigh.

  Corin takes a step closer to me, but I avert my eyes, look over at the water sparkling in the sun. I stare at it so hard the brightness hurts me.

  “Sev, if this is real, then you shouldn’t do anything. You shouldn’t try to stop it, because it makes it better.”

  “Better? How can this be better?” Now, I look. Look right at him, into his eyes. All I see is determination—but it’s canceled out by what he’s just said. “Corin, do you not get it? For the Untamed to win, you have to die.”

  He sighs. “Yes, and if this is real, then we both die. I’ve been thinking, and I want to believe it is real, because I don’t want to live without you.”

  My mouth dries, and the seriousness of what he’s saying sinks in. The reason he doesn’t want me to try and save him.

  “No.” I shake my head, clench the water container tighter. “Don’t say that.”

  But he says it. Of course he says it, and his eyes burn with emotion.

  “I love you, Sev.” He reaches for my hands, takes the water container from me, drops it so it bounces. Then his warm fingers wrap around mine. “This whole time, knowing you were going to die when the war ends, I don’t know—maybe I didn’t think it would happen, that the war would end. But now I have been thinking about it. This world is different, it’s in ruins. And it feels closer: the end of the war. I know it’s going to happen, it has to, and I can’t pretend it’s not going to, can’t tell myself I’ll think about it another day. I want the war to end, but I don’t want to lose you.” He lifts our hands so they’re at chest-level between us. “But this—if it is true, what Raleigh says—it makes things better. And I want to believe it now, because I won’t have to live without you. That’s why we shouldn’t do anything.”

  I turn away, break our contact, take a few steps. “No, Corin… I can’t—I have to do something. You can’t ask me not to.”

  “But that’s what Raleigh’s counting on. He’s waiting for you to go to him to stop it. No, you’ve got to prove him wrong, that you wouldn’t save his people just to save me. I mean, it may not be real, but if it is, I don’t want to be saved.”

  I feel sick, feel like I should’ve seen this coming. “But, Corin, I….”

  “You have to kill Raleigh. You have to end the war.”

  My eyes widen as I look back at him. “No… Don’t you get it? It would be me. If I kill him, I’d be killing you.”

  His eyes darken, and he seems so far away. “No. You’d be killing Raleigh.”

  “You’d die too.” I shake my head. “I can’t do that.”

  “But you have to. You’re not going to give us all to the Enhanced, are you? We’re not becoming them. And the war has to end. Sev, you have to let me die.”

  “No. I won’t. I can’t.”

  “Even if that’s what Raleigh’s relying on it?” He shakes his head, then exhales hard. “He’s made it easier for us, if we both die. And the Untamed have to win.”

  “No. I love you too much not to do anything,” I gulp out, and then I feel silly because I know I look a mess, and how do I even know this is love? It’s messy. It’s so much energy, and emotion, and hurt. How can that be love? “I can’t just sit back and let this happen. I have to try something.”

  I take a deep breath, try and gain control. I push my hair back, wipe my face with the backs of my hands. My Seer pendant burns against my skin.

  “No, you don’t.” His voice is calm, smooth. I want him to be strong-willed or angry or something. Some sort of emotion to match what’s in his eyes. “This is better, for both of us. Please, Sev.”

  He closes the distance between us, takes me into his arms. Smoke clings to him, wraps around both of us. I lean into him, my cheek against his shirt. His arms tighten around me.

  “I love you, too,” he says into my hair. “That’s why we have to go out together.”

  I lift my head, look into those eyes. As if they’ll say what he’s not.

  A million emotions claw through me, twisting, weaving, entangling. He lowers his head slightly.

  “This isn’t fair. I don’t want you to die.”

  “I don’t want you to. But if we both do, at the same time, it’s right.”

  I kiss him, a soft, open-mouthed kiss, feel the sweetness of it, the purity, make myself concentrate on only him. How can a kiss feel like this when the atmosphere around us doesn’t? When we’re discussing life and death.

  I pull back.

  “No. I can’t do this… I can’t kill you…” His eyes look softer than ever now, and I focus on the golden flecks in them. So many, like his eyes are liquid and changing, getting softer and softer. I’m shaking but we’re united through our touch, and he keeps me secure. The best of cages.

  His lips move, then he licks them. “You have to, Sev.” His voice is low, and I know he feels it too—our connection. He clears his throat. “Raleigh has to die.”

  A tear rolls down my face before I can stop it. “But not you.”

  I shake my head, press my lips together.

  We’re silent for a moment. The world isn’t—the energy is deafening, the air heavy and thick with it, but we shut it out.

  “What if I kill him?” Corin’s voice is barely more than a whisper, but suddenly it’s louder than the pulsing energy radiating off us, so loud I jump. “The augury says your powers will win the war. Not that your powers will kill him. You kill everyone else, and I’ll kill Raleigh.”

  I shake my head. “Corin, that’ll be suicide.”

  “And ending the war is yours.” He breathes deeply, and the air crackles. “We have no choice, Sev. If Raleigh’s death causes mine, then I should be the one to kill him. You’re right. I can’t put that on you.”

  The back of my throat aches. “There must be another way. You don’t have to die. There’s got to be something I can do to stop this… I can go to Raleigh and—”

  “No.” Corin’s hands get hotter against my face. “You’re not going anywhere near that man. And this is a plan. Our plan, okay? Our deaths will save all the Untamed and make sure humanity keeps living. It’s nothing really.”

  Nothing?

  “But it’s you.”

  “And it’s you.”

  I make the promise, and it lies sticky in my heart. The promise to kill Corin, because that’s wha
t its essence is. No matter what plan we come up with, who we decide will kill Raleigh, I know it will always be me who does it. Some things cannot be changed.

  It’s not right, but nothing in this world is right, and it’s all I can think of when Taras and I talk about the spirits. I’ve told him what I can do, how I think we can boost the Untamed’s numbers with them—but that we need to ask them. Need to find humanoid ones we can communicate with.

  “Then you must call them in,” Taras says. “We must prepare ourselves as soon as possible.”

  I shake my head. “I haven’t got a working spirit-summoning power anymore.”

  “But you will.” Taras inclines his head a little. “You’ll find a way. Or you will gain that power again. But I believe you need to practice controlling them—even the non-humanoid ones—considerably more, especially in this world, with the new order of things. Even if it’s just on a smaller scale, at the moment.”

  The idea of enforcing my control makes my stomach feel too heavy and hard, but I can see the sense in what Taras is saying. It’s not like I’ll be getting the spirits to do anything bad. I’m just testing my power.

  “I can see if I can call one here,” Elf says. He glances behind him, to where Esther’s sitting with Toivo. “Like at Nbutai.”

  “That would be a good idea,” Taras says. “We don’t know how much time we have until the war’s end is here. It could spring up on us at any moment.”

  I twist the cord on my jacket and swallow the brimming unease before Elf and I head away from the huts. He stops by a scattering of small pebbles and looks up at the sky. The sun is bright, but he keeps his eyes open as he lifts his arms up. His voice sounds strange—stronger than I’ve always thought him to be—as he shouts, tells the spirits to come down here.

  I fold my arms as I wait.

  Elf tries again, and then I join in. Our desperation drives us harder, and I’m sweating by the time we stop.

  “Maybe you need to be angrier,” Corin suggests to Elf when we return. “You did, after all, try to kill me the night before you summoned them the first time.”

  Elf’s mouth sets into a hard line, and I look at the remains of last night’s fire. The embers are still glowing, and I move closer, try to warm up. I don’t know why I’m so cold, why my core feels like ice.