by DJ Molles
Teran drew herself up into her typical defensive posture. “I can handle myself.”
“I know you can. That’s not what I’m talking about. Stuber’s going to be here, and so is a legion and Mala. But you? You’re going to be all on your own out there. No offense Lucky. I’m just saying…stay sharp. And don’t do anything stupid.”
She raised an eyebrow. “So don’t do anything that you would do?”
“Exactly. Be smarter than me.”
“Well, that’s easy. I can do that.”
“And if you can get those Outsiders to agree to come with you back here to Karapalida, do that. We need everyone working together if we want a chance at beating this thing.”
Teran managed to be serious. “I’ll try.”
Perry rubbed his swollen elbow. “What if they don’t wanna come?”
“I can’t make them do anything.”
“But if they don’t come…are you going to stay with them?”
Teran glanced sideways at Lucky. She seemed to want to say something, but his presence kept it locked inside. Or maybe it was Perry she didn’t want to say it to. Maybe she didn’t want to admit to him that she had no intention of leaving her people again.
Perry held up his hands before she could say anything else. “You don’t have to answer that. This will be easier for me if I just imagine that we’re all going to make a happy reunion when I get back. So…I’ll just think about that. And you just think about staying alive.”
“I’ll keep her safe,” Lucky announced, in a rather overly-familiar fashion.
Teran, Stuber, and Perry all looked at him like he was an idiot.
“What?” he gawked, ignorant of his mistake.
“Petra?” Teran asked. “Can you do something for Lucky’s crispy face before we leave? If you have to bandage his mouth shut that’ll be fine.”
Petra winked at Lucky. “I’ll see what I can do.”
***
Perry didn’t try to fly while he was still in the bounds of Karapalida. He didn’t trust himself not to fling his body into a building.
It felt strange and desolate as he strode through the west end of the New Section, out to where the buildings disappeared into the flatness of the wastelands. There were less people on this side of town. Well…less living people. Still plenty of bodies.
He passed a few desperate civilians, scavenging through the wreckage, or perhaps searching for the bodies of loved ones. A few seemed to take note of the fact that he carried a longstaff, but none made any motion towards him, or spoke to him.
Perhaps they’d heard about Legatus Mordicus’s command.
Despite the fact that there were people about, Perry felt strangely alone. As he strode out past the last line of concrete buildings—these ones looking barely touched by the destruction—he realized that this was the first time in a very long time that he’d actually been alone.
He’d grown up with a pack of kids in the farming freehold outside of Touring. And then he’d been shipped off to Hell’s Hollow where, while he still felt lonesome, by virtue of the fact that he was surrounded by people that wanted to beat the shit out of him on a daily basis, he had still been a part of something.
Then he had been on Boss Hauten’s crew. For three years, he’d been surrounded by that crew, working, sleeping, bathing, drinking, shoulder-to-shoulder with them.
And then, most recently he’d had Stuber and Teran and Sagum.
Now he was truly alone.
The sensation of it was both oddly liberating—I don’t have to bounce my decisions off of anyone—and oddly terrifying—I don’t have anyone to bounce my decisions off of.
The only other time that he recalled being the sole navigator of his life was the brief period of time that he’d wandered about aimlessly, after deserting from Hell’s Hollow and before falling in with Boss Hauten’s crew. And even then, he hadn’t really been navigating his life. He’d just been drifting along.
Now he had a purpose. A mission. And he had to rely completely on himself to get it done.
He stopped, about fifty yards past the last building in Karapalida. He looked out at the dry plains that stretched out before him. Mostly flat, though a few hills and hollows contoured the landscape, rimmed by low, scrubby brush.
It all came down to him.
For now. At least until he could get everyone back together and—hopefully—working together. Then he could relax back into his usual state of…
What? Going along for the ride? Supporting the larger objective?
He shook his head. He needed to focus right now on not breaking his leg. Although, really, if he was going to break a leg, doing it close to Karapalida was probably the best place for it to happen.
He took a few deep breaths. Clutched his longstaff tightly. Lowered his body into a half-squat.
He leaped. The shield erupted. He pulsed it, tweaking the bottom of it like a bowstring, just like Mala had taught him, and flew into the air.
He was so focused on landing properly that, when his feet touched the ground again, it took him a moment to realize he’d only traveled a few yards. He’d mostly jumped straight up and down.
He swore under his breath. Glanced self-consciously behind him, as though there might be an errant squad of legionnaires watching and laughing at him.
“Little less up and down,” he chided himself. “Little more forward movement.”
He tried it again, and this time went shooting out, the ground blazing by recklessly under his feet. Terrified at the speed of his forward movement, he pulsed again, trying for a little more altitude. He bounced up, but was still going at a horrendous pace.
He kept trying to slow himself down, until he realized that he was skipping across massive distances like a flat stone on glassy water.
A haphazard grin spread across his face as the clench of fear abated.
He pulsed again, sending himself rocketing upwards at a sharp angle, then pulsed again, right as he felt himself begin to fall. The wastelands receded below him. The air around him seemed to hum, cooler and crisper than he’d ever felt on the ground.
A strange thing came over him. A sort of dream-like joy. What child hasn’t dreamed of flying?
He cackled insanely as he vaulted himself effortlessly over a hill that would have taken him half an hour to trudge up.
He was flying!
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A LACK OF TRUST
As Perry was walking out of the west side of Karapalida, Teran and Lucky wound their way through the disconsolate crowds, heading east.
Teran kept waiting for someone to recognize them as the people that had harbored a wounded demigod, but no one seemed to give her or Lucky much attention. As they approached the eastern limits of the New Section, Teran realized that the crowds were getting thicker here.
“More refugees,” she said, looking about at the tired, downtrodden faces as she wove between them.
“Where from?” Lucky murmured, his voice slightly changed due to the burn pack that Petra had applied—a skin-like patch that melded with the skin. And apparently it made you feel like you couldn’t move your mouth much.
Rather than hazard a guess, Teran found a face that looked slightly less exhausted and confused. A woman with two children in tow behind her—she strode along with the crowd, pulling her children with a stern sort of resolution.
“Excuse me,” Teran said, making eye contact with the woman.
She noted that the woman gripped her children’s hands harder and drew them in closer, giving Teran a suspicious look.
Teran held up her hands and didn’t come any closer. They were close enough to talk, and for the others to part around them, rather than walk between them. “Where are you from?”
The woman hesitated, but seemed to come to the conclusion that such an admission would not endanger her. “We’re from Sekofeld. Or, at least, the freehold outside of it is where I’m from.”
Teran gradually lowered her hands. “What happened
to it?”
The woman’s eyes went skyward. “They came. The wrath of the gods. The demons.”
Teran nodded, needing no further clarification. “When did they come? And how far have you walked?”
The woman’s shoulders rounded as though suddenly too tired to bear an invisible weight anymore. “Yesterday morning. They came out of the sun as it rose. They killed everyone that couldn’t get away fast enough.” The sharpness came back to the woman’s gaze. “Do you have any water? My children haven’t had anything to drink since we left.”
Teran didn’t have much on her. She had anticipated the short hike to the skiff—hopefully it was still there—and a travel time of less than a day to locate the Outsiders. She’d managed to gather up a tattered old knapsack which hung from her shoulder, containing a hologram from Legatus Mordicus, some salve that Petra had given her for Lucky’s burns, and a small water bladder that held only a liter.
She glanced at Lucky, but his gaze was fixed on the children, pity in his eyes.
She opened the knapsack, aware of the other starving and dehydrated refugees milling about them. She stepped up closer to the woman and discreetly passed her the bladder. “Take it. Try not to let anyone see it. There is water here, but the lines are long.”
The woman grabbed the bladder and shoved it into a fold of her homespun blouse, pinning it there with an elbow and glancing about to see if she had been noticed. When it was clear that she wasn’t about to be attacked for the liter of water, she looked at Teran and her eyes softened.
“Thank you.”
Teran looked away, disliking the welling of emotion she felt. “Stay safe,” she said, a little thickly, and began moving again.
“There should be some water left on the skiff,” Teran murmured to Lucky.
“It’s fine,” Lucky replied. “They need it more than we do.”
“How are the Outsiders fixed for supplies?”
“They’re not. Water isn’t an issue—they have access to a spring. But since our clan combined with the Southerlies, their food stores are gone. Which is part of the reason we came to Karapalida. They sent other parties out to the nearest towns and cities to beg, barter, or steal.” He gave her a knowing look. “Just like you and your father used to do.”
Teran looked sharply at him. “I never stole. I simply tricked people into giving.”
He smiled, then winced at the crease it created in his burn. “Of course. But if the other cities are anything like Karapalida, then I don’t think anyone found any food.”
Teran considered this as they passed the last section of structures—really just hollowed out shells and foundations. If the Outsiders’ position was untenable, that might make it easier for her to convince them to give up their old ways of hiding, and join with the rest of humanity. Hunger could be a powerful motivator.
But did she even want them to? Or was that just what Perry wanted?
She needed to do what was right for her people—or at least try to convince them to do what was right. Was rejoining the society they had turned their back on for generations really the answer? Or was that just going to subject her people to a new form of burden—working under someone like Legatus Mordicus, or whatever other leadership might crop up in these tumultuous times?
Things were changing so rapidly. In the span of less than two days, every political and geographic demarcation had been destroyed. The entire known world was now shattered particles in a vacuum, like cosmic dust in a nebulae. Who knew what new structures would coalesce from that? Would they be better? Would they be worse?
It was impossible to know the future. Teran knew this, and yet she couldn’t stop herself from pursuing each thread of possibility to its logical conclusion. But the threads she held now might not be there tomorrow. Things were changing too rapidly to make a reasonable guess at where they might end up.
Go and talk to them, Teran decided. That was all she could do. Tell them what she knew, and what she had witnessed. Let them make their own choices. But let those choices at least be informed, and not born of ignorance.
They hiked in silence out along the dusty flats to the first rise in the land. The skiff was where they’d left it, nestled in a tiny valley between two ridges, obscured from most angles by low sage.
Mala’s blood still coated the starboard side where she’d lain.
Teran and Lucky hoisted themselves aboard. She pointed to the cargo holds to either side. “Open those up and see what kind of supplies we have. There should be some weapons, too. We’ll want those.”
As Lucky bent to his task, Teran went to the controls. She wasn’t overly familiar with these machines, but she’d had plenty of opportunity to glean how they were run over the last couple weeks. She was fairly certain she could figure it out.
The readout panel was straightforward. Altitude. Speed. Power.
The power meter was a series of nine lights. Three green, three yellow, and three red. The skiff currently displayed three red and one yellow. Less than half a charge.
“Lucky, how confident are you with your navigation?”
Lucky looked up at her, two rifle in his hands. “Why?”
“Because we only have a half a charge on this thing, and no way to recharge it. So if we want to actually get where we’re going, we need to go straight there and not fly around looking for landmarks.”
“Ah.” Lucky stood up, the weapons dangling from his hands. He spun in a slow circle, as though he could assess his geographic location from the scrubby hills around them. “Right. Well. Head east-southeast, and we’ll go from there.”
Teran narrowed her eyes. “So you have no idea where you’re going?”
Lucky squinted. “I’m like an ant, Teran. I can retrace my steps, but if you put me in a new location, I’m completely lost.”
“Are you completely lost right now?” Teran demanded.
“Well, no. Not completely. I know we need to go east-southeast.”
“Fantastic,” Teran mumbled, returning her attention to the controls. “Alright. I’m going to get this thing started. You might want to hang on.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve never flown one of these before.”
“Oh, so you’re completely lost too?”
“Nope.” Teran jabbed her finger on a pretty obvious button, sending a rumble of energy through the craft and causing it to lurch from its position and rise a few feet into the air. She gave Lucky an unpleasant smile. “I know we need to go east-southeast.”
“Huh.” Lucky turned back to the cargo hold, shaking his head. “Blind leading the blind.”
***
As the tail end of Teran’s skiff crested a ridge and disappeared from the vicinity of Karapalida, on the dubious heading of east-southeast, a rumble drew across the low hills and dusty flats.
A few pebbles shimmied about, upset from the place where the wind had placed them for the last several years.
Down a snaking valley just a little to the north of where Teran had gone, a dusty cloud took shape and billowed its way up the valley.
Skimming along the dry riverbed that made up that valley, Sagum stood alongside Lux at the fore of their skiff as at plunged onwards. Behind them, the skiffs filled with praetors flew in a V formation, for no real tactical purpose outside of avoiding the wake of dust kicked up by the lead skiff.
Lux glanced backwards to the controls, perhaps considering whether to ask how close they were to Karapalida. Sagum followed his hesitant gaze to where it landed on the dour face of the centurion at the controls.
Interesting, Sagum thought, glancing furtively at Lux. There appeared to be some hesitation on Lux’s face, and eventually he turned back around, as though he had decided not to bother his centurion.
“We’re close, aren’t we?” Lux asked over the wind.
“Should be,” Sagum answered. “Not like I have these hills memorized, but out in those flats ahead should be Karapalida, a bit to the west.” He considered his words carefully. �
��Why not ask your centurion? He has the readouts.”
Lux sniffed airily, but it hid a genuine concern that Sagum perceived beneath the façade. “You know this area better than the rest of us. It seemed easiest to ask you.”
Sagum didn’t buy it, but he let the moment stretch. He hadn’t been privy to any direct conflicts between the praetors and Lux, but since they received the message at Praesidium, Sagum knew there had been a shift in attitudes. The stalwart and eager praetors had seemed sullen as they’d trudged onto the freshly charged skiffs and made their way west across the Glass Flats.
Lux did not seem to mind the silence. Sagum had kind of hoped it would make him uncomfortable enough to speak, but then he remembered that Lux was an inquisitor. He probably used that tactic all the time on others.
“Alright,” Sagum said, leaning on the front rail with one hand and facing Lux. “If there’s something going down, don’t you think I should know about it?”
Lux shot him a look. “There’s nothing…going down, as you call it.”
Sagum shrugged. “Okay, then. Shouldn’t be a problem to holler at the centurion and see how close we are to Karapalida.” Sagum turned to the aft and took a big breath as though to yell.
Lux put a stern hand on his shoulder. “Leave the centurion be.”
Sagum smirked, turning back. “So there is something going down.”
Lux lowered his chin and blinked a few times, as though trying to press down some irritation. “Praetorians are not accustomed to retreating.”
“I see. Do they prefer dying then? Because that’s what would have happened if we’d stayed.”
“Perhaps. But I think they would prefer even more to be back in The Clouds.”
Sagum frowned. “Based on little things, like the messenger’s tone, and also all of the words that came out of his mouth, I’d guess humans aren’t very welcome in The Clouds right now.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that their entire existence has been upset.” Lux sighed, barely audible over the roaring wind. “They need some time to acclimate. I’ve chosen to give them space.”
