by ST Branton
Akker sat in the center of the field, battered and bloodied, stripped nearly naked and on his knees. I ran to him, yelling his name, but he didn’t respond. It was only when I reached him that I realized he was chained to a large metal stake, holding him to the ground. The chains bound his arms behind him so he couldn’t try to pull them apart, and he was stuck facing the earth, only able to hold his head one way or the other. Blood streamed from a wound on his forehead, and he moved so the rivulets flowed away from his eyes.
“Akker, are you okay? What happened?” I nearly shouted, trying to examine him for deeper wounds. His dryad features were extremely clear now, and his body shone in the light. I tried pulling on a chain, but there was nothing to be done. I crawled back to his face and was about to ask him a question when I saw the culprit of the assault over his shoulder.
Jonas stood across the field, a compound bow drawn, and an arrow nocked and pointed right at me. Behind him stood a tripod with a camera facing Akker and me, recording everything.
“Run,” Akker croaked, his voice weak and defeated. “Please, run.”
“I don’t think you should take the advice of a Farsider, Slick. They are known to be untrustworthy,” Jonas said, a mad grin on his face.
I was in disbelief, but I tried to process everything all at once. It was one man with a bow. This wasn’t complicated math. I was Sara Fucking Slick, and even without the locket, I could take down one dude with a bow.
“Don’t move, Slick,” he commanded, spitting my name out like a curse. “I know you think you’re so smart, so good at fighting that you imagine yourself beating me up and going on about your life right now, don’t you?”
“Jonas, this is over. I—”
“Can shut the fuck up is what you can do,” he interrupted. “The great Sara Slick could take me down, sure, but the problem is, you traitor, I have this whole place wired to explode, and if you make one move toward me, I swear I will blow it to hell.”
I hesitated. He could be bluffing, but the confidence with which he spoke belied a sense of reality, and the risk was too high. I had to try to talk him down. A small, almost imperceptible tremor rolled through the ground. I shifted my feet to get better footing.
“Jonas, this isn’t worth it, none of this. We can fix this, we can…”
“We, we, we, we, we,” he chirped mockingly, his voice trilling higher with each word. “There is no we. Not anymore. Oh, but there could have been if you weren’t a traitor. Sara Slick, the traitor of The Near, that’s what they should call you. Of anyone on this planet who should know the Farsiders cannot be trusted, it should be you. The girl who escaped The Deep.”
I inhaled sharply. I didn’t tell him about that, and I was positive Ally hadn’t either. What the hell was going on?
“See, I know more than you think. I’m not some dumb human like you think of all of us now. Since now you’re so enamored with these Farsiders, Farsiders who tried to frame you for murder, then kill you. Traitor,” he spat, his contempt for me filling every word he said, and every time he called me a traitor it seemed to fuel him even more.
He continued, “There are those of us who know the truth. About The Far, about The Near, about you, Sara Slick. I came here to start a war, but when I found out you were here and found out who you were, oh God, I thought I hit the jackpot. Here is the girl who beats up Fae. The one who escaped The Deep! No one does that. If you and I teamed up together, we would be unstoppable. We could rid our existence of the Farsiders for good. The heinous Sara Slick and her sidekick Jonas. I was willing to be that for you. A lesser, a tagalong. If it meant we could start this war and end them, I would have done anything. But, no. Just another traitor of your kind.”
Jonas was walking closer now, his eyes wide and crazed. The bow stayed focused on me, and I saw the button attached with a carabiner to his hunting shirt. I was still trying to piece together the camera, and I looked over at it. Jonas noticed and scoffed. Another mild tremor rolled through the ground below us.
“You see, I realized the only value you have any more is your reputation. When you sided with these freaks, it hit me. If I’m going to convince my kind of what type of threat we’re under, I had to find them a monster to focus on. A Sara Slick of their own. And I found the perfect one.”
His eyes traveled down to Akker, and it dawned on me what was about to happen. He didn’t choose this place because of the scenery. It wasn’t because it was somewhere he loved to be. It was the dam. Akker shook in his chains and tried to lift his head to see Jonas, who stayed behind him like the coward he was.
“I will never be your pawn,” Akker choked out. Blood spilled from his mouth as he said it, and he coughed more onto the dirt around him.
“Oh, but I think you will, freak. Do you know why? Because I know what happened to your friends. I know what happened to your father.”
I needed to find a way to stop him. He was trying to use Akker’s power against him to cause the dam to break, but I couldn’t get close enough to him. And if I missed…
“You bastard,” Akker said.
“Your father begged for his life, you know.” Jonas fiddled with the button in his hand. He seemed to enjoy torturing me by rubbing his entire palm over it and tensing his shoulder, then sliding it away. He was torturing both of us at once, and it delighted him. “Begged. On his knees, not unlike you, right now. Begged me to let him live. He said, ‘the Vrya are peaceful.’ So peaceful you attacked the people of Hunt when they came to you, right? Hypocrites. He said the Vrya would leave. He promised me, with tears in his eyes, Akker. Tears. But I know the truth. Farsiders lie, and your people would never leave. Not for good. You would go somewhere else and use up resources meant for humans. You would cause us to hurt and to suffer. So, I made him suffer. I cut him apart, Akker. I cut him in every single way you can cut someone. I did it slowly, right here, in this field. His screams went nowhere but into the sound of the water at the dam, and the only person who heard them was me. And I enjoyed every single second, Akker.”
The ground was trembling. I knew there was no stopping this. Jonas had won. Akker wouldn’t be able to control his emotions, and it would destroy the dam and the town. Then the war would begin. I needed to think fast. Faster.
“Akker,” I said, my voice low and even. “Akker, it’s me, Sara. You are better than this, Akker. Look at me. You are better than this.”
Jonas mocked me from behind and got close to Akker, nearly whispering to him. His thumb settled on the button, daring Akker to move, to cause the righteous war that Jonas desperately wanted.
“And then, he begged me to die. He begged me to end it. But I wasn’t done. I hunted him like an animal.”
The ground shook and trembled, and I felt it was all lost. I heard the ground crumbling behind us, and the fear of the moment gripped me.
“Akker, please.”
“Shut up, Slick,” Jonas said. “There’s nothing you can say anymore. This is an animal, a creature who doesn’t deserve your pity. He is designed to do one thing, and one thing only—to destroy us.”
“I know him better than that. He knows better than that. Akker, listen to me,” I insisted.
“You sniveling traitor,” Jonas spit. “You deserve to die with the rest of them. You’re an animal like he is.”
Then suddenly, everything was still. Jonas’ jaw dropped as he looked around.
“No,” Akker nearly whispered. “I am not the animal here. The Vrya are not animals. You are the animal. I will not be your monster.”
Jonas screamed in rage and jumped to his feet again. He pulled the arrow back and nocked it into place. I leapt to my feet and dove toward Akker. I reached for my shield rune and activated it in mid-air, and Jonas fired. The arrow bounced off the shield and tumbled away. He drew another and let it loose, but it also bounced off, and he screamed a guttural curse.
I dove toward him in his distraction and rolled into his legs. He stumbled back, and I stood in one motion, punching him in the jaw wi
th a sweeping uppercut. He stumbled again, and I barreled into his chest, pushing him a few more steps away. His arms hammered on my back as he tried to get me off him, but I threw punches into his gut that seemed to slow him down.
I was overwhelmed with rage and lunged upward with another hard uppercut, and he stepped back in a daze. The cliff was close, and he was tottering on the edge of it. But I didn’t want to stop. I threw another punch, smashing his nose and making his knees buckle. He wavered mere steps away from the edge, and I hit him again, sending him back another step.
“This is for the Vrya,” I shouted as I hit him with another hook that put him a step away from the edge. His eyes rolled like a slot machine, and he tried to focus. I reared back my arm for another shot when I heard Akker behind me.
“Slick, no!” he shouted.
I paused for a moment and looked back at Akker. His face was a mask of confusion and pain. He wanted Jonas to pay as much as I did, even more, but he also knew this wasn’t the way. I turned back to Jonas, who spat blood on the ground and laughed a mirthless laugh.
“You don’t have the balls,” he muttered through broken teeth. “But I do.”
Suddenly, he grabbed my hand and yanked me toward him as he dropped off the edge of the cliff. I stumbled and fell, grasping desperately at the ground to stay alive as his body tumbled over the edge and hung from my arm. I looked down into his face, red with madness and eyes bulging with hatred and purpose.
“Hang on, Jonas. We can get through this. We can fix this together, just hang on!”
“The war begins with one casualty. I will be the face of the resistance. I will be the inspiration for the glorious rebellion. I am The Near!”
He smiled and let go.
As he fell, he laughed and slammed his hand on the button.
I watched him fall for a few seconds. Then an explosion rocked the ground. I stood quickly and ran to Akker while pulling out my switchblade. Explosions filled the air around us, and I knew we were out of time. I cut the chains holding him down, and it broke him free. Gingerly he stood, and I ran, Akker following close behind me. I activated the shield once more, holding it above me as rocks and debris fell toward me.
Suddenly, the explosions stopped. The shield rune was weakening, letting some of the debris through. I looked back at the dam one last time and saw water springing from a hole in the middle.
Soon, it would flood and take Hunt with it.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I wanted to reach out and help Akker as we made our way toward everyone, but he was determined to do it on his own. The fierce, strong young dryad limped along beside me, moving as quickly as he could. Pain etched his face and kept his jaw tightly clenched, but he didn't slow down for an instant.
He knew how important it was for us to get to the others, and he wasn't going to stop no matter how excruciating his injuries were. It was impressive, but also brought tears to my eyes. This was far too much for someone so young to face. He shouldn't have to cope with this amount of loss and pain. He shouldn't have to suffer through this type of fear or feel like the survival of his entire people rested on his shoulders. But he was taking it all with so much dignity.
Wherever he was, I knew his father was proud.
We made it back to the gathering of humans and Vrya and found them right back in the middle of a shouting match. I hoped they would have come to their senses at least enough to not get into a verbal battle while I was gone, but it seemed I was way overestimating their ability to control themselves.
"Oh, you have to be kidding me. You people are absurd." I swirled my hand around, gesturing to encompass all of them. "I mean, there are a few specific ones of you I'm not fully including in that statement, but as an overall evaluation...absurd."
No one seemed to hear me, or if they did, didn't care what I was saying. They didn't even respond to Akker being back. They were too busy snarking at each other and hurling an increasingly stupid string of insults and threats back and forth at each other. We got to the point of one of the humans saying he would turn them into a campfire and toast s'mores over them and I stepped up closer.
"Do we need to go over this again? Shut up! All of you. Time out still stands, and I’m not above hog-tying people to make it happen."
I might have been too hard on them considering everything that was happening around the town and the trauma they'd been through on both sides. But I didn't care. I was sick of the arguing, sick of them pushing back against each other and putting more thought into their hatred for each other than into figuring out what was happening. It was the way fear occurred so often. Rather than pushing through it and stepping up to resolve a situation, people spazzed and lashed out against whatever they wanted to assign blame to. We didn't have time for that shit right then.
They still wouldn't listen, so my only choice was to resort to extremes. I extended my arm in front of me, touched the two moon shapes on my giant-ass metal bracelet, and pulled them together to create an image of a full moon. Twisting it toward me activated the rune and produced the shield. I planned to smash my fist against it to make a loud enough sound to distract the group from their bickering. Instead, when I slammed my fist into it, a blindingly bright white light blasted out of it.
"Damn." I closed my eyes against the glare and turned my head away. "Archie slipped all kinds of goodies into this thing and didn’t tell me about them."
At least the blast of light did the trick. Everyone stopped yelling at each other and turned to shout at me, hissing at the light and flailing around. I kept it on them until they went quiet, then smashed my hand against the shield again. I didn't know if that was how to make the light go away, but it was the only thought I had.
Fortunately, it worked. Qulma noticed Akker and her eyes widened, her face brightening before clouding over again when she saw his wounds.
"Akker." She rushed to him. "You're alive."
She threw her arms around him, but he eased her away from him.
"We don't have time. I'll explain everything later, but not now. Everyone, listen to Sara."
They turned their attention to me, and I lifted my voice as loud as I could get it to make sure everyone heard me.
"The dam is failing. We only have a few minutes before we're all under water."
The announcement brought gasps and shouts of fear.
"What?" Qulma stepped back from Akker and looked at me. Her eyes were sharp, staring into mine with desperation like she hoped with everything in her she had misunderstood what I said. "What do you mean, the dam is failing?"
"It's collapsing. Jonas destroyed it."
"No," Shailene cried out.
A few of the other humans shouted, throwing questions at me, but I held up my arm to threaten them with the shield and stop them.
"It was him," I insisted. "He’s the killer. He's responsible for all the Vrya murders. He committed the attacks. He knew your hatred for one another would tear this town apart, and now he's using the dam to finish the job."
Cale's face dropped. The fire in his eyes faded and he swallowed hard.
"What do we do?" Qulma asked.
"There's no time to get to high ground," Shailene said, her voice high.
Everyone looked panicked as they exchanged terrified glances and pulled children close. I didn't know what to say to them. My chest ached, emotion tearing at my throat. I was as afraid as they were, and this time, I didn't have answers. Suddenly, Cale stepped forward and looked into my eyes. Where there had been violence and hate, there was now a glimmer of hope.
"I know what to do."
"What?" I asked.
"We run to the mine," he suggested.
"The mine?" I asked.
He nodded. "Yes. There are old access tunnels high up on the mountain. We don't have the time to climb the mountain on the outside to get to higher ground, but if we get inside, the mountain can protect us until we get higher. We need to go in low and block the entrance to keep the water out. Then we hike up t
o the top of the mountain and use the access tunnels to get out. We'll be above the water level."
"It could work," I said.
"How are we supposed to block the entrance?" Shailene asked.
"We can do it," Akker said. "You only have to show us where."
The other Vrya nodded around him. They were coming together. It might not be in the circumstances I hoped for, but right now, we needed it more than ever before. The dam couldn't hold out for much longer. Soon, all the water it held back would rush down into the valley and swallow the Vrya village and the town of Hunt. We needed to rely on each other if any of us were going to survive.
"Let's move," I said.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The town ran behind us in a solid group. Despite everything that happened before, Cale was now stepping up, using his voice and his talent for convincing people to get them to move quickly to the access tunnels. They were low to the ground, and water had already started to wash over the area in tiny streams. Those streams would get bigger soon. Then the dam would burst and turn it into a river. We needed to move quickly to get everyone in before it happened.
The tunnel was wide enough for several people to fit through at a time, and Cale led the smaller and weaker of the group, humans and dryad alike, deeper into the tunnel first. The rest of us noticed the sandbags laid out along the sides and began stacking them in one long low wall across the opening. A shelf nailed to the wall held lanterns and oil sitting next to each other. I lit a few to give us enough light to see and passed some up the tunnel to those who were waiting farther in.
“Lanterns?” Ally asked mockingly.
“The lights went out with the damage to the dam,” Cale said from behind her. “All the electricity in the town is out because of it, I suspect, outside of anyone who has a backup generator.”
“Not that it will matter much soon,” one of the townspeople muttered.
