by Mark Tufo
“I did not believe you to be real. You are still twenty miles from FreeTown. Wait until nightfall and follow our tracks. My name is Gendast; it is my honor to come across the three…well, four that would defy a realm.” He handed over his canteen and a pocketful of rations before leaving. Five more soldiers at various points saw the four, nodded and kept moving.
“I had not been expecting that,” Parendall said.
“And why not? It would appear that we are legends. I am as of yet unsure what pose I should strike when they cast my statue,” Ziva said.
“Maybe one where you are sleeping; that seems to be your most natural state,” Drababan said, and his mother laughed quietly.
They waited until nightfall, like Gendast had told them to. Their traveling was much easier due to the path the searching Genogerians had forged. Parendall was still favoring his leg, but he felt immeasurably better. By the time the morning sun was beginning to rise they could see the outer boundaries of FreeTown and the thousands of inhabitants milling about its borders, having heard the news that there were going to be some important visitors that day.
“Something is wrong,” Demeta said as she looked out over the nearly mile-long clearing.
“Yes, that we are here and they are there,” Ziva said as he attempted to push past her. Parendall reached an arm out and pulled him back.
“If the inhabitants of FreeTown are expecting us there is no reason to believe that the Progerians do not know as well.”
“But they are stupid,” Ziva said.
“Do you wish to underestimate them like they do us?” Parendall asked.
Ziva shook his head curtly.
The sun traveled higher in the sky and still there was no sign of the Progerians.
“How long must we wait to drink from our glass of freedom when it is so close?” Ziva asked. “I am parched for it!”
“We are close; we do not wish for it to sour now,” Demeta replied. “We will wait for nightfall. This will give Parendall more time to rest his injured leg and a better chance to run should we need it.”
None of the Genos left the periphery of their town—if anything, the numbers had swelled as the day wore on. It was at twilight that Demeta mistakenly believed they would have their best chance of bridging the gap.
“Are you ready little one?” she’d asked her son, nervously.
Drababan nodded.
“I will go first” Ziva offered.
“We will go as one,” Parendall said. They started cautiously, expecting at any moment to be gunned down as they stepped into the open. They didn’t dare rush forward in haste, until they were certain they wouldn’t be running into something better left alone. They were nearly halfway across when they were spotted by the Genogerians at the town. The crowd had pushed up to the boundaries, an expectant silence hung over them all as if the entire town held its breath as the four moved closer.
“We are going to make it,” Demeta said with a smile, and as if that were the cue, a giant spotlight illuminated the entire field, shining down on them as clearly as if it were noon.
“RUN!” Parendall shouted. The crowd urged them on with a spontaneous cry.
“Commander Treadnor do you wish me to order the drones to fire?” Vivoch asked.
“No.”
“If we don’t do it soon, they will escape.”
“They will not. I want them to have one moment of hope before I rip it from them.”
“Commander?” Vivoch asked.
The Genogerian crowd erupted in tears and laughter as the group crossed onto their lands.
“Now!” Treadnor.
“It is too late,” Vivoch replied.
“I was not talking to you,” Treadnor said viciously.
Above the din of their success, Parendall heard a loud explosion, and it became difficult to breathe, as if the very air had been sucked from their location. He turned back to see a swirling wall of blue fire nearly twenty feet tall. “Larendite” flared across his mind. The vast majority of Genos that had spotted the anomaly stood there gazing upon it like their very God had appeared before them.
“Demeta, Ziva! Dig! All of you—dig for your lives!” He dragged them down and began to move great swaths of earth with his powerful arms, hands, and claws. It was indeterminably long moments before the spellbound crowd could pull their gaze away from the destructive wave and react. Bushes, trees, animals, bugs, burst into fire the moment the ethereal flame touched them. Genogerians wisely began to flee for their lives.
“What have you done Commander? We are too close! The Larendite will be far into FreeTown before it is exhausted,” Vivoch said.
“Who cares? They are only Genogerians. This is a lesson they needed to be taught a long time ago.”
“The Emperor did not decree this.”
“The Emperor is not here. My report will say we were under heavy fire.”
“That is not what happened, Commander.”
“You are not so valuable an officer, Vivoch, that I cannot have you replaced...or worse. We are under heavy fire, you know. You would be wise to shut your mouth and watch the awe-inspiring show I have out on display.”
“Get in!” Parendall shouted from the edge of his shallow trench. They were nearly alone as the other Genogerians were clearing out as fast as they could move. He could not help but think he was asking his friend, mate, and child to get into their own hastily dug graves.
Ziva dove into his hole. “Hold your breath,” Parendall said as he shoveled great piles of dirt on top of him. Next, he physically placed Demeta inside her hole, laying Drababan next to her. “Not deep enough.” He said aloud. He glanced quickly to the fast approaching horror and without hesitation laid on top of his family.
Vivoch turned his head away as the flame crashed into and through the first line of Genogerians. Screams of the damned and destroyed ripped into his ear drums indelibly etching the memory of their slaughter into his brain.
There were long moments Demeta could not breathe. The air had been forced from her lungs when Parendall had covered her and Drababan up. But even if she had been able to breathe, the very air itself had been on fire. Parendall never screamed as the fire washed over his back; his eyes had rolled up into the back of his head and he had at first got very rigid before going completely limp. Demeta began to suck in small increments of air, the ground next to her was sizzling and popping from the extreme heat it had just experienced.
“Parendall, my sweet Parendall.” Demeta had said as she attempted to move.
“Chief?” Demeta heard Ziva say from outside the hole. There was a forlorn and choked sob in that one word. “Demeta? Drababan?” he cried out.
“We are here,” Demeta was able to say, though not with much force.
“Pull him up,” Ziva said. “I am afraid that there is nowhere I can touch him that is not injured.”
Parendall’s eyes shot open as Demeta gently pushed him up until Ziva was able to wrap his arms around his friend’s midsection.
“Demeta?” he asked.
“I am here, my love.”
“I cannot see much in this world. I fear I am traveling into the other now. Does Drababan yet live?”
“He does,” she said tenderly.
“Ziva?”
“I am here, old friend.”
“My family’s safety falls to you.”
“It will be my honor to stay beside them, Chief.” Ziva held him up, keeping his burnt and destroyed back from coming in contact with the ground.
Demeta rested her forehead against his. “You are what all beings should aspire to.”
“I will make you proud, Sire,” Drababan said as he laid his head next to his mother’s so that the entire family was connected. Ziva wailed as Parendall crossed over.
An hour later they were in very much the same position when the Progerian vehicles approached.
“Put them in the cages,” Vivoch ordered.
“You insipid fool,” Emperor Malfrandor said when he got t
he commander to his receiving chamber.
“I killed or captured those that had escaped. That had attempted to make fools of our empire. And I taught the rest of those savages a lesson they will not soon forget.”
“You needlessly killed six thousand Genogerians.”
“They would have escaped had I not done so, and if that happened they would have armed their people with a more dangerous weapon than we could defeat: that of hope.” Treadnor defended.
“Hope? You speak of hope as an enemy? Hope is a specter compared to what drives them now. Armed with righteousness, they seek revenge. Revenge for their fallen, revenge for the promises we broke. We are in the midst of a full-scale rebellion, and all thanks to your hubris. Second Officer Vivoch tells me that you had the group trapped by a drone, that one missile could have stopped all of this.”
“I will deal with Vivoch.”
“Answer my question! Have you forgotten that I am the emperor of our universe?”
“I did not forget, Your Majesty.”
“Then?”
“It is true I could have struck more precisely.”
“You, Treadnor, you could single-handedly be responsible for the downfall of our realm. As word of this spreads, we will have Genogerians by the thousands, hundreds of thousands, refusing to fight or actively seeking to sabotage their superiors. The Progerian that is responsible for the massacre must pay, and must pay in the most public way possible. You will be executed tomorrow, and I will broadcast it to every corner of our known universe.”
Treadnor was dragged away by the royal guards, protesting that all his actions were in defense of the realm.
Four days later, Malfrandor visited the hidden prison deep within the bowels of Aradinia. He looked upon the three huddled Genogerians, one of which stared back defiantly at him.
“Now I have to decide what to do with you all. I cannot kill you, for that will incite more riots. The games perhaps?” He smiled at the thought of the brutal competitions so enjoyed by the Progerians. “You will all die in there eventually, but not by my hand.” He turned and walked back up the dark tunnel. “Yes, the games.”
About the Author
Visit Mark at www.marktufo.com
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