“That’s more than I would’ve expected, Wallah,” I said. “And I truly appreciate it.”
“Just remember the quantities. It’s always equal parts of everything,” Wallah added. “Never more, never less. Otherwise, it won’t be effective. It won’t disintegrate a body like it did with the tree. The Draenir opted for this type of deadly weapon because it causes a minimal amount of pain. You don’t even know it hits you.”
I let out a deep breath, raising my eyebrows as I stared at the dismantled weapon on the table. “I can only imagine. So, you’ve got fifty normal shots and three shots of pulverizer before reloading, right?” I asked.
Wallah nodded again. “Without a weapon, I don’t know how you could use them, though.”
“We’d need the materials and a blueprint. Our swamp witch can help us make our own,” I suggested.
A moment passed, and then he went into another chamber, next to ours. I followed, then froze before a wall covered in screens. This looked like the command center for the stronghold, with keyboards and monitors, printed materials that reminded me of instruction manuals, and communication devices with receivers and microphones. The Draenir had definitely been using radio and wireless systems to speak to one another across large distances.
“We used to have satellites in the sky,” Wallah said. “At least, that’s what Rakkhan remembers. But the plague made the elders destroy them and anything else that might make people want to leave the planet. The plague was so contagious and dangerous that they didn’t want it leaving Strava. It was a difficult decision, but we all understand why they did it.”
“So, if we turn this stuff on and try to reach out to other strongholds, do you think we’ll find others like you?” I replied.
Wallah shrugged. “I don’t think so. And I don’t know how to work any of these machines. Only Rakkhan knows, and he’s been adamant that we keep to ourselves, that there was no one else out there. But my siblings, my friends, and I, we don’t agree with hiding anymore. We would like to do something. To fight back.”
“What’s stopping you?” I asked. “Rakkhan?”
“He’s protected us for over a hundred years.” Wallah sighed. “We owe him our lives and our safety. We have children and elderly that need protection. And if the Perfects are as powerful and indestructible as you described them as being, we’d be foolish to reveal ourselves. The climate of Merinos keeps us well hidden. We’re better off here than out there. Personally, I’d like to find a way to get our world back, but, you know… the circumstances don’t make it easy.”
Just then, I realized something. I glanced around, the wheels in my head turning at surprising speed. “Wallah, would we be able to find weapons and pulverizer supplies in other strongholds?”
He thought about it for a while. “Maybe. But I cannot guarantee it. We don’t know what happened to the others, if anyone ever managed to stock up on them for the plague. I’d be guessing if I told you yes.”
“Have you tried talking to Rakkhan about doing something against the rise of Perfects?” I asked him.
“Of course. His face turns red whenever I mention it. He’s terrified for us,” Wallah said. “He would never allow us to go out there. He’s worked hard to keep us together and safe. I mean, I get where he’s coming from, but the younger generation isn’t eager to live a whole life hiding from those monsters. We’re already tired, and we’re in our late teens now. Imagine how we’ll boil over in the next five to ten years.”
What Wallah kept describing was a rather sad situation. According to him, the youth were eager and filled with energy. The tribe needed protection and nurturing, particularly where the babies were involved. The elderly were mostly sick, and had forgotten their old world. Rakkhan was the only lucid one, the only one who still retained a memory of life before the plague. Worth mentioning was the fact that what really made Rakkhan a leader of the tribe was his previous position in the higher circles of Draenir society.
The others came from rural regions, the smaller, distant islands—the handful of Draenir that had chosen to have families and work the land, instead of dedicating their lives to scientific and cultural pursuits.
Rakkhan had managed to round up and save the villagers, rather than the scientists. Based on the youths’ accounts of how the plague unfolded, it had first erupted within the cities, later spreading out to the smaller islands. The first to fall had been the scientists, the cultural clusters, the entrepreneurs, and the medics. The villagers were the last, farthest from the virus’s reach. Still, it had done a spectacular amount of damage, and we’d all thought it had killed them all.
It was good to see that some were still standing. The resilience of a species still boggled the mind.
“We should go back to the camp, now,” Wallah said. “We don’t want anyone to come looking for us. If Rakkhan finds out I’ve shown you all this, I’ll be in a lot of trouble. He has an aversion to foreigners, mainly because we’ve never met any. You’re all new and scary to him, and to most of us.”
“I understand,” I replied. “It’s okay. This is more than I could’ve hoped for. At least we know what to do, going forward.”
Wallah guided me back into the principal chamber, from which steps took us back to the surface. “What will you do next?” he asked.
“Well, first and foremost, we need to get some information out of Bogdana. She knows more about this world than we do, and she has to keep her promise. We brought her with us on the condition that she tells us everything she knows,” I said.
“She’s old, isn’t she?” Wallah replied, slightly amused.
“You could tell?”
He chuckled softly. “It’s in her eyes. I don’t know how else to explain it. She’s been through a lot, though,” he said. “We’re like that, you know. The Draenir, I mean. We’re very good at reading people. We just look at someone, and we can tell that they’ve been through a trauma, or a joyous moment, or an illness… It’s in the eyes.”
I gripped his arm, prompting him to stop, just as he was about to climb up the stone steps.
“What do you see in me?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
He exhaled deeply. “You almost died. There was a lot of darkness inside you. Your heart is connected to the very nature around you, and your soul is bound to the brunette with greenish-blue eyes,” he said, matter-of-factly. “There’s a snake inside you. Its spirit, anyway. I suppose that’s how you’re designed.”
I was impressed. “Not bad at all,” I muttered.
He climbed up the stairs, and I followed.
“So, Bogdana isn’t your friend,” Wallah said.
“An ally, for now. But we’re not quick to trust anyone, in general. We’ve been betrayed before, after all,” I replied. “We’ll see. She’s been helpful so far. Serena reads emotions. She will be able to tell if there’s something wrong.”
I felt as though I had to give Wallah some inside information from our cluster, so to speak. He’d put himself at risk by bringing me down here. The least I could do was show him that I trusted him as much as he’d trusted me. Confiding in him about Bogdana was something I could do without putting my people at risk. I figured it made him feel less guilty about what he told me, and maybe even eased his conscience.
He did seem to relax a little more, as we made our way back up.
“You said you were looking for your friends, right?” Wallah asked.
“Yes. There’s a group of our people out on Strava. The Perfects are hunting them, and we’re looking to provide them with some serious feedback,” I replied. “Once we reunite with them, we’ll plan something against Ta’Zan and the Perfects. We have to find a way to stop them. There’s no other option for us, I’m afraid. Otherwise, the entire universe will be in danger.”
Once he set foot through the stone opening, Wallah stilled. I could almost feel the tension gathering between his shoulder blades, his figure stiff as he blocked me from coming out.
“Rakkhan…” he breathed
.
I couldn’t see anything from my angle, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the Elder was waiting for us outside. I cursed under my breath, then climbed the last step and slipped out, joining Wallah in front of Rakkhan and a group of four Draenir guards. The youths were surprised to see us there, judging by the looks on their faces.
Rakkhan, on the other hand, was furious, his white brows furrowed and drawing deep shadows under his eyes.
“What in the world are you two doing here?” the Elder asked. “The stronghold is forbidden.”
The guards pointed their weapons at me, as if I’d been the mastermind of this whole endeavor. Wallah moved in front of me, obstructing their aim.
“I brought him here,” Wallah said. “It’s my fault, sir.”
“It’s a deep betrayal of our tribe,” Rakkhan replied, his tone clipped. He then shifted his focus to me, and it raised the fine hairs on the back of my neck. “You… I cannot trust you with anything, it seems,” he spat, and gave one of the guards a sideways glance. “Tie him up. They no longer have privileges while they’re in our camp.”
My stomach churned as I felt an entire day’s worth of progress go down the drain. We didn’t want to be on the bad side of these people. Based on what Wallah had told me, there was a chance that Rakkhan knew the locations of the other strongholds, since he was one of the upper-echelon Draenir—maybe the only one left, besides the four that Ta’Zan still had in his lab, according to what intel Amane had given Ben and Rose for their last video message.
I still had hope that we could work Rakkhan over and get him to do more than just let us go freely. We didn’t have enough time to mine and gather pulverizer ingredients and build weapons capable of firing it. We were racing against the clock, while Ta’Zan was getting dangerously close to figuring out space travel.
But we’d clearly made him mad, now. I was back to starting from scratch.
Serena
We’d managed to keep most of the Draenir youth in the camp busy with a mixture of conversations and dazzling spell work by Lumi. I didn’t even know the kind of show that swamp witch could put on, if she wanted to impress. We’d been gazing at little dragons made of pure fire that chased little rabbits around on the wet grass. Lumi was wiggling her fingers, making the kids laugh and the adults wonder as she manipulated the scene and allowed the rabbits to escape in a puff of smoke.
The dragon vanished altogether when she heard footsteps to our right.
In less than a second, the entire show came to an end.
Draven was coming back, threateningly accompanied by four Draenir guards. Behind them were Rakkhan and Wallah, the latter sullen and ashamed. The others in his group were both surprised and angry, though I had a feeling they weren’t even sure whom they were upset with, at that point—Wallah, for showing Draven something supposedly secret, or Rakkhan, for not wanting to help us.
“What happened?” I asked, standing up.
The wards were quick to move back and position themselves around us in a protective stance. They didn’t have weapons, but they were Maras. There were plenty of fangs and claws between them to tear through anyone.
“Your impudence is unacceptable,” Rakkhan said, his cheeks flaring.
“Wallah showed me their safety bunker, deep in the underground,” Draven replied, his hands tied behind his back. There were weapons pointed at him.
“And why is that a problem?” I asked Rakkhan, frowning.
“They’re not allowed to reveal our stronghold!” Rakkhan said. “That is our safest spot in the world. If anyone knows where it is, we will all be at risk!”
“Oh, come on!” Draven said. “You will always be at risk, as long as there are Perfects roaming this planet. You need to accept that and do something about it. Otherwise, your whole tribe will perish!”
“Enough!” Rakkhan shouted. “I’ve had enough! I was gracious enough to let you stay here, but I think it’s time for you all to go!”
Bijarki grinned. “You can’t take the truth, can you? Your days here are numbered,” he said, raising his voice for the whole tribe to hear. “Not because of us, but because Strava is infested with a species so mean and toxic that they will stop at nothing until you’re all dead or stuffed in cages.”
“We are safe here!” Rakkhan bellowed.
“We’re not,” Wallah said, his voice trembling. “We are, maybe, for another week or two, but we’ve all seen the flashes. They’re getting closer with every day that goes by. Soon enough, they’ll be here.”
“We have the stronghold. We can go deeper into the wintery lands,” Rakkhan replied, though I could sense his uncertainty straining him.
“Rakkhan… it doesn’t work like that,” Lumi said. “These aren’t hostile Draenir. These are creatures who think they are genetically superior, and that it entitles them to supremacy, to killing everyone else who’s beneath them. They will find you, sooner or later, and everything you’ve worked to preserve, until now, will be destroyed.”
Rakkhan stepped forward, running a hand through his white hair. His frustration was impossible to hide. “You don’t understand. The Draenir have gone up against Ta’Zan before. We didn’t stand a chance. On top of that, we had the plague. Our own hubris and addiction to technology brought us to our doom. We’ve been through this before, and we nearly went extinct. We’re better off away from Ta’Zan and whatever he’s planning. We cannot make the same mistake again.”
“You wouldn’t be making the same mistake,” Taeral interjected. “There are many of us who don’t want to see Ta’Zan and his Perfects achieve their goals. Billions of us, to be precise, who don’t deserve such a fate. We still have a chance to nip it in the bud, but we need everyone to help. Don’t you people want your planet back, too?”
“We do!” Wallah replied, ignoring Rakkhan’s glare. “We most certainly do!”
“They have limited resources, though, in terms of warfare,” Draven briefly explained. “It’s why they’re reluctant to share anything with us, including these weapons. Some of the materials needed to reload them during a battle are difficult to come by, hard to extract and to process. But they have other strongholds like this, on most of the larger islands.”
Lumi chuckled. “Hold on, you mean to tell me they’ve got more blasters in other bunkers, scattered across the planet?”
Draven nodded. “Most likely, yes. The strongholds are definitely there, but we’re not sure about their contents. They’re all undetectable, because they’re shelled with live serium generators,” he said. “It’s why our scanners never picked them up.”
“Much like the pod cave where Ta’Zan and his Faulties were, right?” I asked.
“Exactly,” he replied, then looked at Rakkhan. “We need your help. You need our help. You’re sitting ducks here, and your weapons will only hold them back for so long. But if you give us at least some of your gear, we can use it to plan a proper campaign against Ta’Zan. To take away as many of his Perfects as we can, to fix the psychological damage he’s done to them in order to make them obey him. To basically turn them against Ta’Zan, because they weren’t born evil like this. They were taught and conditioned. With enough of them on our side, we could turn the tide and start a revolution among his own people. He cannot, under any circumstances, leave this planet. Billions of souls are at stake.”
“This is no longer about this little tribe,” Bogdana chimed in. “As wonderful as it is to see you’ve made it, it amounts to nothing if Ta’Zan is allowed to continue what he’s doing.”
I groaned, suffocated by angst, and took out my tablet. I’d saved important pieces of data on it, including a selection of videos from the fleet attack. “Can I show you something?” I asked, and Rakkhan scowled at me. I took it as a miserable yes, then went over with the tablet and played the videos for him.
As he got a better look at what the Perfects were capable of, along with the speed with which they obliterated two of our starships, I could see the color draining fr
om the old Draenir’s wrinkled face. He couldn’t take his eyes off the screen, witnessing the destruction—captured from ship footage and the telescope recorder.
“They’re… horrible,” he mumbled.
“They’ll do worse to your people,” Bogdana said. “I imagine he still has a bone to pick with the Draenir. If there’s one thing I remember, it’s how your people reacted to his birth. I read Marduk’s letters. I know you were all vicious and cold toward him. I’m sure it made him who he is today. So, will you run and hide, or will you stand up to him?”
Rakkhan froze, downright befuddled as he stared at Bogdana. “What do you know about Marduk?”
“Enough!” Bogdana retorted, crossing her arms. “Enough to know that Marduk never would’ve allowed Ta’Zan to get this far. This is your world, your planet. You cannot let him take over and destroy you, too!”
“You should also know that Ta’Zan still has four of your people,” I added.
That hit a soft spot in the Elder, judging by his expression, but it still wasn’t enough to get him to work with us. After a moment of processing this information, he sighed deeply. “There’s nothing I can do for them. It is too late. My young people here, however… They’re a different issue. There’s hope of survival for them.”
He then slowly moved back, while Wallah settled by Draven’s side. His guards looked quite confused, not knowing whether they should put their weapons down or not.
“It’s not our world anymore. We’re but refugees in this land,” Rakkhan said. “We take what we can get, and we are thankful for that.”
“But we aren’t,” Wallah replied. “We’re miserable and lonely. We are not to blame for what happened. And we most certainly don’t want to end up dead, or, worse, the Perfects’ slaves.”
“There’s something none of you understand,” Rakkhan insisted. “This is not the Draenir way. We had the tools and resources to wipe out Ta’Zan and his Faulties before the plague erupted. But we could never… we could never bring ourselves to kill all those creatures. They didn’t know better, and they just wanted us to accept them. Nothing more, nothing less. We cannot engage in killing. We were never designed for cruelty.”
A Shade of Vampire 64: A Camp of Savages Page 13
