The air in the desert along the riverside was cold at night, freezing cold. Anaxis would run for spurts, as long as he could, to stay as warm as possible, but his mangled toe inevitably forced him to relent. Thankfully, the sun eventually started to come up. As the horizon turned from red to orange to yellow, the temperature started to rise, and Anaxis was able to let go some of the tension he had been holding his body with to keep from shivering.
It was a cloudless morning, which meant the intense heat would come on fast. The Guide Star faded from the sky as the day grew brighter, leaving Anaxis unsure of exactly where he was supposed to head to get back home. The river was still in view though, to his left, and he knew following it upstream would at least return him to where he had fallen, even if recognizing it or getting up the cliffside when he got there would be another difficulty altogether.
The dry heat of the dawning morning dried out Anaxis’s clothes and hair, and then started to dry out his skin. He got thirsty, which pulled him back to the river for a drink.
At the edge of the river, which was now deeper than the rapids where he had awoken, Anaxis spotted tiny, golden fish darting through the water. They scattered when he dipped his cupped hands in for a drink, but a larger, blue fish replaced them, one which took Anaxis’s hands for food and latched onto it with sticky gums. Anaxis pulled his hand back out of the water, but the fish refused to let go. Anaxis watched the fish blink at him as if nothing was out of the ordinary, then flung it off his hand with a flip of the wrist, and moved to where the water was more shallow. He drank until his belly was full, then spread out on the cool rocks for a rest.
There was a snapping freck across the river, which Anaxis realized was staring at him after a short while.
“Hey, buddy,” Anaxis said to the freck.
The animal pulled its head slowly into its spiked shell, turned, waddled off its rock, and sank into the water.
“Was it something I said?” Anaxis asked himself.
Though he was cool next to the water, the sun was rising swiftly, and Anaxis knew he had to find cover. He understood people often died in the heat of the desert sun. He took another few handfuls of water into his belly, then got up again and started to search for an overhang under which he could spend the hottest part of the day.
He came to an outcropping of tall rocks, and hoped that one of them or a combination might hold a place to hide him from the sun. As he searched about the columns, he became aware of them shifting in the sand. He placed his hand on one of the shorter columns out of curiosity, to see if he couldn’t shift it himself. When he tried, the ground beneath him started to shake.
All of the rock columns began to move now, in unison. Then, the ground rose up from below Anaxis, and he fell on his back and tumbled over the sand pouring around the various rock columns, until he eventually rolled out of the maze and fell through the air before hitting still ground. From where he had fallen he watched as more sand poured down through the rock columns on the ever-rising mass of land in front of him, until it became apparent that it wasn’t land that was rising at all, but the massive shell of an unbelievably large sand freck. When the animal had fully freed itself the sand, it shook its body, loosing the rest of the sand from the rows of blunted spikes on its back. It turned, slowly, to see who had disturbed its slumber, eventually locating Anaxis with its huge, prismatic eyes. Anaxis stared back, too frightened to move. The animal blinked and cocked its head to get a better look, then let out a deep, exasperated exhalation as it wheeled itself around and started to crawl off toward the dunes in the distance.
Anaxis watched the freck go, then remembered to breathe and got to his feet.
“Well, you don’t see that every day,” he said to himself. “I wish I had a shell to hide in about now.”
He got up and continued on along the river, where it was hotter than comfortable now, eventually finding an outcropping of rocks that were so configured as to where a shadowy recess was beneath them. Anaxis checked to make sure it wasn’t living, then crawled as deep as he could beneath the rocks, out of the glare of the now-scorching sun. He watched as the heat rose in radiant waves from the sand, knowing all he could do was wait for the sun to start to go down again so that he could continue his trip, and wishing he had something to eat.
But even Anaxis’s hiding place from the glaring sun couldn’t protect him from the heat. It grew hotter as the day wore on, until Anaxis got so thirsty that he had to return to the river for more water.
It wasn’t until he left the shade that he realized just how hot the day had actually become. The sunlight on his skin hurt, as if he were standing too close to a fire. He skipped over the sand to the river and drank all he could before he couldn’t stand the heat any longer, then jumped in to wet his clothes, and ran back toward his shelter in the rocks. His clothes were almost dry by the time he had crossed the short distance back to hiding, and dried completely within minutes of returning.
“This is awful,” Anaxis said to himself. “And it’s my own fault. I can’t believe I did this to myself. To everyone. I’m going to get in so much trouble for my stupid lens idea. What was I thinking, trying to change things? I should know by now that I can’t do anything right.”
A tiny desert sarax crawled out from a crack in the rocks and skittered along the wall of the recess.
“Hey, little guy,” Anaxis said.
The insect stopped and turned, as if it had heard.
“What’s going on?” Anaxis asked, happy to have something to distract him.
The sarax turned back around and started walking again. Anaxis reached for it.
“Why do you have to leave so soon?” he asked the sarax as he picked up the creature and cupped it in his hand.
Anaxis brought the insect up to eye level and examined its little head. The sarax’s pincers scissored wildly as Anaxis stared.
“You’re a handsome little guy,” said Anaxis. “And feisty. I’m sorry, am I scaring you? You were probably doing just fine before I came and cramped up your cave and picked you up. I’m sorry.”
He put the insect back down, and watched it scurry quickly back into another hole in the rock.
“I mess everything up, don’t I?” Anaxis asked himself with a sigh. “It’s so hot. So. Hot! What can you do about heat? Nothing. Not like cold. You can put more clothes on if it’s cold. But heat? Can’t escape it. Just wait it out. I suppose you can talk to yourself, like a loony. Like me. I’m halfway to meeting with Mills for steep already. Might as well accept my fate.”
Hours wore on, during which Anaxis thought through the stampede he had caused over and again, and imagined what the reactions of the other villagers would be when they saw him. At some point after high noon, the sarax reappeared.
“Maybe I shouldn’t even go home,” he said to the insect. “Maybe I should turn around and see where the river would take me in the other direction. Go live with the Gnirean. What do you think about that, buggy?”
The sarax chittered.
“No? Well, then can I live here with you?” Anaxis asked.
The insect disappeared once more.
“I’ll take that as a no,” said Anaxis. “I’m going to have to redeem myself, somehow, to my parents and everyone else. But what could I do?”
No answer came to Anaxis, despite the thought baking in his head all day, even after the shadows had stretched their furthest and the sun began to dip back down below the horizon in the east.
“Thank goodness,” Anaxis said, crawling out of the recess to find the sky in a beautiful gradient of yellow to purple. “I was beginning to fear I might hear answers to my questions if I stayed in there much longer. I really hope I make it home tonight.”
He drank to his heart’s content, and was happier still to find some shelled biora in the water, which he cracked open and ate raw, before continuing on under the burgeoning starlight along the edge of the river.
Sometime later, Anaxis came upon a long, purple lizard straking through th
e desert sand in the opposite direction.
“Hello, lizard!” he called.
The lizard stopped, lifted up on its hind legs, and answered, “Hello, Anaxis.”
Anaxis laughed and smiled, then realized that the lizard had just spoken back.
“Did… Did you just… How did you know my name?” Anaxis asked.
“You told me,” the lizard said.
“When?” Anaxis asked. “And how can you talk?”
“You taught me in a dream. It’s you who’s talking, Anaxis.”
Anaxis started to panic. “What’s going on?”
“It was probably the biora you ate, Anaxis. Remember? You know that they can be psychoactive. Don’t you?” the lizard asked.
“Oh, right,” Anaxis said. “So you’re a hallucination?”
“I’m not. I’m a lizard. But I’m not talking. That’s a hallucination. Though, you’re telling yourself all this, aren’t you?” the lizard asked.
“I guess so,” Anaxis said. “So what do I do now?”
“You should probably have a seat. And drink more water, to flush out the intoxicant. Right?”
“Right. Thanks, lizard.”
“Think nothing of it. And remember, I’m only you, anyways. Thank yourself!”
“Right,” Anaxis said.
He waved goodbye to the lizard, which waved back before starting off in a strange zigzag through the sand, leaving a trail of liquid sunset in its wake. Anaxis went back to the river and drank as much as he could, despite the sensation being very strange, and then turned his eyes up at the stars.
As he was staring, the points of light in the sky began to contort, and press down in the three-dimensional form of a face.
“Go home, Anaxis,” the face said.
“I’m trying,” Anaxis answered the star-face.
“Go home and tell the others you’re travelling to Gnirean,” said the vision.
“But… I’m scared to travel to Gnirean,” Anaxis said.
“You have to, for your village. To make things right,” said the face.
“But no one ever has. How could I? I can’t do anything right.”
“Travel to Gnirean, Anaxis,” the face repeated, before the stars pulled back into the sky and Anaxis was suddenly sober.
He pinched his arm to make sure he was still alive, and then drank until he couldn’t drink any more. When he was sure he was fully returned to clarity, he shook his head to clear it, and continued along the river again, wondering what his strange vision could possibly have meant.
6
Anaxis kept his head down as he walked along the riverside, lost in contemplation. It was only when he stubbed his toe that he looked up and saw the sky and realized he had strayed from his intended path.
“Oh, no,” he said to himself. “The river must have split… Where am I now?”
The waterway he was beside was hardly much of a river at all now, in fact it was more of a shallow stream, which disappeared under the sand completely not far from where Anaxis was standing.
“Great. How much time have I wasted following this tributary? Just perfect, Anaxis. You just keep on winning, don’t you. Guess I can just turn around now.”
He did so, sighing a deep sigh, and began to trudge back in the opposite direction.
Anaxis searched the sky to find the Guide Star. It was there where it should have been, as constant as ever, but next to it there was a brighter star, one he had never seen before.
“What is that?” he wondered aloud.
The star grew brighter and larger as Anaxis continued along, eventually getting so bright that it rivaled the luminance of the moons.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” he said.
The strange star now seemed to move.
“I wonder if that’s just the biora still acting on my brain,” Anaxis said.
The star turned a bright green as it appeared to fall from the sky, then exploded into red fire as it traced a flaming line of debris. The star, or whatever indeed it was, perhaps a meteor, Anaxis supposed, smashed into the sand somewhere over a dune to the west with a bright burst of white light and a dull thud.
“Incredible!” Anaxis exclaimed. He twitched for a while, unsure if he should continue heading back home or go to inspect what he had just seen. “I know I’m going to regret this when the sun comes back up,” he said, ultimately deciding to see what it was that had fallen to Valor.
There was a famous meteorite back home in Talx which his instructor, Xala, kept at her house. That object's strange sheen had always fascinated Anaxis, and he wished as he sped along that he might be able to carry a piece of this new meteor home to keep as his own.
“This is so incredible! I was lost, and now this! What luck!” Anaxis said. A pang of guilt struck when he thought back to the poor cannar who had died due to his mishandling of his lens. “Er, not luck. I guess it’s just coincidence.”
In a half-run, ignoring his exhaustion, Anaxis scaled dune after dune until he saw from one of their tops the crash site. Only it wasn’t a meteor there waiting for him; instead, there were pieces of what seemed to be flaming wreckage scattered all about the desert sand.
“What’s this?” Anaxis wondered.
He walked hesitantly toward the wreckage, clenching his hands into nervous fists. When he came to the first piece of debris, he observed that it was metallic. The second and third pieces were similar, small pieces of shining junk, but the fourth was a much larger chunk that had what looked like charred, black intestines spilling out of one end.
“Is it Gnirean?” Anaxis wondered.
He tried to put his hand to the bizarre object, but found that it was extremely hot to the touch. He yanked his hand back and cursed, then stuck his fingers in his mouth and started sucking to cool them off. Anaxis continued on past a white-hot fire consuming another piece of the scattered object. The flames had already turned the ground beneath the object into glass.
“That would make a great lens,” Anaxis thought aloud. “Or, would have. No one will ever listen to that idea again.”
The largest piece of the fallen object was in the middle of the debris, with a mass the size of a large boat. As Anaxis came to it, he saw that there were what appeared to be glass portholes on its side, alongside writing in characters he had never seen before. Anaxis approached one of the portholes and looked through. To his complete amazement, he saw inside what looked like the hold of a ship, but full of bizarre apparatus which blinked erratically in the darkness.
“It has to be from Gnirean,” he whispered to himself.
He moved to look into another of the portholes and jumped in fright when he saw a pair of wide eyes staring back at him from the other side. He turned and ran away out of sheer panic, then got ahold of himself and turned back around.
“Stay calm, Anaxis,” he said. “It’s alright. Everything has a rational explanation. Think: just what is going on here?”
He tip-toed through the sand back to the fallen vessel and looked again at the strange face staring out from within it. The face looked much like that of a Valorian, but it was ashen white, and had no hair on its scalp or face whatsoever. Anaxis tapped the glass to see if he could illicit a reaction. There was none; whatever it was that was inside seemed to be dead, or at the very least unresponsive.
Anaxis walked around to the other side of the vessel, and found there a door that was nearly busted off its hinges. Swallowing down his fear, he stuck his boot into the space where the door was broken then pulled back, popping the door open.
He took a deep breath and stuck his head inside the capsule to look around. The blinking lights cast strange shadows across the tight space, off bizarre glass and metallic objects the likes of which Anaxis had never before seen. It was apparent once he could see inside that there were not one, but two beings in the capsule. One was bent over a broken counter and bleeding red blood from its mid-section, the other the first Anaxis had seen, still pressed against the wall and porthol
e glass as if it had been trying to escape when it perished.
Anaxis had the impulse to enter the capsule further, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so alone.
“I need Mills,” he said to himself. “I need Xala.”
He ducked back out of the capsule and took another look around at the crash site.
“I need help with this,” he said. “I’ve got to get help.”
Anaxis ran back over the dunes to the tributary, all the way to the river he should have been following all along, and straight on until morning, when, just before dawn, he saw Ancestor Peak rising in the distance and he knew he was almost home.
A fortuitous passage of rocks sticking up out of the deep river that Anaxis had tumbled into days before carried him across it to the base of the cliff from which he had fallen. Anaxis searched in vain for a way back up the cliff as the sun rose and the shadow he searched in grew smaller. He was wondering how he could ever possibly scale the imposing face before him when a voice from above called his name.
“Anaxis!” it cried. “Anaxis, up here!”
Anaxis couldn’t see whoever was above due to the blinding sunlight pouring down around them.
“Who is it?” Anaxis called back. “I can’t see anything up there!”
“It’s Caraxis!” came the response. “Where’ve you been, brother? We’ve been looking for you for days!”
“I fell, and the river carried me downstream,” Anaxis shouted. “But then I found something in the desert, Caraxis, the most incredible thing!”
“We’re going to get you back up,” Caraxis called. “Hang tight, okay?”
Before the sun had overtaken the shade, a rope was tossed down to Anaxis from the top of the cliff, one with a loop at the end for him to put his feet into. He did so, and then held on tight as he was pulled up the side of the cliff.
At the top, he used his waning strength to take his brother’s hand and get lifted over the edge. There, he found the rest of his family and much of the village waiting.
“Oh, thank goodness!” his mother said as she ran to Anaxis’s side. “We were so worried!”
Legend of Alm -The Valor Saga Pt 1 - Falling Star Page 4
