The Reward of The Oolyay

by Alden Smith, Liam

  And then, the entirety of his being was changed. He remembered the child standing at the portal. He remembered the old Vesh who had spoken about the Red People, and he felt the ground around him rumbling. His ears recognized these vibrations: the explosions of strategically launched warheads, erupting into an atomic inferno somewhere in the distance. There was no other sound like it, and the crowd shook like Teftek’s vision of life shook. His eyes careened up to the sky and he caught the clouds in his vision, to give him the one final step for his soul to climb until it rested in the cradle of the Oolyay. He knew then that he finally believed and knew what he must do, because he knew what was coming through those clouds.

  He began to laugh slowly at first. It grew to a maniacal chuckle and then elevated in pitch into an insane, howling cackle as through the clouds above burst the immaculate vision of sheer and unadulterated irony. A massive alien ship, as large as three sky-scrapers stacked end to end, barreled toward them. It was a hulking cube of burning metal blasted the cloudy night out from under it. From the sides of the hull screamed torrents of nuclear fire, the products of atomic artillery launched into it as it had approached the planet.

  Teftek imagined thousands of those strange tentacle-masses inside that ship all waiting to ask “will you be my friend?” with the chilling voices of children, if they lived through the painful crash-landing that would soon ensue. The blast would send shock waves of dust and rock through the region as the mountains would be pulverized by this colossal, dying machine, and every being between here and the Dread Gulch would be one with the Nothingness.

  Teftek gazed down at the panicked crowd, already being consumed by the wrath of Oolyayns, as the Hagayalicks had been distracted for just long enough. He turned back toward his own executioner, whose eyes were still glazed over and his jaw still slack as he stared into the sky. Teftek struck at the stomach of the Necrologist and snapped his neck in one fluid motion. He heaved the limp body over his own and sent it tumbling down the steps of the Ulgayir as he watched Hagayalicks race up the old temple to stop him.

  Iquay ducked down as the chaos ensued in the crowd and ripped a confiscated sickle-blade off the side of a Hagayalick, slitting his throat a moment later. Inlojem gripped Iogi and yanked him up under his arm, a bloody sickle-blade appearing in his hand a moment later from Iquay, who had chosen to work with a straight-blade. He nodded his thanks to her and they started to weave through the crowd.

  Teftek lumbered down the steps with the executioner’s massive battle axe in his hands, launching himself over the body he had thrown and into the crowd. He swung it three hundred and sixty degrees, lacerating the bodies of many warriors as he moved. He saw Inlojem further on in the crowd and fought to push through in order to reach them. Projectile weapons fired rounds into the sky and haphazardly sprayed through the crowd while their owners were hacked down by blade-wielders.

  Inlojem and Iquay sliced and cut through the crowd of battered, screaming Hagayalicks who fired on their Oolyayn foes in sheer terror, and all the while doom rumbled louder and louder from above. Iquay led Inlojem into a hidden catacomb entrance within the village’s humble library. Inlojem looked back to see if anyone was following them and saw that a whole squad of Hagayalicks were right on their heels. He slammed the thick wooden library door and scrambled after Iquay with the child in hand.

  Teftek followed close behind the squad of Hagayalicks that burst into the library, his whole form covered in streaming purple blood. He threw himself like a pile-driver into the crowd of Hagayalicks before they made it through the door, only one escaping his vicious slaughter,as his axe ripped through the bodies like loose clay.

  Iquay caught a glance at the Hagayalick behind them and took up Inlojem’s back to fight him. Yet the ground stammered as she moved past Inlojem, and they were all thrown to the ground for a moment. Something huge had hit the surface above them…falling wreckage from the ship. As Iquay made eye contact with the dazed Hagayalick, a massive piece of metal pried open the earth and incinerated his body, blasting chunks of debris in its wake. A piece of the debris tore through Iquay’s stomach and pinned her to the wall. Iogi fell from Inlojem’s grasp and darted down the corridor. Inlojem placed his hand upon the young Necrologist’s face.

  “Go…it’s just around the bend,” she begged.

  “Give me your last words, child-“ Inlojem pleaded beside her. She gripped him and gave him a small bar that hung from her belt.

  “Take this. The transmutation block…you’ll need it to activate…the…portal,” she stuttered, her grasp upon consciousness becoming weak as she struggled to keep life within herself. “When you…get to the…other side…it will be there. Take it back so they don’t…follow.”

  He stared at her with eyes of sadness. “I am just a faithless old Vesh. I'm not even as strong as you, how am I...how is it I who raises the child-“

  “Inlojem…I have never had faith,” she declared in her last moment of breath. He gazed upon her with ultimate understanding. Her grip released and her eyes went blank. Inlojem rose from his moment of weakness and felt the strength of his soul return to him. He felt Quantelenk inside of him, and Pojlim, and Aljefta and every other fallen Vesh who had died at the hands of this cruel world. He pursued the child.

  Teftek came to a massive metal shard that had bored into the ground and split it. The captain crawled atop it to see the sky's light flooding into the catacombs, realizing that the arm of the Hagayalick he was chasing was trapped under it. As he came to the other side, he found Iquay’s body, lifeless and empty. He felt a shudder tear through his bones as he saw her that way, the Vesh who had saved him from a useless end. No Vesh, believer or not, wanted a useless end, and she had delivered onto him…for this one moment in time... faith and purpose.

  Inlojem rounded the bend and there, in front of him, was a simple pyrix arch, lifeless and dull, that seemed to sprout out of the ground. In its side was a small bar-shaped slot for the transmutation block. In front of the portal was something much more menacing; Ilquast, with Iogi struggling in his arms. A sickle-blade curved around the child’s neck.

  “You,” he snapped. “I should have seen your face in my visions. I should have known you would be the one to face me here.

  “Let go of the child,” Inlojem instructed as calmly as possible, “and fight me directly.”

  “No, the child will go with me, and you will start the portal. I know she told you how, that miserable Oolyayn whore,” Inlojem crept toward Ilquast and dropped his blade on the ground. He placed the transmutation block into the slot on the side of the arch, and the portal brimmed to life with a spectacle of fizzing white-magenta light that filled the archway. Black arches generated arcs of electricity shot out from inside it and snapped at the walls of the room. Inlojem stood with his back to the portal, as Ilquast pressed the child’s throat with his blade.

  “Step aside, old fool,” he demanded.

  “So you may slit this child’s throat and leave?” Inlojem asked.

  “I will slit his throat and then I will slit...“ before his sentence could be finished, a massive axe blade tore his shoulder in two as Teftek slammed himself down upon the young Hagayalick. An agonizing scream rolled out of Ilquast. Iogi slipped below Ilquast’s arms and ran as Ilquast’s grip on the sickle blade loosened for a second. In final retaliation, the Stranger plunged the sickle blade backward into Teftek’s stomach. Teftek felt the blade curl through him and pass next to his spinal column. He yanked back on the axe and let Ilquast’s body fall, and then unsheathed the sickle blade from his stomach. Ilquast fell to the floor and writhed in shock and pain, before Teftek stepped on his neck and ended his life. Teftek looked up from his conquest and realized that, staring back at him was the vision he had seen before.

  “Come on, child! Come through the portal!” Inlojem commanded him, beckoning his hand toward the illuminated archway. Teftek rose to meet him, his mouth dripping with purple blood as he staggered toward the portal. He went to take Inloje
m’s hand, but Hagayalick soldiers were already rounding the corner toward the room and racing toward the portal. Teftek instinctively fought them off, his last remaining strength going into battle.

  “Go!” he cried as Inlojem watched him, remorse overwhelming his soul. He felt Iogi tug at his hand and pull him toward the portal. The Hagayalicks would kill Teftek and get through the portal if they did not leave. “Go, old Vesh! Go!” Teftek yelled in fury as he clotheslined another Hagayalick charging for the portal. Inlojem took two steps and disappeared. Teftek felt several blades pierce his skin and bring him to his knees as his Hagayalick executors raised the blades high above him. Teftek laughed as the chasm began to rumble and sway.

  The light from the portal disappeared and the arch was dormant, as if it had never been lit at all. The small transmutation block was missing from its original position. As Teftek’s consciousness began to fade, he felt the ground begin to throw itself about and the rocks rip from their foundations. He saw the cleansing fire sweep through the catacombs and everything closed in on him as the falling alien ship finally made contact and blasted the mountainside into dust.

  ***

  Inlojem’s eyes looked onto an expansive field of grass that led up to a flat platform made from sandstone. Around the portal, which was also made of sandstone on this side, stood several beings, humanoid in form, but red in color. They all wore well-trimmed, neatly tailored baggy clothing, with headbands and bracelets draped casually off of their slender wrists and smooth white-haired heads. A young female smiled at Inlojem as he stood, shocked on the other side of the portal.

  “The Red People!” Iogi beamed, as his face emerged from the light. Inlojem removed the Transmutation Block from the portal, and almost instinctively gave it to the young female who smiled at him.

  “Do not fear…this came from our land. We have been waiting for you,” disclosed the round headed red female whose eyes were a glowing yellow Inlojem had never beheld. Inlojem stared back toward the empty arch, and saw that behind it another field of grass expanded endlessly. On the horizon were some tan ziggurats, not entirely different from Vesh structures but built in a bright and welcoming quality. He thought about Teftek, who met his end at this very second, and about Iquay, whose body waited for extradition from this life.

  Iogi ran around in circles as Inlojem stood in shock, his unbroken gaze consuming the strange details of his new life. Iogi chanted “The Red People!” loudly and excitedly as he ran around the serene, smiling cadre rosy skinned greeters. They laughed with him and tried to meet his eyes, eager to see the joy of a child.

  Inlojem looked back toward the portal. Blank and hollow, it was a hollow threshold that only showed the image of this planet. He stared through it, his eyes widened and fixed on the shallow groove where the transmutation block had been. Teftek had been within Inlojem’s grasp, but had slipped away at the last instant. Now, only the old Vesh lived. He had abandoned the only true convert he had ever known, to die so he would live, still evicted from his faith.

  A dark red hand, slender but tough, touched Inlojem’s thick wrists. His arm jutted back and his head swiveled to see her face: a stocky thick boned female with blazing yellow fires inside of her eye sockets. Her half shaven head boasted braided locks of white hair from one side which ascended into a mohawk. She persisted with her hands and wrapped one around Inlojem’s elbow, the other around his hand.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she cooed. “It’s alright. You’re alive.” Inlojem shakily gripped her for support as he felt his knees buckle slightly, his mouth standing open aghast and confused. She moved him to the small steps leading onto the flat stone crest where the portal stood, and they sat down together. “Is that your child? She asked, pointing toward Iogi who was telling a tall long haired male about the things that had happened to him.

  “What? No,” Inlojem replied, recognizing the language and understanding that life was still moving around him. “No, no…that…that is the prophet, Iogi.” Her smile dropped a little as she discerned the seriousness of his voice and her eyes followed the innocent seeming child who bounced with energy. “He led me to this place. No one…no one would believe him about the Red People. But here you are.

  “He knew he would see us?” She inquired, her voice rising with interest.

  “Yes,” Inlojem replied ponderously.

  “We haven’t met any others like us, with bodies and minds like us- like you,in our time on this world. We’ve met others…from the portals that is. Even from the stars. We’re just mastering how to get off of this world, but we haven’t met any others that were like us” she explained. Her sun colored corneas studied his face as Iogi walked toward the ziggurats with several of her colleagues. “Would you like to go with him?”

  “Maybe…maybe in a little while,” Inlojem intoned and clasped her hand softly between both of his own. He studied the soft red skin with no abrasions or slashes. It had small callouses from farming on the palms, and healed scars from tending to bushes and vines. He felt the jagged, scorched lines of his mouth arch into a small smirk. “I remember when I was a little child, I was sitting in my father’s arms watching a cooking fire blaze in the middle of my village. They were preparing…preparing for something. I don’t remember what festival it was. There was a Kyrun tied to a stake outside of our home and my father showed it to me. He touched my hand to its skin and I felt the leathery texture of it and the small patches of fur between my fingers. It was a child like I was. It was lost to the world and my father had taken it. He told me that it would be good to eat in a few cycles of the moon.” Inlojem breathed deeply and his eyes tracked the small patches of clouds that skimmed the surface of the atmosphere. “Then, later…my village was raided and destroyed. The Kyrun escaped.” She watched the old Vesh with her head tilted to the side and her eyes narrowed from the strangeness of his story. When she read into him she felt the sorrowful energy wafting off of him, and she moved her hands and drew in closer to him to rub her arms against his.

  “My people are called The Ixotil,” she replied, as she wrapped her other hand into his, clutching his large calloused hands tightly. “My name is Tixqu.”

  “Mine are The Vesh,” he responded in kind. “I am Inlojem.” She watched tears stream down silently from his dead gray eyes but dared not move to wipe them off as they were blotted up by his furry patched garments. She noticed his sickle-blade, smeared with purple blood still wrapped in its sheath. Small gashes and lacerations were now very clear across his arms and his legs, mauve smears appearing on her arms pressed up against his. She knew Ixotil who lived several centuries and none looked as old and battered as this Vesh named Inlojem. Her face leaned in very close to his and in almost a whisper she asked,

  “What happened to you on the other side of the pillars?”

  Inlojem’s face grew very sullen, and he pressed his tough old fingers against his eyes, rubbing off the liquid emotions. He closed his eyes and composed himself, keeping his head down until he was prepared to answer. When he looked back at her, it was as if he had transformed back into the Necrologist. He had accepted that death had not come for him and with this understanding he replied,

  “We were rewarded.”