Wilderness Untamed

by Butler, J. M.

  She hadn't noticed it as being too bad. Granted, the wind was blowing toward the dragon. And her sense of smell had never been the greatest. There was a recognizable scent of rotted meat, but she'd smelled worse in the vet's office. The broad branches overhead shielded them from any other dragons catching a glimpse as they flew over.

  "It's a young one," AaQar said. "At least relatively."

  "I could lure it off," QueQoa suggested. "It probably wouldn't be opposed to a little chase."

  "A little chase that's just as likely to get its big brothers and sisters involved," Naatos said. "Be ready to move out. Get farther into the trees. It'll take us out of our way, but we can course correct after dark."

  "Where are you going?" Amelia asked, frowning.

  "Down." Naatos transformed into some lithe digging creature with long silver claws and a blunt triangular snout. He then burrowed deep into the ground, slicing through the soil and kicking it back in smooth strokes.

  After a few seconds, he disappeared entirely. The stream of dirt continued for a while longer. Then it was gone. He was gone. His presence remained. Surly. Confident. Annoyed at how nature wasn't cooperating with him. Determined. Her gaze followed the line of his mood as it passed beneath the earth and beyond the posturing dragon.

  Then, all at once, dirt exploded near the tip of the dragon's tail. The young dragon whirled about, huffing and grunting. Another hole opened up farther away with a small plume of dirt. The dragon pounced on that one next. It was now fully turned away from them.

  WroOth tugged her arm and guided her deeper into the forest. She had to spare at least one look back through the trees as the enormous reptile pounced on yet another hole with both paws, looking for all the world like an enormous scaled cat. Its pupils were probably huge. "Is he going to be all right?"

  "Oh yes," WroOth said. "He'll never admit he enjoys this game, but he does. It's been years since anything caught him. Now the real question is how far will we get before something else attacks us."

  Twelve minutes. The answer to WroOth's question was approximately twelve minutes.

  Naatos caught up to them just as they were finishing off an attack by three seven-clawed raptors. Amelia had even managed to get a good few blows in with one of the wood and stone spears. This world was relentless. But as Naatos passed her, he caught hold of her briefly and stole a kiss before returning to lead.

  Brief but intense.

  He made it hard not to think of him.

  Even more challenging once she realized that the doublet he wore still had the cuts from her fingernails. He'd fixed the toggles so he could button it all the way but not that. Her cheeks warmed immediately as something stirred inside her. Was that romantic or just, well… She blinked, realizing she wasn't really sure what it was. Sentimental maybe? Enough to make her smile and blush simultaneously.

  With moments like this, it was easier to hold onto hope that things could get better. Somehow. Some day.

  68

  No More Delays

  They carried on within the treeline, not risking the dragons catching sight of them again. All was more or less ordinary. At least for Ecekom. The sun had started setting again when Amelia heard the first cries. She froze in place, the sound chilling her. QueQoa stumbled, nearly falling on her. "Ho hey," he exclaimed, grabbing her by the shoulders.

  Her mouth had gone dry, her stomach knotting. That screeching sob reminded her of a child trapped in an elevator, separated from her parents. "Unformed one," she whispered hoarsely. Her gaze was pulled to the north. She needed to go.

  When she tried to pull free, QueQoa held her fast. "You shouldn't go that way," he said. "They're only going to hurt you."

  The man had a grip like a vise. But she was already sliding, her mind racing to those sobbing cries. More than one. Another voice. This time—which way was it? Another too. The weeping cut deeper and deeper, shredding her awareness. She was supposed to go. Now. Now!

  "Which way are they?" Naatos loomed in front of her. She hadn't even realized he had moved.

  Her limbs had grown heavy. Her feet didn't want to go any way except toward the voices. The cries itched up and down her spine and through her limbs as some sort of energy tingled and burned through her fingertips. She needed to get to them. They needed her. It was so simple. She pointed, her finger weighed more than her entire body.

  "How far was it the last time?" AaQar asked.

  "Half mile or so," Naatos said. "That might not be the max of her range."

  They were pulling her into a funnel. She wasn't moving; QueQoa held her tight, his hands gripping her shoulders as if she might just vanish. Yet if she closed her eyes, the ground was sliding beneath her feet. The pull intensified. Five voices screamed in her head.

  Opening her eyes, she tried to draw a deeper breath.

  She had to get to them.

  Had to.

  Some sliver of awareness kept her from letting go entirely. If she did—

  Naatos had her hand now and was pulling her along. Away from the voices. Away from the cries. They sobbed all the louder. Angry. Hurt. Confused. Why was she running from them? Why didn't she come and bring them comfort? That's what they wanted. To be heard and soothed.

  "What are we going to do about this?" QueQoa asked. He was right next to her, and yet his voice sounded as if it came from a great distance.

  "At this point, my solution would be to run very fast," WroOth said. "They'll follow us no matter what, but we can at least get to a more defensible location. And we may learn the limits of this one's sensing capacity. If we keep on in this direction and angle a little more that way—" he made a broad sweep of his arm to the right, "then we will reach some rock flats. We might risk the rels then and move out into the open so that we can see them coming."

  "If we don't get away from them soon, I'm going to start running toward them," Amelia said. "Because all I can hear is that they need help. And—" She glanced back over her shoulder. "And that I'm the only one who can help them."

  "Well, you aren't," Naatos responded. "And they don't want you to help them. They want to burn and collapse you. To drive you into a coma or death. They are preying on your compassion and empathy, playing you for a fool. So don't listen."

  Maybe. But something else inside her was waking up. Regardless of what they saw in her mind, the Ki Valo Nakar was awake within her and urging her to fulfill her purpose. It had to be. The words choked her as she tried to force them out. Her consciousness faded the harder she tried to speak them. This was more than compassion. It asserted itself against her, digging talons deep into her mind and urging her to go back and fulfill her purpose. Go… go—go—GO.

  A sharp clattering bark cut through the air. Raptors. Again.

  She blinked. Time had skipped. The raptors were dead, and they were already moving once more. Forming a path beneath the trees and over the short grass in the heat of the fading sun.

  What remained of the day dragged into night. Attack after attack. Screeching and weeping. How many were there? How many souls in torment? How many? How many!

  She was sick of these predators. Sick of the chaos. Sick of the voices clawing at her mind.

  The leaves of the trees grazed her face, but she couldn't quite turn her head. The screams poured into her, constant and unrelenting, never increasing in volume but never decreasing either. And always her feet and mind wanted her to go toward them. Just go.

  They didn't want her help.

  No, they did.

  They did!

  A dark, grey form darted next to Proteus. The bavril reared up, wailing as if he had gone mad. Naatos spun and stabbed the dark form through the heart. A second slid toward Amelia but AaQar had that one down.

  QueQoa thrust his arm out and stepped between her and the third that lunged from the brush. WroOth dealt with that one swiftly.

  Amelia staggered back, her balance wavering. Another unformed one dropped out of the tree. It seized her face.

  She froze in place
, staring into those horrible fly-like eyes as thousands of memories poured into her like water from an exploding pipe. Suja. An architect—

  A hand wrapped around her ankle. Her vision narrowed, pinholing until all that remained were those eyes as memories upon memories poured into her like an open sewer. Agony. Sorrow. Loss. Destruction. A million shades and hues of horror and terror. Choking, she clutched at her throat and chest.

  Just as swiftly it passed. Except she wasn't standing beneath a turquoise-and-white leafed oak any longer. She was near a large stone wall, the camp set up around her, the moon high above, and a bright fire popping and crackling over hickory and oak logs.

  AaQar knelt beside the fire, the rib bone split open and now layered with salt and willow leaves. WroOth and QueQoa slept on opposite sides of the fire.

  She had no memory of them reaching a place for camp, let alone setting up camp. But here they were.

  AaQar tilted his head as she continued to turn. "Is all well, little sister?"

  "Have I been conscious this whole time?" She fidgeted with her sleeve.

  "To my knowledge…" He raised an eyebrow.

  "I don't remember anything that happened after the two unformed ones touched me."

  He motioned for her to join him by the fire. The rib bone had been split down the middle. Salt and a number of willow leaves covered the center.

  "Where's Naatos?"

  "Scouting." AaQar sprinkled salt over the leaves covering the marrow of the bone.

  "Do you need help with this?" She knelt beside the bone. A little busy work might give her something to focus on while she sorted through what had happened. Had she blacked out or had she forgotten? Which of the two was better?

  "No. We're just preparing this so we can make more rels."

  "They don't keep the unformed ones away though." She shivered as she glanced around, then moved onto the log. From the position of the moon, it wasn't midnight yet.

  "No. But it got rather challenging there for a bit. Did you notice the voices getting louder?"

  "No." She ran her hands along her thighs, trying to organize her thoughts.

  "We were attacked by twelve total. They came fast, and they came with only one purpose. To reach you. Three touched you. Naatos carried you for a while. Did that technique with your elmis."

  She paused, realizing after a half second's thought he wasn't referring to what had happened in the tree. Yes, of course. He was right. "I almost forgot he did that the first time."

  "It's a regulating technique. It doesn't really stop or repair the damage so much as help you gain additional space to breathe and sort. How are you feeling?"

  "I'm a mess." She rubbed her forehead. "I just couldn't move. With Tai, I saw him and felt him so clearly. This time—there are so many faces melting in my mind's eye. I know their names. Suja. Anton. Retno. But the details, they're merging. I can't—"

  "The whole point of the attack is to overwhelm you. To drown you in their sorrow and memories. It's best not to think of them if you can. The individual aspects are there, but they are too convoluted for you to easily draw out."

  "I don't think I could if I wanted to." She glanced at him over her hand. "So none of you realized I was—I guess blacked out?"

  "You've been quiet, but you were quiet before as well. When we asked you questions, you answered. And you did everything we expected of you. The fact that you remember none of it concerns me."

  "You and me both." She leaned her chin on her palm. Fatigue tugged at her mind as well as her body, and her limbs still felt as heavy as if barbells had been strapped to her hands and feet. "Maybe it was just… maybe I just can't remember it now."

  "Maybe, but one of the risks of the unformed ones doing this is that it could push you into a comatose state. It might even drive you mad."

  "Have you seen it happen?"

  "No. Not in person. But I know Neyeb can go insane if they take on too many thoughts and feelings of others without properly caring for themselves. We completed many missions and quests with Neyeb over the years, and while it was not against an unformed one, there was one Neyeb who assisted us in the evacuation of a community that had been attacked many times by a cruel and vicious group. Many of the children had nightmares because of what they had seen. Deanimation takes significantly longer to accomplish, so this Neyeb simply took the bad memories. Just plucked them out."

  "That works?" She frowned.

  He nodded. "Oh, it works for those who know how to do it. And it works fast. But the problem is that the person who does it transfers all of their horror and pain to himself. It nearly destroyed him. Sinara sent for him to be brought back at once. Hatet was the only one he'd let near him. She said that by the end, he was barely breathing."

  "Did he—" Ducking her head, she pressed her elmis to her torso. There was comfort in cutting them off from additional sensory input. "Did he survive?"

  "Yes. And he went on to do the same in other places despite what it cost him. You have no such luxury."

  "There must be something Neyeb do to purge their thoughts."

  "I am sure that there is. My concern is that it is not something which a solitary Neyeb can do on her own. And which four Vawtrians can do little to assist in."

  "So am I going to slowly go insane?"

  He continued spreading out the leaves and then straightened. "I do not know even half of what goes on in a Neyeb's mind. Neyeb brains have additional structures. It is possible that there is a safety mechanism within you that will kick in eventually. With Vawtrians, we have this tiny organ no bigger than a toothpick that regulates our shifting and maintains the imprint of our state of rest. It keeps us from remaining shifted too long, and it also ensures that if we are in a bad situation and fall out of our shifted form, then we will return to our state of rest. Perhaps the Neyeb have something like that but never mentioned it."

  She smiled a little. All those layers of emotion flowing off him though he kept his voice as neutral as possible. He didn't believe it. "The Neyeb didn't like writing everything down."

  "No, they did not." His smile faltered as he put his hand over hers. "You're strong, little sister. Stronger than I ever would have guessed you to be. I wish I had more to offer you. So long as we can keep you away from them, you'll be all right."

  "How do you think we're going to do that?"

  "Well, WroOth suggested wrapping you in a blanket every time one attacks or putting you in a box. And Naatos wasn't far from agreeing with him."

  "Would that work?"

  "We're relatively certain that this transference requires skin on skin contact."

  "Are we going to have to go through Dry Deep?"

  "No. This other plan will work."

  "We can't go around it the other direction if this pass fails though?"

  "We are drawing near to its narrowest point. Going around it in any other direction would take us through far more hazardous territory and over a much longer period of time. But Naatos's plan is good. And it is not a long flight over the canyon."

  It sounded like a good plan. But she couldn't believe in it. Something would happen in the canyon. She nodded slowly, not wanting to let the silence in for fear it would bring more memories of the three unformed ones. Or worse still others on their way. "What's in Dry Deep?"

  AaQar continued at his work, his movements swift and smooth, comforting in their efficiency. "Many things. Creatures which can live nowhere else. It is terrifying and strange. Like a sea without any water. Which makes it my least favorite kind of sea."

  Laughing, she shook her head. "I have to admit, I'm terrified to see the oceans here on Ecekom. I can only imagine how many predators there are. Your humpback whales probably eat people, and the most terrifying and horrific depictions of the piranha and barracuda are likely the gold standard for what to expect."

  AaQar smiled. "Our seas are brutal. But they are beautiful. I loved swimming them. There's a comfort in the pressure of the water against your mind and your body. And
if you choose the form of a powerful enough predator, you don't have to worry about anything disturbing you."

  "You're a Melspa Vawtrian, so that means that the water-based forms are your core. Did that make it hard for you to learn the ones that aren't based out of the water?"

  "At first. But mastering any form is challenging. And Naatos and I knew that if we were to survive, then our family had to be flexible in our forms. We all agreed to master a separate form from each of the three types so that we had a better chance to survive."

  "You four have always found ways to survive," she observed, turning her gaze up to the sky. Focusing on anything other than what lurked inside her brought comfort now.

  "It's why we chose the chimera as our cadre emblem."

  These stars were beautiful. Those gentle pastel hues in particular. She continued to stare up at them. "Are there chimeras here on Ecekom?"

  "Oh yes, and they are especially challenging to battle. Fortunately they are—or were—rare. It's hard to say what happened to them now. But a chimera in a state of rest embodies all three of its possible forms at once. It knows how to fight in harmony and as an individual. It's disorienting if one is not used to it. Our shrieking chimeras all knew how to handle the elements and how to fight as a unit and as an individual." His brow furrowed. "I will miss them dearly. They were good people. You would have learned to love them quickly."

  She rested her head on his shoulder. "I'm sure I would." She closed her eyes. "I miss Uncle Joe and Jacinda and her family too. Matthu as well. I don't know what I'd tell any of them about this."

  AaQar chuckled. "Your guardian is not likely to appreciate your family."

  "If you are my family, then he is your family as well."

  He shrugged. "Perhaps."

  "Jacinda too. And all of her family."

  "I'll remember that if we ever make it to Eiram. Perhaps we can send them invitations to join us at the next Festival for the Veskaro and the Rite of the Dragon."

  "Christmas cards as well. Don't forget that. Jacinda's family always used to do that. That and newsletters about what the family did together."