The Run

— Parsa, "The Jimala" —

To anyone with good beastly senses, every hour of the day has its own smell and its own sounds. This time of night, all the little nocturnal creatures had put themselves to bed. The nearly silent wings of predator birds swept to greater heights, returning to their lofty homes. Parsa was in the quiet hour, the cold hour, when the dawn-grackles, sunrise-flowers, and all the early-morning crowd had yet to rise, bloom, or buzz. It was a special time of day to be awake, when he would normally have the entire world to himself. It was a shame the city ruined it.

The great gates of Sand Castle lay before him, torn down and trampled into wreckage. The stonework that once hung the doors tumbled down in ruin like broken teeth in a broken mouth, leaving the entrance dark and gaping. A horrible smell issued from that hole, the breath of a thousand corpses gone to rot.

Phillip seemed to step out of some secret doorway hiding in plain sight to appear next to Parsa. It wasn't just him, but another disciple too. Their type was easy to recognize, now that he'd met a few and had a chance to watch them at work. It wasn't just the stars of Olyon pinned to their chests. They were all utterly confident and yet a little bookish, even thoughtful. If they wanted ham-fisted antics then they had bulwarks to turn to.

"Jimala, meet Brother Montague. He's been keeping an eye on Darkmaw and thinning out her children. He has officially killed more cursed monsters now than anyone in about three hundred years."

"Not that it means anything these days, with Darkmaw in the world. She sets a new definition for monster." Parsa nodded to the new disciple, making his peytral of tirun scale rattle and ring. "Eldest Brother says you're the fastest thing alive. We're counting on you. We'll be riding on your flanks, keeping up as well as we can. Good luck out there."

Phillip started praying, each invocation silent and sudden, wrapping Parsa in layers of enhancements carefully tuned to what he needed and what his body could bear. Parsa drank it in until his body quivered with the need to move, to run, to flash over the desert. The tirun scales vibrated slightly with each new prayer.

Phillip finished with a prayer unlike the others, said aloud and not from scripture. It was more like a personal supplication to the divine. "Our God Olyon, who sees all, watch over this jimala. When he is in darkness, light his way. When he would fall, lift him up. Guard him against despair. Amen."

"Give us a few minutes to set up," Phillip said. "When she comes, don't hesitate. Just run for your life."

Parsa stamped his impatient hooves. The kid liked to prattle on so! He'd given these 'cautions' before. Don't freeze up. Don't hold back unless he was leaving Darkmaw far behind. Keep his courage. Keep his wits. Pray if he needed to. Above all, run for his life.

What did the kid think he'd been doing all this time?

The disciples left in opposite directions and promptly vanished, leaving Parsa at the mouth of the dead city. Now he had to wait.

Parsa hated waiting. He hated being still, and always had. His whole garden was a place of stillness, never moving, never changing. The doyennes were always denying him the chance to run because he might damage something, or he had damaged things in the past and they didn't want him to continue. He's been born with a second form, rare and prized yet taboo to talk about. Unlike other jimala children, he never outgrew his need to run and bound and click his hooves in the air. But his need to be in motion was only the beginning of his troubles. He was too small to be a builder, too gentle for a hunter. Shape-shifters couldn't be caravanners because jimalas were taboo, and the caravans weren't running anymore anyway. Weaving didn't want him because he couldn't sit still. The garden was better for him in theory: at least gardeners got to move around a lot. But only girls could be gardeners, and they never passed the walls except on their daily runs to the compost heap.

So, Parsa tried to be a hunter in spite of his size and gentle nature. Every child learned basic survival skills, but hunters practiced. They spent days and weeks at a time beyond the walls, practicing, and learning their advanced skills. In the desert, Parsa could run all day and never have someone tell him he was a nuisance. But at the first trial, he had … shamed himself. Simple failure would have been forgivable. It was allowed to fail and try again. People could learn and get better. But Parsa had … it was better not to dwell on it. That was the day his father stopped talking to him.

The less said about his father, the better. The great spear of a man was supposed to be the next maul, and he'd wanted a son in his own image. What he got was Parsa. It would have been far better if Parsa had been born an entirely different person, or been born a girl, or would take up a woman's ways and residence with the unmarried women. But pretending to be a girl didn't fit him, just like hunting or sitting still or living inside the walls didn't fit him. Parsa didn't fit anywhere.

As the time passed for him to settle on a profession (and for the garden to settle on a place for him) Parsa began to wander. He would leave for days at a time, nobody could stop him after all, and not return until his provisions ran out. Every return felt less and less like a homecoming and more like he was an interloper at a gathering that didn't know what to do with him. Old friends would greet him but not ask what he'd been up to. His father would scowl at him and then turn away. Parsa would sleep for a few days, raid the ration box, and leave again as soon as Father's sour looks began to hurt.

Once, he was gone for three full weeks. He was finally getting the knack of surviving on his own and, for the first time, he returned home with food on his back instead of an empty sack: spring cactus fruit, a rare spice he knew his father liked, tubers from a tiny oasis he'd discovered, and a chunk of prized obsidian he'd dug up from a ruin. He dumped all the food into the ration box and set the obsidian where it would be seen in the morning.

Parsa crept to his room, intending to sleep, but found someone already there. There was a boy on his sleeping pallet, limp and unconscious to the world. Parsa knew the child to be an orphan from one of the ravaged gardens. He was a chunky lad, muscular, the kind to think with his fists and use his mouth for bragging. A boy in his father's image.

Parsa was too proud to take back the gifts he'd given, even though he could have used them. He didn't even rummage through the food box. He put the empty sack on his back, tightened the straps, and changed to his animal form. He was over the wall in only a few bounds. He hadn't been back since. What was there to go back to?

The bombardment started. Heavy round bullets of rock appeared out of thin air and screamed at the ruined gate. The shots went into the darkness and crashed around in the first, great courtyard beyond. There was no doubt when they had Darkmaw's attention because the city let them know: he could feel her steps trembling the ground beneath him.

Parsa added his voice to the violence and bellowed his challenge to the unseen monster inside. He would show her speed. He would show them all what a runner could do. When the monster didn't show herself, the sling stones continued their assault and Parsa bellowed again, a note that started low and rose higher until it passed normal hearing. Come and get your bait, bitch! Nervous now, eager to launch, he turned quick circles on the broken roadway.

The city screamed at him in return, a thousand trumpet blares adrift of any music, focused through the narrow (for her voice) gate until it slammed into him like the shockwave of a collapsing thunderhead. Rot, bile, and urine smells mingled with something more awful, swamped him in dread malice. His urge to run paused on trembling legs, their high spirits dimmed.

The rock around the great gate ruptured. Some parts collapsed. Most of it flew at him, a rockslide in flight, its scale so deceptively large that he thought it was all moving unnaturally slow at first, then realized those were boulders arcing through the air at him. The void of the entrance was filled with storm-churned dust.

Until it wasn't. The city vomited her up, the deadly parasite grown too large, ejected at any cost to its host. The two pincers came first, tree-reaping scissors held high, and then the arms, then the eight terrible blank eyes above the mouth fully as tall as the city's gate had once been. And around that mouth, bladed arms longer than a man. The legs came next, and then the tail above her head, the poison barb that killed gurantors by the dozen. Living darkness raged around her, fighting against the holy light from the fragments stuck to her body. She was all chaos and destruction and violence, and there was no power on earth equal to her.

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Parsa couldn't move his legs. The harder he tried, the more they wobbled, and she was coming. He felt her eyes on him, so many eyes, and he couldn't move. Worse, his knees buckled.

It was happening again.

Parsa's bowels clinched until he cried out, not in the rapid roughs of a warning signal, or the bellow of a challenge, but the high cry of a child in distress, a wounded and terrified animal. He cried, and the pellets came shooting out of him one after another, scattered on the ground in a tumble until his bowels were empty. So many pellets.

His pain went away with the shit, and Parsa was able to look up at her, at his fate, the fate of all cowards. But, he found he could at least stand on his jellied legs. Maybe someone would remember that he had died on his feet and not lying on the ground. The center of a maelstrom was coming for him and he couldn't face it, not directly, but he could stand up for it.

RUN. The impulse shocked him into motion, and he took the first stammering steps of flight. His legs would move if he let them. The winter moon's yellow arch was blotted out by one of her claws. She wasn't going to bother snapping at him with the oversized pincers: the mouth-arm-blades would get that gory chore. But he was moving now.

RUN. The urge was beating at him now. RUN RUN RUN! Parsa was good and truly moving now, fast enough to keep pace with death incarnate, easily enough to outrun the gate of hell that pursued him, the bloody blades that reached for him. As his legs ran, Parsa's lungs fell into rhythm. As his lungs heaved air into him, his mind cleared. The monster had gorged herself on every meat Calique had to offer, but she wasn't fast enough for him.

RUN OR DIE! That's what the brother should have said, not "Run for your life." He would run or he would die, and Parsa decided he was fine with that. But he was in a tricky place now, between chelicerae the length of greatswords and pincers the size of mountains. They were veering far off-line, which wasn't a problem yet but would become one soon.

Parsa did exactly what his father would most disapprove of: he pronked. He arched his back for two strides, hit all four hooves on the ground simultaneously, and sprang into the air like a calf, only higher, far higher than any jimala had ever pronked before. He flew so high he was looking down at the monster's central eye, the one on top of her head.

Of all her eyes, she had somewhat too many of them, the big one was the scariest. He felt her hate, or hunger, or whatever it was that made her want to destroy every other living thing that wasn't a scorpion, emanating from that wide black circle. It was passing under him, but not because she was running faster. He was slowing down because he was airborne for so long.

But they were two bodies in motion now, and he had the freedom to act. He thought he would land on her back until the stingered tail whipped at him, barb first. Parsa could see the venom sack contracting, readying for the moment her stinger buried itself into warm flesh.

That's convenient, thought Parsa, and spun himself around to meet the massive poisoned spine. When it tried to drive into him, Parsa kicked it with all four feet, and sailed still higher and farther forward.

He was out of her cloud of debris now, shot like a hot comet from the sandstorm raised around her. It didn't matter that her poison splashed him: he was protected. A claw big enough to wreck a grove of trees came up to rend or beat him, but that too was a convenience. Parsa landed on the moving claw, took one small bound along the edge of its rough, curved surface, and pronked again.

He was heading toward his line, and he wasn't just running anymore; he was flying. Just for the sheer joy of it, Parsa clicked his hooves and spread all his legs wide. He called his challenge to the lightening sky, urging on his prey.

Then he was plummeting down, faster than any jimala had ever plummeted and survived. He took the landing on all fours and bounded twice more, in lower arcs, then broke out into an honest run. Darkmaw had gained some distance while he was managing his great drop from the sky. He had brought her close to the line, but it was already time to turn again.

He made the course change, not too sharply lest she bowl him over, and Darkmaw turned to follow him. Her many legs had trouble with the (for her) sharp maneuver and gouged trenches in the earth deep enough to bury armies in. Parsa dared to let her close in a little so as not to lose her. Phillip had warned him the monster would be fast: a large monster had to be, just as a matter of scale. On a normal day he wouldn't have been able to match her.

But today was not a normal day. Today, Parsa was the fastest living thing. Once he had her securely on the path he opened up a little distance between them. He could see the ground gently sloping up in the distance, the hill that grew as disciples dug their pit. His red line and green line were pointing forward, and they grew shorter.

Parsa slowed as he climbed the hill, and he lost crucial distance as Darkmaw closed in on him. The terrifying pincers were looming again, but she was too far behind to use them. When his hooves hit the thin dome of rock over the pit, he knew he'd won. The muffled thunk-thunk-thunk of his hooves turned into proper drumbeats, dadalum-dadalum-dadalum, a clear signal of their arrival that would carry for miles. He put on his last burst of speed, to get across the trap before his quarry's weight collapsed it.

He called again in victory, head high.

Desperate to reach her prey, Darkmaw's mountainous pincers tried to crush him. Their size and weight made them absurd weapons to use against him and she was too far behind to reach, but the impact of those gargantuan claws caved in the dome. All of it, the entire shell of rock that was supporting him, fell away while he was in mid-stride.

When Parsa's hooves should have touched the rock they found loose debris and air instead. He was still moving forward, falling with the shattered rubble of dome, and still moving forward. Parsa got his body turned in time to collide sideways against the pit's curved wall, and fell with the rest of the broken rock into the sixty-meter-deep pit. It bruised him, but he could feel the prayers still working on him.

Darkmaw's terrorizing scream whipped him around in time to see her careening to the edge of the pit while trying to backpedal, but it was too late. Two pairs of legs were already over the edge, and her pincers made her too front-heavy to not fall in. The monster tipped forward until she was hanging upside down, with her back two legs still hooked over the lip of the pit. She hung there for quite a long time while Parsa watched her, wondering what he should do. Her darkness still raged against the fragments' light, warring with each other.

Don't celebrate too soon. That was another one of Phillip's cautions. He had entirely forgotten that one.

"Hey Jimala, are you all right?" Parsa looked up to see Eldest Brother Phillip's face peeking over the lip above him. "Can you move?" Parsa trotted in place to show that yes, he could move. "Great! We're gonna push her in." He disappeared.

They were going to what? Parsa barked his indignation. This time, both Phillip's and Montague's faces showed over the rim.

Phillip shouted again as if there were some kind of confusion. "Is there a problem?"

Parsa spread his legs a little wider and tonked at him, several times. With emphasis.

"What are you going on about?"

"Yeah," joined Montague, "we just watched you sky-dance all over her. We have faith in you!"

"Just stand over there," pointed Taylor, "where she isn't likely to fall on top of you, and then dance on out of there." Then Taylor was gone.

Parsa grumbled at length at the remaining disciple.

"Hey, I know it looks bad from your end, but consider ours: we have to touch her with our hands, near her anus!"

The jimala looked back at Darkmaw, still hanging upside down, nearly in the pit but not quite, obviously trying to back herself up and out. Her legs couldn't find any purchase on the smooth walls, and they were too hard to punch holes into. Parsa couldn't see it from this angle, but the monster anus would be about at ground level. Unwilling to completely concede the point, he grumbled a little more. He was the one in the pit, after all.

"I know, but you can do this. And we're definitely having drinks after this, okay?" Montague waved encouragement as he left.

Parsa noticed that Darkmaw's front pincers didn't quite reach the ground. If they were only a meter longer or the pit a meter shallower she might have had a chance to get out. Just how closely did they measure this thing? Her tail wasn't doing anything, probably because if she brought it forward it would tip her over into the pit.

It wasn't even a minute later that he heard Montague again, "Here she comes!"

It would take time for all of her to fall so instead of standing aside, Parsa decided to stand his ground. He would move as she did, and take whatever advantage he could. They pushed her in surges, shoving her by centimeters at each impact until the very tips of her claws were at the edge. With one final heave, they freed her from the rim and she fell.

It wasn't a natural motion for a scorpion. She landed on her pincers, which weren't meant to hold up her body and collapsed. Her face hit the floor of the pit and she screeched. The tail, that terrible tail, stabbed at the ground. No, it stabbed at him. Her huge eye, the one on top of her head, could absolutely see him and she was still trying to kill him. The idiot creature should have been trying to save its own life instead of trying to eat him. She should at least get her face out of the dirt first, and maybe stand upright.

Parsa dodged the massive stinger twice, backing toward the far end of the pit as he did so. The stinger reached for him without any sense of caution and, sure enough, the whole monster keeled over onto its back in one huge, slow-yet-alarmingly fast sequence of monster segments crashing into the ground. The tail never stopped looking for him the whole time, sweeping back and forth along the floor. But she had no eyes on him now, and Parsa easily put himself to one side where the tail couldn't reach. It didn't have a lot of sideways motion and was unable to reach most of the floor. Before she could think of righting herself, Parsa bounded onto the base of her tail, and from there onto her belly. The feet tried to stab at him but they were far too slow: with two jaunty steps and one serious pronk, he was free of her and the pit. He clicked his front hooves to his back ones, just to show those disciples who had the best style on this hunt, and landed on all fours.

When he called out his victory for the second time, there were a dozen voices to join him. They cheered and rushed him, pulled him away from the edge, patted his shoulders, rubbed his horns for luck, and took other liberties that comrades would be allowed. Phillip cleaned them all with a single prayer, ridding them of Darkmaw's filth and poison. Parsa was happily lost inside the mass of cheering bodies. They swept him downhill, off the little mount into the shelters, where hot food and milk-wine were waiting.

For once in his life, Parsa had done something right.