They emerged out of a long towering tunnel lighted up by glowing lights of blue embedded on cave walls. At the end, it led to a couple of wooden elevators that were being used for hauling up cargo. The rest of tribespeople were hugging the walls and climbing upwards using their claws towards an open gape to aboveground with nothing but baggage on their backs. They had turned feral, half-human and half-beast. Bears, wolves, and scaled snakes. But there were a few who grew iridescent wings out of their backs and flew upwards to the sky with such force it made the ground tremble some more.

River saw U’tu yelling at someone, veins nearly popping from his throat. The wild din of tribespeople hurrying out and the earth-quaking made it hard to hear but his large booming voice carried above all the noise, “We can’t use the transport elevator anymore.” He said. “It will slow us down. Take what you need and go.” His gaze landed on Lei’la before he fell back and returned with two kids under his arms. In the next second, he took a stalwart jump off the ground without having to turn feral and jumped off the wall on his feet, ascending towards aboveground as his powerful jumps multiplied.

:Woah,” River said next to Lei’la’s ear, “Can you do that?”

She grunted, a deep feral sound that had brown hair growing from the pores of her skin. Cute rounded ears perked up, and behind her glasses, the color of her eyes shifted to a full blown black that quickly reminded River of a predatory shark.

“Close your eyes” she said, not waiting for a second more before climbing up the walls with startling speed. The ascension to aboveground had River’s belly dipping yet she kept her eyes shut, hoping it properly staved off her panic. Becoming helpless and limp while someone else dragged her around was a strange unwelcome feeling. It was always her that people came asking for help. This being carried around like some weak baby was pushing her to near panic, a core spirit inside urging her to take charge. An urge that was quickly becoming unbearable and too powerful to repress.

Bits of rocks and sand fell on their shoulders as the earthquake intensified, it only made Lei’la angrier. With arms around her neck, River can sense her growing triple in size as she began bolting past the falling debris with renewed strength. The graceful weaver who danced with such ease and comfort was no more, her beastly bear side had a rugged strength of raw power that each crawl upwards was a clunky heavy step that had chunks of rocks scraping off the walls.

As they reached above ground in the open amber grasslands besides a forest grove, lots more tribespeople followed after them from out the gaping hole.

Dirty looks pinned her down once they arrived. Growling, feral, predatory beasts staring at her with a fury of a thousand suns. They circled around, slowly closing in.

“You can’t hurt her.” Said Lei’la proudly, her half-human and half-bear form rising up to its full towering height that it dwarfed god tribespeople “She is Brumcia’s progeny.”

Someone scoffed, a snow tribespeople hissing “As far as we know, no divinity has bore down their wrath on us for getting rid of behagthis. What’s another progeny? Didn’t you hear? She’ll just make another. Our goddess is infinite.” he said with pride.

Crowds of them cheered on that sentiment when U’tu appeared with a heavy dust of clouds in his wake, joining them in the middle. He grabbed River off Lei’la’s shoulder, dropped her firmly on her feet and in the next second, he pulled Lei’la away with him.

Lei’la didn’t have time to protest. By the time she roared her frustration, both of them were already far away, leaving River alone in the midst of an angry mob whose homes were currently being buried by the shaking earth.

“You will pay for destroying our homes!” A feral half-human half-wolf lunged and slashed her across the chest.

Heat blooming from the cuts where his claws had landed, she took a step back, “I’m sorry.” Said she, trying to raise her voice past the sharpening hurt. The smell of iron was starting to trigger past memories. Ones she would rather not face. “That was never my intention.”

“That was our livelihood!” Another woman charged towards her. Scales on her skin, green-yellowish eyes, moving with hypnotic grace that she couldn’t follow before it was too late. Her sharpened claws slashed a superficial wound at River’s back, the one that had wounds freshly healed. “Years of hardwork, and you took it all away. For what?”

”I-I don’t know what I’m doing.” a choked sound escaped her lips. “I don’t know! I’m searching for a place somewhere where everything makes sense. I keep running to familiar places, to people I know. But they’re actually not! I keep agreeing to anyone who asks for help.”

The same healer children from dark tribe began to hum a dissonant tune. It evoked a weighty force that had her skin pulling apart then together again in a clumsy way that hurt a hell of a lot like being cut open by a heavy-handed surgeon. Once she crashed down to her knees, two feral tribespeople from the sun hacked gashes of wounds down her arms, quickly— mercifully. But the torn open wounds razed with a heat so intense it almost blinded her to pass out.

A soft tune, a brazen sound of disharmony and indifference healed her up again.

She gasped at the barrage of assault in her senses. Pain. A wash of blinding relief. Then pain again. “D-don’t do this please. I can help.”

Snow tribespeople. Dark tribespeople. God tribespeople. They kept purchasing long superficial cuts down her skin, ones that didn’t nick an artery or severe an organ. Dizziness had her near passing out, two women began flanking River, picking her up by the arms, hauling her in the air like a rag doll that left her toes dangling inches above ground.

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El’rra stepped out and dropped an unconscious Maksim across her, a spray of dirt under him upon impact where he landed on the ground. His peaceful face unperturbed. “Behagthis” she spat. “Have always been a thorn on tribespeople.” Behind her, a bellowing chorus of assenting roars rocked thousands of birds off the trees, shooting them up in the sky.

God tribespeople spun to the skies, disappearing into the wake of the forest grove with several sun tribespeople following after them on ground.

“See what you do?” El’rra gritted. “Now we’re out in the open with predators among us.”

She let out a shuddering breath, her skin prickling in tense awareness as dark tribe magic infused her muscles, weaving them together again to a hurried close. “I don’t know who I am. Not to you, not in this universe. Not in anywhere else. I don’t know! But I’m sure as hell not one to save this world. You can’t put that responsibility to one person for god’s sake!”

“You’re a behagthi!” Someone in the crowd accused.

“Isn’t she, though?” El’rra smirked. “What exactly is an outsider but a behagthi plain and simple? Your ilk has forever terrorized tribespeople for centuries! Backsliding us to our knees, progressing us to a future laden with blood and ashes.” A vicious cheer applauded behind her. Then, she spun to face the crowd, raised her arms and clawed at the air.

A visage of a towering monster revealed itself from invisibility into existence. Until now, it was cloaking itself, appearing suddenly in its full terrifying form with mere inches further from the crowd. It had a giant toothy maw, long horns and a huge body shape that could fill up an entire stadium. The skin of it changing colors as if trying to camouflage itself again but it can’t. It was frozen in mid-air, mouth hanging agape with its tongue lolling out. A whimpering sound escaped its throat sounding like it was fighting for control, to free itself. Yet its trapped lizard body remain unmoving, eyes widening in realization.

River recognized the helplessness behind that look when it began to be torn apart, straight down in the middle by some invisible force. Sinew of muscles stretching apart, its blood bursting free from its torn up ligaments.

El’rra turned to face River. “Whatever this world will come to. We will manage.” she said triumphantly, licking the blood off her face “No divinity required.”

An army of god tribespeople broke free from the forest, flying back to the ground to flank either sides of El’rra “You can be free now, River. We don’t need your kind around here. A united tribe means a united front against a cruel world. You don’t have to get it fixed for us. We can handle it ourselves, don’t you think?”

River spotted the god tribespeople, feral with robust wings on their backs. Blood rolled down in rivulets across their cheeks, down their arms as if they were fresh borne out of battle.

A disappointment look flashed in El’rra’s expression at their arrival. Along with a bratty pout as her lashes swept down against her rosy cheeks before it turned to a full-on feral smile. The amber meadows encircling them emanated with high status that El’rra suddenly commanded. “First order of business.” she yelled, her words ringing out across the wide expanse “We can’t have outsiders in our world. It messes up with our balance. And we only have but ourselves to manage it.” Soon as she proclaimed those words, her clawed hand twisted and her fingers snapped loudly, its direction aimed on the ground at Maksim. She was doing what she had done to the monster before. River couldn’t quite believe her eyes. One second Maksim was peaceful, breathing and asleep and whole. And the next he was torn apart inside out.

Fresh hot moisture rolled free across her face, down to her neck and to her shoulders. Gallons of blood showering across her clothes. The sound of bones crushing and spurting red liquid was ringing in her ears. And the smell—

The smell was indescribable. Sulfurous and powerfully familiar that it was no longer in her grips to keep a long-forgotten memory come rippling free of its own accord.

A long dark tunnel under mountains. Getting lost through the maze of it. Barely there light. And hunger.

Stark hunger and thirst.

She remembered how unsteady her feet felt the more steps she took in that dark tunnel, how wobbly her knees had gotten under her weight. And the pungent smell of blood that wasn’t her own.

Long ago, she was merely a searching child taking wild stabs in the dark, finding her way out. Her senses were robbed under that cold, dark mountain and once she stumbled her way out of it for what felt like days, she met the jungle during its season of heavy rain. It had rained for most of the day and it fogged so heavily during the night. The rainwater had swept away the tracks, transformed the terrain, and blew away the landscape as it rained down hard for most of the day, everyday.

How could she have survived? She didn’t know.

How could she have found her way home? She didn’t know. All she remembered was the endless struggle for warmth. Thirst and raving hunger.

She looked down her palms, and remembered how as a child the sheer cold felt like it was seeping down to her bones, freezing her. Robbing the warmth away for what felt like eternity.

The same sheer cold rippled down her spine now, inspiring a familiar ebb of chill to waft through her veins.

It was always like this. It has never gone away since.

It has always been like this. Every day. Growing up. For the rest of her life. The chilling poison ran through her veins, pushing out every goddamned good things out of her life. That’s what her grandfather —Brumcia or the Great World, whatever they are calling themselves. The one parent that was meant to bring her to life in this world, raise her, root her up for a full actualization had instilled such freeze within her. Such poison. The Ylein mountains did more than scar her hopes of sunlight, it molded her to a being of bitter cold who is scared, unsteady, and incredibly insecure.

It was with the greatest hopes she thought therapy would melt it all away. Five years of it. All for what?

Bitterness still singed in her veins, threatening to consume what’s good left of her.

And what is to come.

How could she live like this?

How could she keep on living like this? With her poisoned spirit dampening every spark of life that comes her way.

There was no fixing her.

A foolish heart like hers, it turns out, was only ever good for hopes and dreams. Reality and its truth has come rearing its ugly head. Thread by thread, memory by memory, unravelling her real life as nothing more than a cold, freezing tundra.

Her real value in life, for whatever it’s worth, has always been and always will be a matter of convenience. And even that was taken away from her.