They’d waited until the sun had set on the horizon before they crept out from their small campsite. This time with Luthel by their side, this time with him walking in front and knowing every grain of wet sand in the wasteland. He led them toward the village and, as they got closer, Mel’s stomach sank. She hadn’t known how much she didn’t want to go back there.
Last time, when they’d found out who the people of the wastes were. When Luthel and Hanon had turned their backs to her and the people of the village had kicked her out. It had made a mark on her brain. Something hard-wired that she couldn’t workaround. It told her to not trust Luthel again, to not put her care in people who would surely turn their backs on her once more.
“I get why you’d want to save your son,” Gabs said in the darkness. To Luthel, Mel guessed. “But what I don’t understand is why you wouldn’t save Mira? Why would you work with the void to start with? It has cost you so much.”
Luthel didn’t answer. He kept walking at a quick pace toward the place where the ritual would soon begin.
“Please, could you try to explain it to me? I want to understand why.”
Luthel stopped without a word and Mel had to take a few quick steps in place to make sure she didn’t walk straight into his back. He was turned away from them, but all four were gathered close together now. Only the darkness and the wet sand shifting underneath their feet.
“When you put it like that, like I had a choice, like I could have saved Mira,” Luthel said. “It makes me angry. It makes me frustrated. I bet through your eyes, through someone who grew up sheltered in the valley with lies sewn into your brain from childhood, one would think that. Think that everyone here in the village chose to let Mira die like we’re some cold-blooded killers.”
His shoulders rose to his ears and Mel felt the urge to put a hand on his shoulder, to help him relax. To make things easier for him. But she hesitated and then thought better of it. His shoulders eventually fell on their own with an accompanying sigh.
“I could ask you the same, you know,” he said. “You lived in Aldrion before you came out here to live with us. You knew we were out here, struggling to get by, while you sat sheltered behind those walls, looking down on the wasteland and the people living here. Why didn’t you go beyond the gates before, take food with you and give it to us? Why didn’t you go out here with blankets and clothes? Why didn’t you care about us?”
“We weren’t people in your eyes, were we? We were just void worshipers, bound to live a hard life or conform to your rules inside Aldrion if we wanted to take part in your bounty. There were soldiers visiting us occasionally, and it was always the same. Give us information, and we might give you food. We were animals to be bargained with for an advantage in the war, an advantage we weren’t allowed to give. So we made up stories, false intel, and the food stopped coming. The soldiers stopped bringing smiles when they visited us. Instead, they monitored us from afar, thinking they could get information from us by watching.”
“Is it so different, though? Watching people from afar and letting them starve? Or to sacrifice one of your own people for the greater good? Are we the cold-blooded killers, the void worshipers you always heard about? Or just people struggling to get by and handling it the only way we know how?”
Mel’s mouth went dry, and she opened it to tell Luthel he was totally off base. That he was a killer, someone who’d sacrificed Mira. At least he’d stood by and watched it happen. But the words got stuck in her throat and they didn’t want to come out of her mouth. As if to further confuse her about what was right and wrong, her stomach gave off a loud rumbling.
Luthel was right of one thing, at least. There wasn’t enough food to go around in the wasteland. Nothing juicy or delicious grew in the damp earth and living off of mushrooms and scarce plants had made her cheeks hollow out and her bones jut out from her hips. It wasn’t something she’d like to continue. Not something she’d like to live with for a lifetime.
For Mel, though, it hadn’t seemed as important, not when she knew she would someday get out of here. Back to Aldrion, the dragon forge and red apples. But for Luthel, it wasn’t like that. He didn’t have a future ahead of him that would be different. None of the people living in the wasteland did. This was their life.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think what you’re doing here is right,” Gabs said. “But you’re right, in a way. I haven't thought about the consequences. Perhaps I’ve been naive, but I’m more informed now. And if we manage to save Hanon, I want you to promise us you’ll stop working with the void.”
It was quiet for a beat and a gust of wind dragged the Aldrion blue cloak away from Mel’s head, exposing her neck to the chill air.
Luthel huffed out an exasperated sound from his lips. “I promise. If we save my son, I’ll help you fight the void.”
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
#
Darkness surrounded Mel’s figure as she stood next to Austin, breathing shallow breaths between clenched teeth. She couldn’t relax, not this close to the villagers. Not when she watched Hanon being tied with a rope around a metal bar that was jutting out from the ground. They must have prepared for this ritual beforehand by slamming the bar deep into the earth.
Her stomach twisted and watched Austin’s chest rise and fall next to her. It was hard to look at Hanon’s body. It was bruised and beaten. They’d done that to him. Perhaps because he hadn’t come with them willingly. Perhaps because he hadn’t acted like Mira, honored to be sacrificed to the void.
Around the pile of metal scraps, the villagers formed the semicircle from last time, sitting down on the wet ground and placing lanterns in front of them. Mel saw Luthel slip in with the rest of the villagers, acting like he was still one of them. Like he was okay with sacrificing his own son.
Lutel’s head was lowered to the ground and Mel could only guess it was too hard to watch Hanon tied up and beaten blue before him.
Lenera took her place in front of the semicircle, facing the villagers. She spoke to them, her voice loud, and the wind shifted around Mel.
“Come to us, you great one. Bless us with your endless presence. Look at the offering we’ve placed before your feet.”
The villagers began chanting now. “Come to us.”
Lenera raised her hands to the sky, and her voice took on another note. A loud booming sound emerged from her lips. “You requested more bodies, and we obliged. Take this body as your own and make of it as you please. Fill your army with smokey shadows and we will be your beasts. Together Aldrion will fall by your hand, oh great one. We call on you to come forth. We ask you to reveal the true face of our offering and to deem him worthy of your noble cause. Come to us.”
“Surrender,” the villagers responded.
The chanting had stopped, and an eerie quiet spread over the wasteland. Mel saw Gabs lurking behind a rock on the other side of the ritual, ready to execute their plan at Luthel’s command. They were all waiting for Luthel to call upon them. Mel shifted her stance and glanced over to him, but Luthel sat still, his head still lowered.
Why was he taking so long? Why weren’t they stopping this?
A shadowy mass emerged from nothingness in front of Hanon. He lifted his head, looking at the shapeless, hovering mass of darkness. He looked calm in the face of this. Melissa took a step out from her hiding place. She didn’t want him to face whatever this was alone. But Austin put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head.
It wasn’t time yet, Luthel had still not given them the signal. He wasn’t even watching as the dark mass stretched before Hanon. It moved closer to him and Hanon opened his mouth wide. Mel froze with one foot ready to run up and save him and the other firmly planted in the sand.
The dark mass wrapped around his throat like it would choke him and then it was sucked into Hanon’s mouth, entering him and disappearing. Mel’s jaw fell open, and she closed it almost as hastily, fearing something dark and ominous would snake down her throat if she didn’t.
Hanon’s body writhed against the dark mass inside him at first, but then he stilled, his eyes closed and his lips drawn into a slack shape. Mel’s eyes flew again to Luthel, but still nothing, and then her gaze was drawn to the light. The body that had been Hanon just a second before was now pure light. It blinded her, and she had to shield her eyes toward the painful contrast against the night sky.
She was staring, completely baffled. In her heart she felt a connection so strong it almost lifted her feet and dragged her out from her hiding place toward Hanon. It was like a bond had been established between them and she knew they were one in a way that felt familiar. They were the same somehow.
“Stop! Or I’ll kill her,” Luthel yelled from the ritual circle. “Don’t think I won’t do it, Lenera. Give me back my son or I’ll end her.”
Mel’s eyes dragged away reluctantly from the pure light. Luthel was standing with a rusty blade held against the throat of Lenera’s daughter, Sandra. Her face was alarmed, but as Mel looked over at Lenera, she saw she wasn’t. Lenera’s face was serene and had barely lifted from the light that was Hanon.
“Go ahead,” Lenera said. “You can’t stop this Luthel. You should know better than to defy the void. It demands sacrifice and it will not rest until we give it. You cannot defy a god, you fool.”
Mel saw Luthel’s hands shake, the blade scraping against Sandra's pale skin as she stared with wide eyes at the light. Mel rushed out of her hiding place with Austin behind her and charged forward toward Lenera. The blue light of Austin’s blade shone in her peripheral vision, and she was ready to create a distraction.
At the edge of the ritual, Gabs was moving forward, ready to take her place in this play. Lenera didn’t put up a fight, none of the villagers did and as Mel entered the circle, she knew somehow this wasn’t going to be what they’d expected.
Her eyes adjusted to the light emerging from Luthel and she used her blade to cut him free from the metal bar. He slumped against her and then fell in her arms toward the ground, his body limp and still alight. Mel hovered over him, looking for something to do, to get him to react. Panic gripped her by the throat and she pried his jaws open.
The dark mass emerged from his body, but lingered in the air before it snaked around Mel’s throat. It wasn’t panic gripping her anymore, but something else. The worm slithered around in the back of her skull and she lost control of her limbs. Her jaw fell open and the dark mass slid inside. She swallowed it down, letting it fill her body, not by choice but by force.
Then everything became black. Her eyelids fell closed, and she was floating somewhere. It only lasted a few seconds before everything changed and became light. She felt energy humming inside her. It was playing a note in her bones, vibrating through her entire body and it felt like magic.