Chapter 21: the Lunar Fortress
The being opened its eyes. A cold black fog lingers a few feet before it, slowly obscuring the distance as the layers of obstruction stack against the ability of his vision. The ground was laden with blades of unnaturally blue grass, each frosted over with a thin layer of ice. It was cold here. It looks up, a large uniformly textured moon dominates the sky that is devoid of stars, it weakly covering the ground in a soft blanket of its affection. The smell of winter air fills the being’s lungs.
The being blinks, the dim light ceasing and returning. It looks down.
A mass of black fur, some areas scarred, some not. Four clawed paws upon two arms. Four toed feet under its legs. A faint glow from its left paw draws its attention. An orb, just small enough for it to grasp, flickers gently as the obsidian color somehow illuminated the space around him.
Him? That feels... right.
The orb lights up the area in which he can see in the dim glow of pale light, the object providing him with more detail than the moon allowed. The surface is rough and textured as if made from natural stone, yet perfectly spherical and shining as if polished regularly. He must protect this, he feels, but there is something missing...
More. There are more he must protect. Where are the others?
He turned around. The vast field of grass abruptly ending behind him, it giving way to an unforgiving void. Floating in the void, suspended by naught but the black abyss, lay many orbs, each cracked and broken as the shards floated in their suspended position as if propelled by an explosion. They do not glow anymore, unlike his own. Taking a step towards them, the air freezes his blood, his orb’s light sputtered. He retreated backwards from the abyss. Those are not them. He must find them. Protect them. They will otherwise join those in the void. This is all he knows to be true.
He returned to his searching towards the moon and the field before him, a glimmer of white far in the distance drawing his attention. Perhaps there is more to find that way. He steps forward, hesitant and expectant of the sudden chill, but there is none that assaults his body. His orb flickers gently with every step. It is still cold, but it is manageable.
He walks for hours, the odd grass softly crunching beneath his feet with every step, the glimmer of white now replaced by a line on the horizon. Eventually, a break in the monotony. A pillar.
It is not very tall, maybe reaching his waist, but it is as thick as his thigh. The ornately carved stone is of one width until its peak, where upon it resides a divot large enough for his orb. In the depression rest another orb, transparent and dark, merely reflecting the glow of the moon without its own cast from its form. He reached out to touch this new orb, recoiling at the sensation it imparts upon him. It is cold. It is not one he must protect.
Curiously, he touches his own orb to it. The sphere sputters, rapidly cooling in his paw as the heat transfers to the clear one. He hauls his paw away, freeing the connection between the two. He is colder now, shivers begin as his body fights to remain. The transparent sphere glows softly for a moment before extinguishing, cracks and chips slowly take form as it crumbles to dust. There are more. He must find them. He continues towards the glimmer of white in the distance.
More pedestals litter the ground as he walks. Some are chipped and cracked, others are host to an orb like the one he tested before. None are warm. None are like his. The glimmer has become larger, once a speck of light but now a wall of silver, the surface reflecting the moon onto the oddly coloured landscape. A fence of red wood blocked his way forward, projecting as far as his and the moon’s glow would allow him to see. It is not tall, it being only big enough to discourage stray animals from encroaching. He climbed over it easily.
His feet touched the grass on the other side, the warmth of the air increasing slightly in the new zone. It felt nice, but it refused to seep into him to alleviate his chill. The frost that layered the ground until this point had simply stopped at the fence, the steps he took no longer polluting the air with noise. He crouched down, pressing his paw onto the grass. It is not warm, but it is not cold either. He touches his orb tentatively to it, frowning when the scarce warmth does not free him of his shivering. He is not warm, but there is more warmth to be had further. He continued forward.
He now begins to pass many pillars, each holding orbs that do not glow. Each atop pedestals with simple carvings. Few are cracked, more are whole, all are transparent. None are like his. None he must protect. None are warm, yet he touches them all to check. His orb not absorbing their neutral temperature, nor do they absorb what is left of his, though all crack and crumble after the connection. They are neutral, merely existing within the confines of the fence, yet outside the walls. He continued forward.
The wall is larger than the fence, comprised of large silver bricks rather than wooden posts, he would need both paws free and a running start to climb over it. He considered laying his orb down for a moment to test if he even could climb it, but his paw refused to release it without it resting in the other. This is fine. He must protect it, after all.
He inspected the barrier of silver, walking around the perimeter in hopes of an entrance. There were many finely shaped bricks of strange metal, each separated by a clear mortar which allowed him to peer into the inner workings. Gears and cogs flicking in sequence were visible behind the thin strips of transparency, all dyed in a copper hue. A faint ticking sound, muffled by the material between the source and him, rang out with exact timings until it paused. The bricks shifted with a deadened roar of stone screeching against stone. An entire row of the metal wall slid one position over, each brick replacing its neighbour over the span of two seconds. The ticking resumed. He continued to search for an entrance.
Tick. Tick. Shift.
Hours pass again as he traced his orb over the wall, hoping to gain some of the soft neutral temperature to ease his own while he walked. It never accepted the warmth, yet also never grew even colder. Every so often, a row of the wall shifted, the bricks moving to their next position. The ticking resumes.
Tick. Tick. Shift.
He seen a break in the monolithic structure, an archway that extended a paw’s width out from the wall. He approached it, finding a large metal gate that is sparsely composed of round bars to block passage beyond it. The gap between each bar was large, the gate only able to block massive objects or vehicles. He had no issue walking through it. The ticking stops, the gate shifts slightly. The ticking resumes. He would need to find the exit later, once he has the rest, since this will no longer be here.
Tick. Tick. Shift.
Looking away from the shifting walls, he noticed the ground had changed from pale blue grass to carefully aligned flagstone. Few pillars populated the vast expanse of stone, the horizon again showing a white line. It is not the other side of the wall he passed. It looked too different in stature for that to be the case. He was not sure how, just that it did. He approached a pillar.
The orb it holds is not clear. A translucent brown orb glows dimly, matching his own. He touched it. It was... warm. Not very, but warm enough to notice. The pedestal was adorned with many more symbols than the ones outside the walls, some of the embossment had been filled with silver, contrasting against the dull grey. He touched his orb to it, but it did not take any heat. The brown sphere’s glow faded, its heat dissipating. The orb cracked and crumbled. That is okay. It is not one he must protect, and he has learned.
The ticking grew faint as he left the wall behind.
Every pillar now had traces of silver. Some held it within the carvings, some were encroached by silver vines, supporting and cradling the orbs that rested. He touched all of them with his paws to feel the warmth, but left his orb swaying in his other paw. He did not need to protect them, but it made him sad to watch them break.
The second wall drew near, twice if not thrice as large as the previous. Every few rows, there existed a brick with a solid silver outcropping of spherical proportions. They were not like the orbs he had wished warmth from. They were not like his. Not like ones he must find. He ignored them, turning his attention to a new pillar. It was not like the others, it being crafted from copper instead of the stone construction of the rest. Atop it laid a black orb, much like his own, that glowed brightly. Small swirls of yellow and grey spun throughout before submerging and reappearing elsewhere on the surface.
He touched this orb, his paw feeling the strong warmth. He found one. He hesitated, holding his own core over the orb. They touch. He felt some release from the frost. Good. Now he must find the others. He reached down to take the new black sphere. It released from its pedestal without any signs of chipping. He took a few steps away from the pillar before the new orb sputtered, just as his did when he tried to venture into the abyss, it growing colder by the second. In a panic, he replaced the orb onto its copper holder. The light stabilized and a tentative touch a few moments later confirm that it was warming up again. This was a problem.
He would need to bring warmth for them, lest they all sputter and freeze when he brought them somewhere safe. He mentally marked the area, memorizing every item and color around so that he may find this orb again. Perhaps heat may be found further in, along with the others. With one last lingering look, he left the orb and followed the wall to find the next gate.
Tick. Tick. Shift.
It took a long time, the wall being much wider than he had once expected, even with the lack of a reference point. The ticking stopped again, a shift of movement behind him getting his attention. The ticking resumed. Behind him lay the next entrance. He had been moving the wrong direction.
Annoying, but at least he knew the way back to find the black orb. He passed the gate, this one requiring him to fit between tightly spaced bars. The ground changed again, from stone to metal. Pedestals remain fewer still, though each now featured the silver prominently within their design.
Tick. Tick. Shift.
He quickly located a new glowing orb, this one of a soft yellow. Black, orange, and white dots of light danced throughout the sphere, though traces of two other colours he could not recognize appeared in speckles occasionally. This one was warmer to the touch than the last, the pillar being half copper and half silver. This too was an orb he must protect, but like the other, it sputtered quickly once removed. He replaced it with a sigh, noting its location as best he could with the limited land marks. He located the next wall and continued forward. The ticking softened as he walked away.
Tick. Tick. Shift.
An orange glow next the next wall broke the monotony. Another pillar of copper and silver held an orange sphere. It too held flicks of light of varying colours. Unlike the others, it did not sputter as he removed it and his own orb increased in brightness slightly. He was happy. He could protect this one without finding more warmth, but he would need it for the rest. He looked at the wall, holding the new orange orb to his chest, and could not see where the wall ended. He could still see the moon, for it lay directly above him now, but he could not see the top of this wall in its infinite height.
Scraping sounds of steel accompanied the ticking, both amplified to be uncomfortably loud. The ticking did not stop here, the walls did not shift. He followed the edge of the wall, two orbs in paw. The next entrance was large, yet solid. There was no gap for him to work his way past, no top for him to crawl over. He noticed a divot in the centre of the colossal door, it being much like the pillars in shape and size. He held his orb to it with no reaction. He hesitated to place the orange one, but eventually did after a few deep breaths. The ticking stopped. The heavy doors screamed as they opened, he covered his ears to protect them from the sound. It continued for a long time.
The screeching stopped; the doors opened to reveal what must have been miles of thick metal acting as the entrance on either side. He uncovered his ears, the ticking resumed. He continued forward.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The room that the passage had led to was comparatively tiny, small enough that he could easily discern the brickwork across the gap to the other side. He could also easily identify the few pillars that lay around the edges of the room, as well as one near him. The moon still watched him silently from above. He checked the one nearest to him first.
The pedestal was almost completely silver, the trimming of copper betrayed by gaps showing the material underneath. Thin silver tendrils crawled from the ground and wrapped lazily up the structure, converging to line the divot the orb rested upon as well as loosely wrapping over it. The orb was grey with the same peculiar speckles of light flowing within its surface, though none of them as distinct as a single black spot. It glowed brightly, a touch confirming its warmth. He reached out to test if the orb could sustain itself.
A single tendril uncoiled from the pillar, striking at his paw before slowly returning to its position. It wasn’t that fast; he could rip the sphere away easily without getting hurt. The issue was that he didn’t want to risk being unable to put the orb back should it not maintain its heat. He needed to find one more, then he would find heat for them. Then he could take them with him. Then he could protect them. Then they wouldn’t crumble, and they would not turn to the void. He would not let the void take them.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
He lingered on the grey orb before turning to the rest of the large yet small room, him noticing the scarcity of pillars being much starker than he had come to expect. What surprised him most was the ring in the centre that lowered the ground several feet. He could see the steps that he would need to use in order to descend into the ring, but decided to check the pillars around the outside before committing to that.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Two lay side by side, both tightly covered by tendrils and solid silver, but lacking an orb to fit within their holdings. Closer inspection showed that the tendrils were wrapped around where an orb had once been, covering the space as if they still held whatever object they had formed around. The pillars emitted no warmth, no glow. They were of no importance to him, yet the empty slots held his gaze for a moment with a small wash of sadness. Perhaps the orbs that laid here were also in the void, their resting places still awaiting the day they return despite such never coming. He broke away from the pedestals, ignoring the melancholy they invoked within him.
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Tick. Tick. Tick.
Another two pillars lay near the edge of the ring, a cursory glance towards the depths showed a small building with simple wooden doors. He would proceed to the building after, he wished to see the orb this pillar held.
A green orb lay within a loose tangle of silver wires, large cracks and chips were filled and replaced by liquid silver, though the glow was gone. A touch confirmed that it was cold, the tendrils did not move to stop him as he removed it. This orb had failed, despite the efforts of the metal. It crumbled in his paw, the liquid silver dripping to the steel floor below him. The pedestal crumbled with it, tumbling into itself as the material turned to dust. A great feeling of loss and regret permeated throughout him.
Next to the destroyed pillar lay a brown orb atop its own. Like the green one, it had been chipped and filled. Unlike the other, it glowed softly and gave a solid warmth to the air around it. He did not crush this one, for it was one he need not protect and still functioned as it should. He did not remove it, for he felt no desire to. He felt that there was once great sadness, but all had been made well. Repairs has been successful, hope shining as proof. He clutched the orange orb closer to his chest before quietly descending the stairs to the small shack.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
It looked cozy, like a small home you would take someone close to you for a while to escape the noise of the population. He opened the simple door; it swinging open silently on its hinges. The room was empty, save for three pedestals. Each was knit with barbed silver strands, them tightly woven and compacted into every crease of the pillars. Two lay on either side of the centre, the middle pillar being far smaller than any he had come across so far. The heat of the room caused his orbs to almost ignite in brightness. He smiled; he would take one of these with him when he found the last of those he must protect.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
He approached the leftmost orb, deciding at random. Glimmers of blue were visible underneath the net of silver spikes. It was not one of his, so he did not think much of the wrapping that guarded it. He inspected the rightmost soon after, as he would not need to crouch to do so. White barely contrasted the threads that captured it in its place. Dances of colours flowed through it. This was the last of those he must protect. He had found each of them, now he must collect them and bring them to safety. He tried to work a finger under the mesh to dislodge the orb.
A sharp pain radiated throughout his arm as the tendrils wrapped and stabbed his skin. Silver spikes grew and joined the constricting cacophony of suffering. He pulled his arm away from the orb in panic, tripping over his own feet with the force.
The tendrils released him swiftly, coiling around the orb before he could finish his fall. He could not gather this one without risking the rest. It saddened him, but it was for the best. He would leave this one for the void and ensure the rest were protected to the best of his ability. He said a silent prayer for forgiveness as he stood up again. The tendrils around the white orb increased, some spreading out to the ground around it, most thickening the covering until he could no longer see the glow or speckles of colours. He turned his sombre attention to the final orb, the one that lay closer to the ground.
It... it was so very warm. The orbs in his arms almost blinded him with their glow and threatened to burn him before settling to a comfortable temperature. He smiled. He would take this one. It is not one he should protect, but it would make the rest able to leave with him. The pillar itself seemed oddly shaped, coming to a rounded bulge shortly before the divot in which this new tiny orb rested. Many barbed tendrils undulated and pulsed below the cage that was formed around the sphere, the container being far larger than the orb, as if waiting for it to grow to withstand their full embrace.
He walked around the pillar, inspecting it from every angle to find a gap he could reach in through. He found one near the bottom with a claw and leaned over to peer through. The orb itself shifted colours. Not like his own, where dots played throughout, but the entire thing shifted from red to blue to green to purple. The heat from the small gap alone was immense. A firm smile on his face, he reached in and touched the orb, poking it so it would roll out and into his paw as it rolled back towards him.
The ticking stopped. The warmth deadened into a piercing cold. The tendrils stilled from their wanderings.
And then they started.
An explosion of silver whips launched from below him sending splinters of the small building tearing through his body, filling the air with the sound of breaking wood and screaming steel. Each tendril pierced his joints and organs before withdrawing and doing it again, their marks never missed, their assault finite.
He dropped the orange orb in his agony, watching with a horrified expression through the pain as several tendrils diverted their strikes to catch and cover the orb, swallowing it whole while the rest continued the assault and launching him higher and higher in their sustained barrage being conducted by a symphony of chaos.
The whirlwind of silver only ceased when they drove him into a wall outside of the confines of the small shack, six larger tendrils pierced him at various points to pin him to the metal wall as the ripped muscle and sinew lay exposed to the air. His vacant stare, once fixed on the point the orange orb had been taken, now lay beholden to the whips forming a large barrier. His vision blurred, the pale white light that bathed the area shifting to a yellow hue. Below him he could see all of the orbs he must protect be whisked away by a conveyor belt of tendrils; each being swallowed by the forming mass of metal.
He had failed. As soon as he had everything that he needed to take them somewhere safe, he had failed. He closed his eyes, tears running down his face. His vision illuminated red; the eyelids exposed to an intense light. He opened them. Staring back at him, mere inches away, was the moon, now a single yellow eye in place of the once repeating texture. The tall vertical slit of black dwarfed him as it lay dormant before him.
WHY ARE YOU HERE.
The voice without sound far surpassed volume his ears could handle. Blood ran down from his ruptured eardrums, the damage doing nothing to stop the noise.
ANSWER.
More tendrils pierced his legs. His stomach. He screamed silently as more tore away at his lungs yet he did not feel his breath stop. His heart was destroyed and his spine shredded and yet he continued to suffer. He wanted to answer in hope to stop the pain. He wanted to protect his orbs. He wanted to lead them away from the void, lest he lose more to its never-ending hunger.
The attacks stopped, tendrils freezing in an instant. His eyes refocused as his body reeled from the intense agony. Five orbs lay before him, each of different colour and each having speckles flow from one to the others as if spirits dancing between the sections. Those he must protect. Each radiated incredible heat as if they were all their own roaring fire. Each alight like beacons in the night. A cage wrapped over the orbs, lowering it to join a pair of other orbs that he need not protect. The gathering of spheres emitted a blinding light they seared his vision.
THEY ARE PROTECTED.
They... They are protected. He... He need not remove them. He need not find them. He need not suffer to ensure they are free of the void. They need not suffer. His task was rendered moot.
THEY ARE SAFE.
He hung silently on the wall for a few long moments, the moon blinking only once as his weight fell heavier onto the spikes that held him to the wall. Slowly, and with great difficulty, he held his left paw forward, his own orb facing the moon. He had no use for it now. Those he must protect are being protected by far more than he could ever accomplish. He had failed his only objective. If the moon destroyed it now, he need not fail more.
He watched as a silver tendril approached his core; it laying in his paw chipped and cracked, barely held together by his grasp. The moon blinked. In his haze, he felt incredible sadness. Not his own, but of the great silver being before him. The moon closed itself, the silver stands trapping him to the wall removed themselves. He fell hundreds of feet to the ground, the wind whipping past his damaged ears muted by the blood in which they pooled. His last vision was his orb smashing against the ground.
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Jax awoke with a start, the jolt sending aches throughout his body. He was greeted by a dimply lit brown wooden ceiling. Hexagonal holes throughout showcased the late-night storm clouds as rain smacked against the glass. He took several breaths, unable to draw a full lung before a sharp pain forced the air out. He blinked, vision flickering in his right eye but remaining dark in his left. He tried to reach up to feel the area but his arm stopped after a small stretch, it held in place by some restraining device with a small clink. He heard some shuffling, followed by a door closing behind someone as they left the room.
“What did you see?” A voice softly called to his left. He tried and was unable to move his neck through the pain. He did not respond, taking a moment to remember as much as he could.
“I... I was fighting the biped.” He stated shakily, his breath betraying his ability to speak. “I remember fighting him. Then... then I awoke here. Was I victorious?”
“You’re lucky you’re alive.” Nalah spoke dryly, stains of fear showing through her cadence. “You threw a spear at Violet. Joseph had to be hauled off you by four of us.”
Jax drew a laboured breath, barely just under what he could do without aggravating his ribs. Nalah spoke again. “So, what did you see?”
“I told y-”
“No.” She cut him off. “I know that face. You saw something. What was it.” Her voice was tense, as if a weight could only be lifted by the answer he provided.
Jax remained quiet for a moment, taking a second to work out how to respond. “I know not of what you wish to hear of me.”
She sighed, walking over to his right so that he could see her. “I know you saw something. I know because I've gone through it too.” She waited for a response. Once a few seconds passed, she continued. “Long before we met. Long before either of us were military. Long before those bastards destroyed our worlds. I saw a vision too.”
She lowered her head, eyes closed with a grimace as she recalled. “I was kidnapped as a kit, taken off-world to a seedy underbelly of a city. They started my ‘welcome party’ by dosing me. Every day. They fed me bare minimum and kept me high until one day, they didn’t. The withdraw arguably hurt more than any beatings they could have given me. They gave me a choice; either I do what they tell me to do, or they give me just enough to trigger withdraws. Keep me on the edge of agony until I broke.”
She drew her own shuddered breath, her voice cracking as she spoke. “I had no choice. They got me high to take away the pain. Screwed with my senses. I remember flashes. Moments frozen in time. I did horrible things, Jax. I had horrible things done to me. Eight years. I spent eight years living in tiny pockets of existence as bodies piled under my claws and they used me to their hearts content with me unable to process more than the anticipation of the next dose.”
Jax swallowed. He opened his mouth to speak but words wouldn’t come out. Nalah spoke instead.
“I saw myself... Kind of myself. Kind of not. I was in a vast sewer system. Blood replaced the deep water and screams that I didn’t recognize sounded from every direction. I couldn’t see more than my arm worth of distance. Those voices... They spoke of things. Things I have fragments in my mind of doing. Things I have fractions of fractions of in my head. The small snippets of time between hits. Between flickers of lucid thought. I let them drag me into the water. I drowned, but I couldn’t drown. They cut me limb from limb and I let them. Each time I would be thrown from the pools and left to regenerate. Just so they could do it again. Just like I wanted. So that I could suffer for my sins as i bled onto the cold concrete walkways.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Jax offered through a choked voice, fighting again his own physical pain in trying to. Nalah shook her head.
“I thought it was. Even though I couldn’t think beyond accepting simple orders. I thought that I owned the body that did all those terrible things, so I deserved the eternal torment.” She cleared her throat as tears dripped off her fur. “And then I thought about it. I got angry. I screamed and cursed the Hunt Mother for letting everything happen to me. I screamed at those bastards that kidnapped me. Those that drugged me. Those that came to my cell every night to... I demanded vengeance. I prayed for salvation. I wanted someone to take me away. To take all of them to the void. To rid me of the forced marks and the addiction that fuelled them. I wanted to be somewhere safe, to be protected from the evils the word had burdened me with.”
She waited for Jax to speak, but he merely stared at her with a cold sorrow. “A light. In the dark sewers, far below whatever layer of consciousness I was actually operating at, shone a single light. Months or years of wandering the tunnels, I thought I had memorized every dead end. Yet the light illuminated a path I didn’t think was there. I ran. I threw myself towards it as fast as my broken body would let me as the screams surrounded me. As soon I got close, it vanished and reappeared down a new section. I chased it for hours, even when my body gave out, I chased it. Eventually it rested at the base of a ladder. A single wooden torch.”
Jax’s voice cracked as he worked to speak. “The Aspect of Guidance.” Nalah nodded.
“I reached out to the torch. I reached out and... I grabbed a paw. I grabbed Sahari’s paw. She was in the middle of my cell, covering me with a blanket with blood smeared on her fur.” She laughed a mirthless laugh, bordering on manic. “I didn’t ask what happened to everyone else. I knew. She covered my head, carried me in her arms, and got me off that shit-hole planet.”
She raised her head to stare at Jax. “That’s why I'm so void-bent on following her. She is The Torch; Aspect of Guidance. ‘May the faithful be guided to prosperity through the dimmest of paths.’ I know that stuff has long since been discredited... but for me at least... I felt some comfort in embracing a bit of the old religions. Maybe it was my screwed-up brain rationalizing the violence, but I like to think it was the Hunt Mother showing me who I should follow. So, when she said she would take us to a safe place, then got worked up over coming here? I couldn’t say no; it was basically the directions of the goddess herself. An answer to my prayers I uttered in my broken state years ago.”
A knock at the door broke up Jax’s attempt at responding. He could hear Pan’s voice through the wood. “Harrow tells us Jax woke up. Joseph would like to speak to him.”
Nalah flinched, her ears lowering as she glanced at him before opening the door, allowing Pan and the biped to enter the room. “I’ll be waiting outside.” She told Jax before leaving. A soft click of the latch behind her prompted Pan to speak.
“I will be acting as a translator for this discussion. If you wish to direct a question at me personally, please say so, but be warned it will be translated in full for the benefit of Joseph.”
He turned his head slightly to look at them. Pan had one arm in a sling of some kind and Joseph was walking with a crutch, a yellow plant peeked out from under his clothes and was present pretty much everywhere. The biped spoke, Pan following suit with no qualifiers for whom was speaking.
“You didn’t start that fight to win, did you?”
Jax stared at the biped for a second before he remembered to blink. The biped took his silence as a refusal to answer.
“That first spear was supposed to miss, wasn’t it? I just leaned into it at a bad time. That last spear was you wishing for a warrior's death. I’ve spent the past week barely sleeping as I thought about it. The look on your face. The spear hits to the armour well after you knew I was struggling to protect my head. The stabs to the chest with your claws being much shallower than they should have been. You were testing me. At some point, I passed.”
Jax remained silent but broke eye contact to stare at a wall.
“You wanted to protect them. When they all ended up here... When I was able to save them while you were powerless to do so... You wanted to confirm it, didn’t you? You drove everyone else here so that you could see what made me tick. So that you could see if you could trust me to keep them safe. That final spear throw; that was supposed to land in front of me. So that I could finish you off and they wouldn’t be able to complain. So that they could trust me to protect them. So that I could end you before you failed your vow.”
“You speak as if you know, biped.” Jax spat, glaring at him with his only usable eye.
“I do.” Pan’s sombre tone mirrored Joseph’s. “The way your eyes went wide, your ears dropped, your arm twitched. You had a lot of bones broken with basically no time in between them. You had next to no control over that throw. I saw where your eyes were aimed, where you intended it to go. What you held back from doing.” Joseph was the one to break eye contact this time.
Jax started to laugh before his ribs prevented it. “Then why am I laid here like a broken pile of meat and not dead? I ‘attacked’ your kin, did I not? Nalah told me it took four of them to remove you from me.”
Joseph averted his eyes further. “I... I lost it. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her. I don’t remember what happened after I dodged the spear. From what I was told... I’m glad I don’t.” Pan’s voice faltered as her expression tumbled into despair. Joseph looked composed, but it seemed that his guilt weighed heavy on him. “Harrow... Harrow was the one to snap me out of it.”
“Harrow?” Jax asked quietly.
“She threw herself over you to shield you from... Whatever I was trying to do. She told me the horror you felt when the spear slipped. The satisfaction hiding under the adrenaline rush as we fought. The pride you felt when I had all but won. She saved your life. And stopped me from becoming a monster.” A tear fell down both their faces. Jax couldn’t tell for sure, but he felt that both were in sorrow together, rather than one effecting the other.
Jax stared at the ceiling, his mind wrapping logic around the illogical until Pan’s translation broke him out of it. “Jax... I’m sorry. I could have sent Pan to let you know what was going on. I could have extended the olive branch first, so that I wasn’t some entity just holding them from you. In a way, I drove you to what you did. Will... Will you forgive me?”
Jax stared out one of the skylights at the moon staring down at him before it was covered by clouds and streaks of rain. Wordlessly, he gave a soft nod, wincing at the movement.
“Thank you... We think you’re going to be laid up for a while. Harrow offered to bring you your food and help you... yeah. She sync’d up, so if you need to tell me anything, just ask her.” He said as he opened the door.
“Joseph?”
Joseph paused at the door, fiddling with his crutch to turn around. Pan spoke for him. “Yes, Jax?”
“I’m sorry.”
Joseph looked at the floor, but Pan’s perked ears said it all. He nodded before leaving the room.
Jax sighed, hearing the door close and footsteps come to his bed.
“How’d it go?” Nalah asked, her voice tense.
“Better than I dared think. What happened to Pan’s arm?” He turned his head to ask.
“She took the spear for Violet. I don’t know what Joseph was teaching her, but I don’t think anyone here would think of trying to touch the kid with either of them around now.” She admitted with a shake of her head.
Jax nodded again.
“We’re gonna’ have to keep you restrained for a few suns. Mostly to stop you from hauling something you really shouldn’t... He... He really almost killed you.” Her ears drooped as she remembered something.
Jax laughed, ignoring the pain it caused. “I believe that would confirm the two of us holding back.”
Nalah shook her head. “Males. Anyway, I’m going to get some shut eye. Harrow should be around soon to help you do whatever needs doing.” She opened the door, letting herself out. Jax spoke just before it closed behind her.
“The Lunar Fortress.”
Nalah paused, not turning around. “Aspect of the Guardian. ‘May he who shelters behind these walls rejoice, for the moon shall nurture their souls in its glow and shield them within its embrace.’” She chuckled as an invisible burden released itself from her. “Sounds like Sahari held up her end of the vow... Rest well, Jax.” The door closed with a soft thud and a click, leaving him alone with the sound of rain pelting the windows.
“’They are protected, they are safe.’” He mused, allowing himself to drift back to sleep.
He had a simple dream that night, though it remained with him despite its barren nature.
He watched several shards of black glass be mended into a ball, chips and cracks filled by a mercury-like substance. The dream ended when the ball glowed, soft spots of colour dancing under the surface, its warmth melting the frosted blue grass on which it lay. A distant noise filled the otherwise stagnate air.
Tick. Tick. Tick.