That Orb, I was surprised I didn’t notice it when we entered his office, because I would never forget its sight, since Hidram had asked me to retrieve it, and Vishan had almost killed me to steal it.
“My client wants the product as soon as possible,” Hidram said while reading papers of reports and bills, “do you remember the way to Steretta?”
“Yes, of course,” I answered, adjusting the gloves over my hands.
“Perfect, then. Off you go, son, I expect your return by the end of the day.” My eyes rolled as I stayed silent and began the eight-hour walk I was destined to.
Steretta had been completely abandoned a few years prior to my first trainings, so for a couple of decades. The Kendarians traveled a lot between these two cities, Steretta’s crops being able to grow different species of vegetables Kendara’s soils couldn’t. Humans and Kleits lived in the village for years before the genocide began, and before the earth dried drastically over one night. The inhabitants stayed a bit afterwards, the capitol providing them with food and supplies, but it became rapidly impossible to manage the multiple travels a day, when even Kendarians were struggling. Some of them decided they would join one of the only cities remaining, and others finished their lives inside their forever homes.
Eight hours turned into four because of my almost inhuman capacities, hence Hidram expecting me to complete my mission in only one day. The road was clear, the sun barely out and the night slightly cold, which was totally relative to the unbearable heat at the sun’s zenith. Cold meant mild. And hot meant excruciating. I already thought the world wouldn’t last long if the weather was worsening each year at the time.
The village entrance was lower than where we usually were walking on. A narrow sloping trailing led there, and before climbing it down, an old display unit was still presenting the city for the foreigners. Since Steretta was situated below the usual level, it was mostly used as a mine for precious stones, but also for curious plants that were able to grow under very precise temperature and pressure.
Even if its location was lower, the climate remained suffocating and incredibly warm compared to the planet’s necessity. The panoramic view of the village carved an even deeper hole inside my chest, seeing the decline of every neighboring metropolis opened my aching heart. Every house was slowly getting buried in the sand, the dust from above falling endlessly over it with all the storms that triggered the movements. Soon, there wouldn’t be any Steretta left. And Hidram counted on claiming the orb before that would happen.
The architecture was divergent from the endless buildings and skyscrapers of the capitol. All along the hill, small houses and cottages layered the village and went down until several miles deep. Each residence had their own little garden, now only discernible from the multiple stones piled up onto one another, forming a circular low wall. Where grass had grown, where flowers had bloomed, where water had streamed, utter dryness prevailed. And the foundations of the homes eroded each time the dust flooded throughout the length of the interstices.
The colors had deteriorated with time, every nuance converging to ochre, white and gray. The ink from the presentation board had disappeared under a thick layer of dust, and the usual sound of the bells attached to the cattle’s neck moved on to the profound silence Zelian was now accustomed to.
Hidram mostly detailed my missions whenever he had enough information over the subject. Which places I should cross, who I should encounter, where I should wait or what I should do. I had my share of initiative, but he insisted on giving me every prerogative possible. This time, I had been sent with a quick description of the product, and the location. I had the whole village to search.
The light wind tousled my curled hair, liberating some strands from the high bun I tangled in a hurry while leaving the frontiers of the main city. I became quickly sweaty, covered in sand and dust, uneased inside my tight clothes that shrunk with my perspiration. After a loud exhale, I initiated the descent, already breaking my neck from looking both sides and focusing my vision over specific microscopic elements on the ground. Not that I would think the Orb would be stupidly displayed in the middle of Steretta, simply placed among two piles of dirt, but to verify I was totally alone, and not surrounded with lurking monsters.
When a city was deserted, it was extremely common for the monsters to search for a resting place, or feed on the decomposing bodies. From insects to any mutants, they could easily crowd a place like this one in the shadows, to wait for another living form to lose themselves, to seek a safe habitation to sleep into, anything the monsters did first.
I withdrew my backpack from my shoulders and grabbed a small device used to uncover any magical object or a spiritually impregnated one. Round, with a black screen in the middle that would lighten up once close to such an object, it could easily be hidden between fingers and handled with the palm. As I started checking the perimeter, I sensed something was off.
I was almost at the very bottom when the gadget reacted lightly. Only a shy red light vibrated inside, but I still sighted from relief after hours and hours of search. Especially as I heard cracking noises and felt movements multiple times, even if I kept my daggers close to reach and concentrated enough my head was deeply hurting. But although I ogled every corner, took secured dispositions each time I entered an abandoned home, nothing jumped or appeared in front of my eyes. I couldn’t scent a particular odor, feel a specific heat, or hear heartbeats in the darkness. Either I was becoming paranoid, inhaled some gas that disturbed my senses despite my mask, or someone was hiding so perfectly, I could only rely on my instinct. And the latter was convinced I was being followed.
The device covered in my pocket to avoid the light betraying my position, I advanced inside a shattered property that stayed up only by miracle. The sun was fully out, and its rays penetrated the windows, clearing my surroundings ever so slightly, I didn’t need more to have a perfect idea of each detail. I knew it was inside this house, whatever it was, and I was prepared to shred it into pieces.
With a subtle and discreet movement, I unsheathed one of my weapons and grabbed it firmly by the shaft, the blade horizontal and along my forearm. My other hand close to the ground, my knees bent, my feet grounded, I circled what must have been a living room in the past, walking around the rest of a wooden unit attacked by germs, worms and insects that could survive the heat. Longing the wall and crossing the whole room to reach the decrepit kitchen, I started hearing breathings. Human breathings. For some reason, I guessed who it was. Our paths had crossed a few times already, even more so in the last week. I knew he was about to attack soon. One second later, his voice emerged, “The Weapon.”
I couldn’t get used to the nickname. People around had been calling me this and I hated every meaning it implied. “Did you follow me here?” the voice asked.
“I didn’t.” I replied, the man exposing himself to the light and revealing his identity. Vishan was standing, a scarf around the nose, light but powerful gears worn, and a large rifle strapped over his shoulders. “You came alone? How surprising.”
“You shouldn’t be gloating, Hidramma. You’re still a kid. I could destroy you in a heartbeat.” he taunted.
“I beg to differ. What are you here for? Why didn’t you ask your clowns to do the work?”
“You know I would have loved talking to you, but I have better things to do.”
As he launched for the door I used to enter, we turned around each other, switching places, and we kept facing one another while we both moved backwards. But Vishan stopped abruptly, and his gaze shifted down, around my legs. I only had the time to notice it was the device in my pocket, that became completely red, bright enough to pierce the fabric of my pants, before the Jalyon’s chief sprinted in my direction, and I ran up the stairs, right next to the door after the room besides the kitchen.
I wasn’t completely sure it was upstairs, but as I distanced Vishan, I observed the light becoming brighter and brighter navigating through the level. I opened a few doors, tried to barricade the path as Vishan approached, his expression furious, his hands trembling, and his teeth bared. “Stay away from this, Hidramma,” he shouted, “you have no idea what you stepped into.”
“Don’t force me to fight you. I would have to announce to your pack that they lost their big dog.” Instead of answering, he growled and worked twice as hard tearing the place apart, cutting his way through with his long sword, splintering the cloths, the wood, the glass, anything that was in his path.
My foot burst open another door and I froze. I sensed it. In my pocket with the device, in my guts, in my head. It was almost shouting. Calling. Pleading. My immobility didn’t last more than two seconds but Vishan was already finding a passage as I could hear his grunt louder and louder. I stepped inside the room, closed the door, moved a large panel of wood to block the knob and started exploring. “Nothing will stop me, Hidramma,” Vishan screamed on the other side, banging his fists and weapons over the door.
“I’m watching you try, go ahead.” I answered, my eyes fixed on the ground. Fortunately, the place was barely furnished anymore, and a large round ball rolled away under a pile of dirt when my foot hit it. I drew out my arm, plunged my hand inside the heap and extracted the orb, a shining silver fluid floating inside. And at the same moment, Vishan destroyed the door in two. “Give me that,” he ordered once his stare fell on the object inside my hand. “Nolis. Give it to me.”
“Why?” My brows frowned and my own eyes troubled looking any other way.
“If you don’t obey, I'll have to steal it from your cold hands.”
“And if you answer, you have a chance to keep it without a fight.” I explained. And I wasn’t bluffing. Hidram yelled at me several times when I returned home without the price, because I had decided along the way it wasn’t worth the trouble. Because I considered we would have been in great danger, we would have to mingle with curious families, I would die in the battlefield, or we wouldn’t get paid. Many scenarios unrolled badly, and I tried so many times to save the ship before it sank. If Vishan defended himself with a great explanation, I could have very well surrendered the Orb. But seeing him so desperate only convinced me this was way too important to give up.
“I won’t tell you a thing.” He finally answered.
“Then you lost. Get out of my way.”
He jumped.
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I had one second to slither the orb inside one of my pockets and one more to place my hands in a defense stance before Vishan tackled me.
We were on the ground, throwing punches, my bag weighting my body greatly, but I couldn’t let go of the orb. I had to ask Hidram about its properties, but if the Jalyon’s chief wanted it, and came himself to retrieve it, it could probably help him ascend inside the hierarchy. And that wasn’t an option.
My dagger brushed past his cheek, and he used his fists, since we were too close to attack with his sword. His other weapon, the rifle, was firmly strapped to his shoulders, and I kept him near on purpose. But soon, I would have to run. I would have to escape and sprint until Kendara. If I didn’t knock him out, he would follow me and use his shooter to kill me on sight once we would be out of Steretta.
I grabbed a handful of dust and shoved it into his eyes. With all my force, I pushed him away from me, his back cracking over the opposite wall and I took a sprint outside the room while he was still screaming and rubbing his face.
I thought it would be enough for me to take some distance but once I reached the stairs, I heard his steps behind. And with a quick glance back, I saw him pushing old and rotten furniture down the stairs with me. I swore, and leaped all the steps, but gravity was faster, and the obstacles piled up against my back as I was catching myself on my knees and hands. Luckily enough, none of it stunned me but it helped Vishan recover his lateness. And he was the one pulling me back up.
His hand over my nape pulled my head on his legs, that shattered my nose enough to make it bleed. I saw my dagger a few feet away, I had dropped it when I jumped. If I could reach it, it would take little moves to handle him. But right now, he had my whole body for him to play with. And I didn’t like being used for fun.
With a swift movement, I turned around, and forced my behind on him to lift his body over my head, fiercely collapsing his body on the ground. The air escaped from his lungs and his frowned brows translated his pain. “Let me go, Vishan. We don’t need to go this far.” I pleaded, still aiming for the exit after snatching my dagger on the floor.
He only laughed, pivoted on his flank and drew out his rifle, already pointing at me. I hid outside the house, back on the wall, before a bullet lodged itself right next to my ear.
The latter hissed and I shook my head as I continued running, climbing up the whole way out of Steretta. Vishan kept shooting as I managed to hide behind a wall, a huge rock or a tremendous amount of sand. But it wasn’t safe enough, and I couldn’t let him have the orb. With my index and my thumb, I picked a throwing knife and waited for Vishan to come a little bit closer. The silence only mingled with my heavy breathing, and I focused deeply to control it. I would need my utmost concentration to aim perfectly.
In five seconds, it was done. I stood up, threw my arm back, waited for Vishan to point his rifle at me and fire the knife right inside the cannon, which peeled like a ripe fruit. The blade continued its course along the barrel, into the chamber and stopped right before the safety, where Vishan had his eye. He backed his head away, froze a moment to realize, then threw aside the destroyed weapon and locked our stares before he raced in my direction.
The difference between me and him was that I couldn’t kill him. Threat and menace were a thing, but murder was something else completely. Within our society, killing someone as influential and powerful as the head of the Jalyons was equivalent to pinning a target right on one’s own skull. But I was only a kid. Hidram was the Weapon’s father, everybody knew I was all muscles and mind, Vishan could have ended me without an ounce of regret or fear of payback. The Collector wouldn’t take matters into his own hands to avenge the loss of his son. He would cry, maybe, but he would need another weapon soon if he didn’t want to lose his credibility. Without me in the picture, Vishan would dominate even more.
The daggers and knives organized around my belt vibrated as I thought of my options. Leaving the place would discover me and would help Vishan targeting me even easier. I would be out in the open, a human among a desert of dust with the gigantic buildings of Kendara visible on the horizon.
I had other gadgets, but they were all inside the bag, and by the time I would kneel to take them out, Vishan would have shredded my skin into pans of nothing. He was getting closer and closer, and I understood, right before we stumbled again into the ground, that he planned on ending me all the way through.
A flash of memories veiled my vision, and I remembered a sleep spray I had slid into the very low emplacement of my cargo pants, almost next to my ankle. The problem was now Vishan beating my face, my stomach and my spine up. His kicks were strong, so strong that I couldn’t breathe properly, that I was contracting every muscle in my body to try and soften the blows. Blood was drooling out of my mouth and nose and probably my head too because I felt it run down my temple and into my eye.
I needed to be quick, and I needed my members to answer fast before he would crack a vertebra and leave me paraplegic. He was using his hands and fists and when he stood up to start beating me with his feet, I took the opportunity to reach for the spray and sprayed it across his eyes, nostrils and mouth. A surprised gasp left his throat before he dropped to his knees again and squinted my neck with his hands, leaving me no choice than to try to grab them, and lose the spray that rolled out of my grasp.
The amount had been enough, I had used it several times in the past to know it could have knocked a whale out, but Vishan was strong. Very strong. And by the time the product was fogging his thoughts, he was still strangling me to the point where I was seeing stars.
I only noticed his eyes rolling back into his head when everything became pitch black, and I fell into unconsciousness. I would have been dead if he had gripped a second longer, but he only suffocated me enough to faint. By the time I woke up, he was gone, the orb with him and I had no other solutions than to go back home. The fact that he woke up from the gas sooner than I did made me internally swear I would never work against the Jalyons once more.
My hands removed the band in my hair and combed it so they wouldn’t tingle my face, the sweat keeping them away from my sight. I then engaged in the eight-hour walk back to Kendara, that turned into ten, with my broken nose, my bleeding scalp, my aching body, but without the orb.
When I had arrived back at the cottage, Hidram didn’t even say a thing. Rumors should have had come all the way to his ears that Vishan found the orb and that they were now in the hands of the Jalyons. He saw my shape, all the blood I lost, and let me climb up the stairs to clean myself. We never talked about it, I'd never demanded any explanation, I was only glad Vishan didn’t use one of my own daggers to break my skull in two.
Now that the memory floated back into my consciousness, I had to admit, I had felt the same about the Orb than in contact with the two stones. That feeling of belonging to a greater purpose than anything I've experienced before. Although I had little involvement with magic and powers due to my incapacity to create it, I had instincts, perception, sensitivity. The more I stayed close to the different elements, the more I was convinced of my part on this mission. The first one I was admitting to myself. And I hoped, the last.
“We have a problem,” I finally said, watching the amber eyes at the top of the Door, that rendered the gaze. Inside, only curiosity, and fatigue mingled.
Samay raised an eyebrow, the sound of the stones shifting on the walls echoed with our breaths. “Why is that?”
Kâl intervened and answered for me. “We are stuck here.”
“Where is here?” Samay demanded, more and more confused.
“Maorat.” She continued. The Lord took a second to think.
“This name doesn’t sound familiar… but my memories are corrupted. What year is this?”
Kâl and I exchanged a gaze. We had no idea. “Year?” She murmured, realizing for the first time that we had stopped counting the years that passed, on Kendara. But the two sisters were still aware because they looked at us, figured out our incapacity to respond and did it for us. “Fifteen thousand and three, Lord.”
Our jaws dropped. Even Samay’s eyes widened expansively and the walls changed positions, forming a hole where his mouth might have been. “I beg you pardon?”
“Yes. Ten thousand years since our home has been trapped inside Maorat. We’ve forgotten the reasons but we never stopped counting.”
We all kept quiet for a moment, as the weight of the knowledge drowned us six feet under. On Zelian, the spirit of every inhabitants had always been to survive and see another day. We had so much troubles in our lives, so much to think about in order to remain alive, the years, the days, the weeks, everything disappeared. Mornings, afternoons and nights remained. And we hoped to have enough food, enough water, enough bullets to seize the next sunrise.
“I need to think.” Samay whispered and we all waited, stared. Kâl approached me and stayed close, our presence reassuring to each other, grounding us to the floor, to the moment, as all the news we were learning seemed to throw us in a terrifying unknown. She crossed her arms above her chest, and grabbed herself, feeling cold. I stepped toward her, seeking for her warmth as well. “Zelian, you said?” He spoke again.
“Yes.”
“And where would my Orb be?” He added to my intention. I inhaled deeply.
“The capitol. Kendara.”
“Kendara is not the…” he started, but stopped himself, as he remembered how much time had passed. How much had changed.
Kâl held herself vigorously and talked. “It’s the last city standing.”
The Door moved and Samay nodded. “Very well. I’ll need time to focus my powers to transport you there.”
“Who are you?” I immediately addressed, as I could feel the depth of his magic course through my unwilling veins. The whole room was filled with his capacities and the strength of them hadn’t stopped suffocating me. As a hand squeezing my throat.
Min and Geia struck me a death stare, and I sensed the shiver licking up my spine. “Do not speak this way to our Lord.”
“What Lord?” I insisted.
“The Lord of Time himself.”
Samay emitted a soft chuckle, his eyes still closed, his mind still concentrating. “So many years without hearing that name. I missed it.”
“Can you rewind time?” Kâl suddenly queried, stepping out of my zone, and closer to the Door. She looked intrigued.
“It is more complex than that. I need the demand to be extremely specific, otherwise the result could be... unanticipated. I can play with time, but I can’t return to the early ages of the universe, if that is what you are asking.”
“What about... years?” Kâl insisted. She was completely focused on the eyes and wouldn’t look at me despite my attempt to attract her attention.
“There would be consequences.”
“What kind?” She continued.
“Kâl.” I halted with a hand over her arm, the contact forcing her to finally shift her contemplation. She bowed her head and nodded, but withdrew herself from my touch, and stroked where I grabbed, as if I had burned her.
“Is everything alright?” Samay called, his attention fixed on the Shadow with great curiosity.
I responded, my attention still focused over Kâl. “Where your Orb is… Well, saying we’re not welcomed there is an understatement.” She walked in the opposite direction and stayed near the portal, waiting for everyone else to follow. “We’ll prepare our equipment and be back as soon as possible.”
“I will be right here,” he completed.
With a final glare in Kâl’s direction, we all guided into the library, Min and Geia following us after.