My limbs were numb by the time the sun reached the other side, and the moon rose up again from its unending rotation. I was exhausted enough to completely bend over Kâl’s shoulders, that she nudged from time to time, my weight causing her trouble keeping straight. Besides apologizing a few times, we did not speak. Neither of us suggested a halt, to eat, drink or sleep. Our prior mission was driving the farthest from the capitol. And the traumas were keeping me from feeling the needs of a sane and functional human being. I couldn’t imagine having to close my eyes and face the demons waiting for me behind my lids.
The disastrous state and climate of Kendara stretched for miles and miles beyond. No specific borders were assigned to the city, because there was absolutely nothing past the remaining crumbs of buildings slowly fading while reaching the perimeter. We knew our planet was dying, but no one for ages thought of going away, the chances of survival decreasing drastically when leaving the rest of the population. The people we left might have been the only ones standing still. And for the first time since we decided to flee, I thought of what was waiting for us ahead. The fear of the unknown creeping up on me, licking my back and sending shivers along my spine. Only my arms around Kâl’s waist retained me from falling, linking me to reality.
I realized the proximity wasn’t so disturbing or unpleasant. Her scent filled my nose multiple times and even though I couldn’t see her face, her features were already carved into my memory. Something was drawing me to her, something I couldn’t begin to understand. She had freed me, in a way.
Hidram had said, in his last breath, that we needed to stay together. Not that I had taken any of my father’s words seriously, but having heard that, while he was so close to death made me wonder. Together for what purpose? What was waiting for us outside of Kendara’s borders? And most of all, why did I have to stay with the last woman of this planet, that I only knew for a few days?
I shook my head and buried it where her neck and shoulders met. I sensed her shifting but the atrociously loud quad was preventing me from saying anything. She must have taken my gestures as a need for rest because the vehicle started to decrease its speed.
But it’s only when I lifted my head back up and saw Kâl’s moving around nervously, switching every button she could attain that I understood she wasn’t the one braking. One curse slipped out of her mouth.
“What’s wrong?” I yelled over the sputters of the engine.
She responded when we came to a full stop. “It’s dead.”
We expected to have at least one more day of use but fate had decided otherwise. We were in the middle of nowhere, all alone, with little food, little water and an even tinier idea of what to do.
Around us, desert as far as the eye could see. No trees, no cavities, no hollows. Flat crackled earth surrounded us and stretched for miles. Kâl swore again.
We each took a sip of water and started walking. No need to bring the quad along; besides exhausting us faster, we had no certainty we could find a place to charge it up somewhere. So, we left it there. Nothing could hide it either, and as we pursued, we hoped it wouldn’t lead the Jalyons to us.
With our bags on our shoulders and no air to cool us off, we started sweating and dripping after so few minutes. We didn’t talk, saving all of our energy for the journey ahead. We needed to find some shelter, anything that would cover us from the sight of Jalyons or monsters. In these unknown areas, mutants were likely prowling nearby. Although they sought for humans and food, some of them could spend months without eating and were particularly resistant to the heat.
Another whole day had passed and neither Kâl nor me could believe we were still alive. We had eaten all of our provisions and almost drank the entirety of our bottles. Our bodies were sore, soggy and the disappearance of the sun didn’t help us getting colder. But we continued, and I didn’t know if I should have felt proud knowing that our survival now was directly linked to our numerous days spent with our bellies empty when we were younger.
But we had targeted some modest mountain at the beginning of our trail and as we approached, we were pleased to see a little alcove at its base, large and deep enough to let us rest. We dropped our belongings to the floor, before we collapsed onto it as well, completely drenched.
Our loud breaths filled the silence and we stayed quiet for some time. At one point, even my light shirt was too much clothes and I took it off, used it to dry myself.
Kâl’s gaze was on me for a second before she looked away and changed the subject. “How do you feel?”
“What do you think?” My arms wide open to prove my point.
“I meant about your father.” The pause I took to respond smoothed the harshness in my voice.
“He was not my father.”
Her eyes betrayed her curiosity but mine pleaded her to say no more. It happened so quickly. I didn’t know what to feel about it. Maybe I would never feel something at all.
Kâl used some of the water to clean her face and offered me to do the same. We took a succinct shower, cleaned ourselves roughly and waited. Even with my eyes closed, I couldn’t sleep and I proposed to stay in front of the alcove, as a protection. Sitting with my legs crossed, I left my thoughts free of my control and realized we were probably going to die here if we didn’t find food to hunt. I didn’t want to leave Kâl unguarded to seek animals but the sooner I started, the better.
Kâl groaned behind and I turned to look at her. She had used her cloak as a plaid, even though the temperature was high enough to wear nothing at all. Her brows were furrowed and she moved, rocking from side to side. I drew closer and lifted my hand over her face, ready to wake her up but she swayed once more and her breathing settled into deep and regular ins and outs. I found myself stroking her greek shaped nose anyway, noticing just now, as I was towering her, little freckles on her face. My gaze traveled her features and finally withdrew, leaving her to rest as much as she could.
After a few hours, the moon descending close to the horizon, Kâl’s rocky voice rose up. “Should we switch? You need rest.”
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to.” I admitted. She only nodded, still groggy from her nap. “Stay here, I’ll go search for food.”
“Absolutely not.” My eyebrows lifted. “I’ll come with you.” She argued. I opened my mouth to refuse but she was faster. “I know a lot about hunting. Especially for food.”
That tone she used when her words held much more of her past than she was ready to tell. Questions burned my tongue but forcing her into revealing parts of her life she couldn’t share was a feeling disturbing enough to keep my interrogations to myself. How could I be so compassionate with someone I barely knew? “Let’s get going then, huntress.” Was all I said instead.
She smiled widely and packed her weapons to her belt. She then explained how we were going to create small traps for average sized animals to fall into. We were obviously never going to catch anything standing in plain sight, so we decided to fabricate lures, place them and wait for a few hours more, hoping for the best. Our stomach rumbled as we were tying nets.
We managed to find some wood sticks on the ground and even the rest of a small forest after some more walking, that we chose as a place to display our work. We arranged everything thoroughly, Kâl correcting some of my gestures. I had enough humility to accept I had no knowledge concerning animal hunting, excelling much more at monster hunting. “What would you have done without me, huh?” She teased while showing me where to put the trap.
“We would have eaten some Tetan meat.” I responded flatly. She froze. “What?”
“You fought one?”
“Once. And it wasn’t fun.”
Tetans were the worst form of mutants yet registered. Eight feet tall, enormous hands with fingers as pointed as knives, poisonous saliva and skin so raw, it could burn ours like acid would. They were dangerous, not only because they were physically brutal and lethal, they also didn’t need to feed on meat, they fed on violence, fight and murder. I almost died the last time I encountered one. It had killed so many people in Kendara a few years ago, until I put an end to its insatiable thirst for blood.
“Don’t you remember the mysterious disappearing? Nobody left their house for days.” I recalled.
“Right. It was so quiet. Day and night. Was the Tetan responsible?” She asked.
“Yes.”
“Did your father mission you to take care of it?”
I laughed. “Hidram didn’t care for no one but himself.”
“He did seem to care for you.”
My silence was enough of an answer. She tensed, lowered her eyes now riveted on the ground, sensing she went too far. I clenched my fists twice and inhaled deeply, as to recover my stillness and self-control. Kâl didn’t say another word either and we started marching back to the alcove quietly.
She sat again but I stayed up, something begging to come out. She gazed. I didn’t know why but I felt like talking and justifying myself. “If he cared, he never knew how to show it. Even if I never asked for much.” I stopped. Her eyes were begging for more. “He was rude. Mean. He was never home. He didn’t care for my wounds. He didn’t care.”
The words had trouble coming out. It seemed like I would never find the right ones to describe what I felt but the closest one was rage. As I never really spoke my emotions, they came out distorted, messy.
She nodded but didn’t say anything after all. Her arms around her knees, she plastered a worried look and something else I wasn’t familiar with and had never seen across her face. I immediately moved my walls back up.
Our breaths were the only sound resonating around the alcove for a while and we settled into the quietness. That was what we had always known, both of us. Alone. By ourselves. Sulking in our own thoughts, asking ourselves questions no one could answer, the reserve we both had barricaded ourselves into preventing us now from having a normal conversation. “Where did you find that dagger?” Kâl broke the muteness after a while.
I gazed at the object around my belt. “One Jalyon used it against Hidram.” She hummed, nodded, and kept her stare focused on the weapon. “Why?”
“It resembles the blade from the legend I told you but… the gem is a different color.”
I took it off my waist and weighted it over my palm. The handle was warm, but it had stayed close to my skin for a justifiable amount of time. The carvings were magnificent and the gem amber, gold. “My mother would draw it just like this.”
“I saw it over a stall a few days prior. Maybe it’s been changing owners for years. Maybe she had seen it.”
“Maybe.” She responded, and we fell back into muted peace.
We waited. Endlessly it seemed. Sometimes, Kâl’s head would rest on the side of the alcove and from behind, I could tell she had fallen into sleep. Sometimes, the latter would find me and I would manage to rest one hour by one hour, just enough for my body to stay focused and my brain to remain sane.
Again, the same lady would find me behind close lids, behind the walls of my eyes, only I could see her as clearly as if she had stood in front of me. Instantly, I felt reassured. She would sooth my pain in a snap of her fingers—more a stroke— while she would stare at me with big blue icy irises. Her face was still blurry, not in my dreams but in my recollection of them, until I would just completely forget her as the minutes of my awakening would pass.
Her hands calmed my ragged heartbeats and stilled my breath, her lips sealed any wounds, from inside and outside, and her false presence had never been more welcomed than at the moment. I would usually feel torn, perturbed, would try to understand how she would just appear and how she could relax me that easily. And it led to a perplexed state of mind once the sleep would end. But now, her generous silhouette, her gaze, her mouth, her face, I accepted all of it, and let myself drift into the pleasures of a reposing nap.
Her body next to mine, her long and deep breaths, one hand over my shoulder and her face cradled in my neck, I had never felt so at peace.
But then, a scream, more like a squeal, emitted in the deep silence of the night. My torso straightened, Kâl shook her head, probably waking up as well. We only shared a quick glance before we hurried back to our different traps, keeping our bodies low. We split, searching which one had been activated when Kâl called me. By the tone of her voice, I knew something was wrong.
I followed the sound and found her, worry and miscomprehension on her beautiful golden face. The nets were tied firmly around a small creature, approximately the size of a human baby. But it walked on four legs and had two hands tearing apart the skin of its belly. I had never seen that monster before.
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“What is it?” Kâl asked, her aversion so clear on her face it was almost funny. “I’d rather starve than eat this thing.”
“I have no idea. It wouldn’t be wise to feed on it anyway.” I unsheathed the dagger and brought it close to its hideous neck. It had tiny black eyes, holes for ears and nose, all round, four legs and two baby hands on his stomach. The skin was raw, as the Tetans’, and had some bumps underneath. With my finger, I stroked what must be its back and realized it had a hardened skeleton cover. Like a metal plaque. I started searching for a squishier part where I could shove my blade and end its life.
“What are you doing?” she queried.
“I need to kill it before it squanders off the other beasts we could actually eat. Or calls more monsters.”
I continued palpating the creature, and realized even its brain was protected. My hands and fingers had to feel every inch of the thing, coating themselves with a weird and uncomfortable grease, until they found a place, under the mouth that displayed sharp deadly teeth. The monster was screaming, we needed to be quick. Placing the dagger at the entrance, I pivoted the blade so it would traverse the whole nervous system and end it quicker.
Kâl breathed loudly and waited, bouncing on her legs, looking around us for anything suspicious. With a hasty movement, I punctured the whole head, the flesh tearing apart and withdrawing itself from the rest of the body. Its eyes had stopped moving and its mouth had stayed open, its final breath caught up forever in its throat.
I nimbly took the head off the blade and stood up. Our bellies grumbled all the way back to the alcove.
Using the remaining water, I cleaned myself of the product the creature left on my hands and we continued waiting.
Kâl sat closer to me this time, and we were too hungry to sleep.
“Do you think the other planets are still there?” she looked at the sky, clear of any light besides our moon, that became larger and larger with the years. Her reverberated light was so grand, the rest in space couldn’t shine.
“I don’t know.” I answered, antipathetic. This wasn’t a subject my life had let me be absorbed by. Hidram thought of everything and made it clear of my only purpose and my only focus. We didn’t have books and I didn’t ask questions. Besides my tattoo, I had no information regarding the rest of our planet, or even our solar system. I only knew there were planets. There were portals. And that now, we were stuck on Zelian.
She continued. “I’ve read a book relating the death of Uri, another planet, about two thousand years ago. It was far enough to avoid the destruction of more but close enough for the implosion to echo on Zelian. There was a wind, so strong it had beheaded the highest buildings. Even some inhabitants had been launched miles and miles away. Some say that is what started it all.”
“Started what?”
“The death of Zelian itself.”
We shared the silence. I hadn’t thought of it this way. This was another approach to the conditions of our planet and why it had been so improper to life for years. We, as a civilisation, had only known this form of consistency, but maybe others had known this planet in a drastically different way. I couldn’t possibly imagine a thrilling environment, besides the dirt and the dust, but to think that life had evolved into this predicament was in fact hard to believe. Impossible, even.
“Don’t you think humans have brought this on themselves?” I asked. “With technology, gadgets, buildings, constructions over constructions, what if we had created this,” I pointed outside, “and had dug up our own graves?”
She played with her fingers, thinking. “I would have expected better from humanity.”
“I wouldn’t. If anything, we deserve the other side of the coin for ruining our own place of living.”
She shrugged her shoulders with a bitter laugh. Her small smile transpired what she thought and she thought like me. She had hope where I had lost any trace of it. I couldn’t blame her for that.
Leaving Kendara was the one and only possibility we had in our hands the moment we fought the Jalyons, the moment I killed Kahill. But seeing ourselves cornered, hungry and tired, maybe it would have been preferable to die quickly at the hands of my enemies than to watch us die within hours and days. The one thing preventing me from going back was knowing Kâl had been tortured to the point where they left her for dead in a cell next to mine, just to prove their cruelty and stupidity. Being far away from them was the best decision I ever made, but as my stomach gargled once more and hurt my insides, maybe dying from a monster wasn’t so bad after all.
Kâl fought her hunger and let her head fall into her arms, focusing on something else, anything else. “How many days do you plan on waiting before going back?” I queried, eager on diverging my train of thoughts.
“Once I’ll be satiated.”
“Do you need anything? Other than…”
“Are you really asking?” she taunted, lifting her head to meet my gaze.
“Maybe?”
“That is so thoughtful of you, Weapon.” She smiled.
My hands dried one drop of sweat off my forehead. “I’m not heartless.”
“That is what people say of you.”
“They see what I want them to see.” I interrupted, suddenly angry. As if I needed to prove to her I wasn’t that person, I never had been. This was all an act I had to perform to survive.
“Alright, don’t get upset, now.” She laughed and repositioned herself on the floor. “Let me think… you could sing me a lullaby to put me to sleep.”
“Please.”
“What?”
“I don’t sing.”
“Even in the shower? While passing the time.”
“I don’t get the time to do this stuff.”
She waited before answering. “Do you smile sometimes?”
I glared. “When I find something funny.”
“You’re telling me I’m not funny?”
“That is exactly what I’m saying.”
This time, she really laughed, the sound so foreign to me, it warmed up a part of my body I had never known. And before I realized it, my mouth stretched across my face and reached my ears. Embarrassed, I scratched the top of my head. “You should smile more often.” She admitted, her gaze softening.
“I’m not used to it.”
“I know. I understand.”
The glint in her irises resonated inside.
We could understand each other for very specific reasons. We had not lived the same experiences, but we had the same emotions inside. We were alone. Forced into a life we would never have chosen. Forced into violence and carnage, because of vengeance or survival, or both. We were the friend the other never had. And our lives might have been very different if we had had one another sooner. In our childhood. When we needed it most. She sighed, her faint grin still on her face. And I couldn’t look away from her glowing warm skin. Her presence was comforting. Knowing she was about to leave me soon shot a pang through my chest, despite meeting her recently.
“How many lives did you save?” I asked, again changing the subject, remembering her words before we left.
Her green irises found mine with new fascination. “I didn’t count. But it’s not much.”
“Why didn’t you come to me sooner for an alliance?”
She straightened her posture and let her back fall onto the wall of the cave. “Because I had thought of a plan for years, and before was not the time.” She smiled and scratched her shoulder. “But I knew about you. Had seen you multiple times. Us, meeting, was not written until it happened. Even if you sped up the process.”
For a moment, I imagined the Weapon and the Shadow taking over Vishan’s reign, becoming the new ambassadors, the new leaders. We could have. Our reputation, although bringing some fear into the population, couldn’t be worse than the Jalyons. The only problem was that we were too humble and too solitary to even conceptualize the idea. And before our one and only mission, we had been working on our own from the very beginning. We had no knowledge about being leaders. Maybe we wouldn’t have needed it.
“What are you thinking about?” she demanded. I turned toward her and noticed the glint in her stare.
“I just hope bad things come to an end, too.”
And we gazed back at the starless sky.
Until loud and rumbling footsteps made the floor tremble under ourselves. My blood boiled and adrenaline started filling my veins. Kâl cursed under her breath.
We receded and hid further into the alcove, gathering our equipment and bags, myself firmly holding the shaft of my dagger while Kâl quietly searched for anything in our stuff. She withdrew a decent blade, but by the sound of the steps, it wouldn’t suffice. We only shared a glance before we held our breath. The monster walked in front of the hole we were masking ourselves in, and it took all my control not to curse loudly at the recognition of it.
Kâl saw my distraught expression, and waited for me to say something, anything. I couldn’t. Tetans were the worst because of many reasons. But Sagunieris were not the best either.
They were complicated creatures. Their scent impeccable, to compensate for their terrible hearing, they were not particularly tall, just very heavy. And most of all, they were not made of flesh and bones, but blood. Just blood coagulating enough to form a vague silhouette that they could manipulate at will. So, even a significantly long and sharp blade wouldn’t have helped against that kind of creature. It would have pierced right through it and fell on the other side.
If it had come here, it meant one thing: it scented the baby we had killed on us and searched for it close by. And we needed to draw it back there to avoid being the ones eaten. Because, if the Sagunieri would see us, little frail humans at the back of the cave, we wouldn’t last a second. When it had walked away from our sight of vision, I spoke to Kâl. “We need to lure him to the beast we have left earlier. That’s what it smelled on us.”
“How?” The plan took time building its foundations in my mind, as the risks of facing the monster were exceptionally high. I hadn’t yet defeated one, and had no idea how to handle the disastrous situation. Kâl lost her patience. “You’re the monster specialist, how?”
“Let me think. And put that steel away, we can’t use it.” Her mouth gaped and she tucked it back into the bag, closing the latter as silently as possible, the footsteps of the Sagunieri still pretty nearby. “They can’t hear. But it’ll smell us. We need to use that to our advantage.”
“I’m listening.”
The sound of rumbling faded away just a bit and I figured it had walked farther from our spot. “We’ll go back to the creature, and wait for his scent to catch up.”
“That sounds lunatic.”
I batted her objection away. “We’ll flee while he’s occupied with the beast.”
I gestured for her to get up and follow my lead. We stayed low and used the shape of the little mountain to avoid the line of sight of the monster. But there wasn’t much to hide behind, and as we ran to the spot where the baby was, we could already hear the steps growing louder.
In a few minutes, we were back to the trap, the dismembered creature still blocked by the device, and its head lying further from it. We continued our path, obligated to flee another time, with our bellies empty and our strength weakened.
We had distanced the Sagunieri significantly when, over our shoulders, we witnessed it bent over the weird monster, and drink the blood from the severed head. Then, he snatched the rest of the body, and squeezed it to drench all of the liquid inside. The lines of his body were blurry now, as we had run a good amount of space, the ground still burning hot from the previous day under the rays of the sun. And we didn’t stop running once the Sagunieri lifted his head, and saw us from afar. Because it charged, and although its heaviness prevented it to be too quick, we were nothing against it.
I looked at Kâl. “Run,” I ordered.
We sprinted as fast as we could. Kâl emitted little whines of nervousness while glancing back. “Don’t!” I screamed. “Just run!”
She cursed but obeyed and some powerful force flooded into her body because she heightened her speed like never before. In front of us, another abandoned structure that looked like being sealed inside a ridge large enough to maybe possess a recess for us to hide in. With a finger, I pointed it to Kâl and we launched forward. From a glance, I could see the Sagunieri hadn’t gained distance. But we couldn’t stop. We had to outwit it.
There was nothing around to lure the monster. This planet was vowed to disappear, and it might be because of that other planet that died decades ago, like Kâl had said, and maybe it was because of humanity destroying any places that welcomed them, it really wasn’t the point at the moment, but as we hoped not to die at the bloodied hand of the Sagunieri, the lack of help from our surroundings made me swore out loud. We only had that little mountain that fortunately arrived quicker than expected, as we charged so fast and rapidly.
Kâl screamed as we took a sharp turn and started navigating across rocks, narrow interstices, and prayed the creature couldn’t follow us.
One glance back had refuted that hypothesis.
Although it was losing blood, and structure, as its shoulders or arms touch the stone, leaving marks along its passage, it didn’t destroy its being at all. It made it angrier. Kâl led the way, jumped, crouched, braked so that our bodies could traverse the sharp angles of the mountain. Until she spotted something worth a try. “Here!” she blurted. I followed.
We slithered our way into a thin aperture, leading to the nothingness inside, no lights, no hints of what could be there. And we watched, powerlessly, as the Sagunieri found our scent, and snared at us from outside.
It pressed its body so all of it would fit inside and we continued backing up, hoping we wouldn’t find a wall at the end. The swirling of the blood was almost hypnotizing and I withdrew my dagger anyway, refusing to die without a fight. I would dismantle it, drink the blood if it meant saving us both. Kâl mimicked me and gathered the blade from our bags, while the Sagunieri took its precious time devouring us with its white eyes. The cave was so large and tall, we couldn’t feel safe at all from the profoundness of it. And while I bent my knees, ready to charge, Kâl and I both stopped as we noticed a figure and a presence behind.
We didn’t have time to turn around, or even wonder where the most dangerous creature was. Magic flooded and lighted the walls of the cave, flew straight towards the heart of the Sagunieri, and made its whole body blow up, splashing the blood on every surface at the entrance. We held our breath, as our fear hadn’t decreased a bit.
If that monster had destroyed the Sagunieri with a spell, we didn’t have a chance against it. Even my steel trembled. Kâl stole a glance and let out a reassured breath. But when I finally turned around, and realized we were standing in front of a supposed extinct species, I wasn’t reassured at all.