“Cora…”
“Go away.”
“Cora, I just wanted to talk to you about–”
“Fuck that. It’s too late. You weren’t there. I saw them. They’re never coming back!”
***
Her dreams are restless. Several times throughout the long night, Cora jolts awake, gasping, heart slamming into her chest. Details blur, shapes melting into the shadows. Liam and Callista sit at either side of her. Her head is lulling, eyes closed, while he’s turned away from her, head tossed back into the tree.
Most of Cora’s vertigo is gone. It’s on the fourth time jolting awake that Cora resolves to stay awake and keep watch.
No use. The promethazine works its magic on her brain, and soon, she dozes off again, slipping into a restless scoured land of nightmares and paralysis-inducing hallucinations.
When Cora opens her eyes again, her vertigo vanishes. Sharp pains in her wounds and broken wrist dull into manageable throbs, save for her aching feet and bruised flanks, punishment after being thrown around too many times.
She winces, probing at her ribs. Pain lashes at her, traveling down her flanks. It’s much, much better than she expected. Is she dreaming? Even back home, she never woke up feeling this well-rested, alert and fully conscious and brimming with the exciting potential of a new day.
She checks on the others. Callista snores softly, curled into a ball. A strand of hair blows outward with every breath exhaled. Liam is stretched out, head slumped away from her, and most shockingly, his left arm lies on Cora's leg. Palm up, at least. Cora resists the urge to smack his shoulder and glare at him until he apologizes, no matter how sleepy he is. For the first time, he looks at peace with himself, all the worry wiped from his face.
Sometime in the nebulous stretch of time they spent asleep, Callista wrapped the blanket around herself. Liam is completely exposed and Cora is at the fringes of the cold.
Or what should be the cold. Her nose isn’t numb. Her eyes are not shriveled husks. She licks her chapped lips. Her throat is clenched tight, mouth dry, instincts begging to quench her thirst.
She hooks her foot around her backpack’s straps and drags it over. It yields more easily than she expected, lighter somehow.
Cora rummages through each pocket. The contents are the same, maybe a little strewn about from constant travel. Then she gets to the main pocket. The box is still there in all its untarnished painful existence. The pain still runs deep, stabbing through her organs, her greatest mistake.
Really? You seemed so proud of it not too long ago.
Damn it. Cora screws her eyes shut and materializes a mental image of the Mari-apparition, shredding it into pieces. You can’t get rid of your sins, the Mari-apparition taunts.
Cora clenches her teeth and plunges her hand into her backpack. The box doesn’t change her into a frog, or make her waltz back to the crashed machinery, or teleport her into a bad horror remake or something insane. It’s just a normal box.
She reaches deeper than expected, plastic bottles rattling from vibrations, before she grabs a full water bottle. Her stomach somersaults. She runs a quick count, frowning. Seven filled bottles left, including the two snuggled inside her backpack’s bottle holders.
They had ten last time they ran count. Cora scans around herself. A bottle dangles from Callista’s limp fingers, empty. Another is crushed under Liam’s leg. A third rolled under a neighboring bush, gaudy packaging popping out from stacks of needles.
“Shit, shit,” Cora whispers. She plucks Callista’s bottle first. Her eyes flutter, head drooping a fraction of a degree. Immediately, Cora freezes like a turtle on rail tracks while a train barrels toward her. She holds her breath, praying with every fiber of her being that those eyes don’t reopen and reveal purple scythes.
Instead, Callista moans briefly before dozing off. A bit of drool trickles down the corner of her lips.
Liam proves much easier. Cora pulls out the bottle from underneath him and he doesn’t stir at all. She stretches to roll the third bottle toward her, comes up a few inches short, and gives up, stuffing both freed bottles back into her backpack.
They need to move soon.
“Liam,” she says softly. She shakes him by the shoulder. “Li-am.”
“Stop, I just want to sleep,” Liam mumbles, turning away from her. He swats at her gently and fails, arm dropping to his side. “Now I can’t sleep. Fuck.”
She sighs in relief. “Sorry, I had to. We have seven water bottles left, and I’m gonna drink one of them.”
It takes longer than she likes for him to rouse to an acceptable level of awareness. His eyes are bloodshot, bags heavy under his eyes. “Wait, what?”
“You didn’t sleep well?”
“I couldn’t.” He drags a hand over his face, exhaling. “Somebody had to watch out for us.”
Cora wants to shrink until he can’t see the shame coloring her cheeks. “I’m sorry for waking you up.”
He stifles a yawn. “You’re fine. We need to get moving. Those bottles won’t last us past today.”
By today, she knows he means until they collapse from exhaustion, bleary-eyed and stumbling blindly, burrowing under the blanket to welcome the comfort of the sleeping abyss.
“Cora?”
She looks up from her backpack. “Yeah?”
Liam produces a sickly orange bottle from his pocket. Prescription medication. Promethazine. She shakes her head before he says anything.
“I feel great, actually. Really awake.”
He unzips her backpack and drops the promethazine inside. “That came out weirdly optimistic.”
Cora pretends to drop her jaw in shock. “What? I can’t have a good morning after a shitty night?”
It should concern her that she's growing used to profanity. The old her would be livid. After the incident, swear words reminded her too much of what happened. They felt as insulting as the rest of the words showered upon her, saying that it wasn’t her fault.
You weren’t there! She’d wanted to scream in their disgustingly pitying faces. I was, but none of you believe me!
But now? Those memories are just that. Memories. They can’t wound her here, in an alien dimension, where she has her own problems to sort through. She is here, and she is now.
And for some reason, she feels more alive than ever since that terrible night so long ago.
“I thought you died when she threw you.” He presses his lips tight, casting a glare at Callista. Then he softens, reluctantly withdrawing into an expressionless shell of himself, save for his haunted eyes.
That explains why he looks like somebody ordered him to shoot his own dog. “Oh. Well, I’m not dead. Hurray, me.” She flashes a smile, then grimaces as her bruises throb, fists hammering her flank.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Cora can’t help but roll her eyes. This world really is changing her. “I'm fine. I said the same thing yesterday, I know.” She raises her hand and claps it to her chest. “But I'm feeling good today. Ready to go.”
“Huh.” He still doesn’t look convinced, but he grunts in acknowledgement. Not approval. She can tell by his squared shoulders, the subtle tension of his muscles. “You know how I helped you walk?”
She trails her hand over the back of her thigh. Under her fingers, the bandage feels like a cancerous lump. The edges are stained rust red rather than a cherry hue.
Small miracle she didn’t bleed out overnight. Then again, plenty of small miracles have kept her alive.
“Where are you going with this?”
“I can carry you. Piggyback ride. You know. If you can’t walk anymore.”
She can’t help but grin. “Are you being shy?”
He glares at her. “After everything we've seen, you think I'm being shy?”
“I think you're being shy.”
“I think you’re mistaken.”
“Please, stop flirting,” Callista moans. Cora is about to retort that she barely knows Liam when she notices the purple highlights in Callista's hair.
Why hadn't Cora noticed yesterday?
Then it dawns on her. The oppressive darkness retreated during her last bit of sleep. The gloom is a hazy gray, erasing shadows from neighboring trees, expanding depth. She can see much farther than before, like her sleep removed imaginary cataracts.
Everything appears in high-quality definition. The many cuts on Liam’s face, for instance. Or the patchwork of blood on Cora’s clothes. Or the back of Callista’s head, where a section of hair was haphazardly chopped off, leaving a blob of matted hair glued to her skull.
“Sunrise,” Cora says.
Callista looks around, shoulders hunching. Her pupils don’t light up, though. She grimaces and touches her cheek. Pauses, reconsiders. One of her eyes lights up, and then the other, like a malfunctioning LED strip light.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Cora can’t stop staring at her, fascinated by the timed pulses between each blossom of light, starting as pinpricks of light and unfolding like rose petals fanning out, edges bleeding into each other.
Her stomach still churns, her primal instincts screaming at her to leave, that this is not an ordinary person. That this strong being could snap her bones and punch a hole through her chest.
The conscious, more inquisitive part of her marvels over Callista’s magic. Real magic, right there in the flesh. Everybody back home would go ballistic if Callista showed up. She’d make international news, become living proof that maybe people can be something more.
Cora shakes her head. Callista isn’t a specimen to be studied. She’s a living, breathing, person of flesh and blood, like her. A friend, if Cora wants to call her companionship that.
They have to iron out their differences, sure, but Callista proved herself already. She could’ve killed them all with her herculean strength, bound or not.
“What are you doing?” Liam asks. He, like Cora, stares at Callista.
She blinks slowly. Her pupils return to normal. She wipes a hand over her face, rubbing at her sunken eyes. “I tried–I needed to see if–sorry, sorry. Give me a second.” She massages her temples next, scrunching her eyes shut. “My head hurts. I can’t think normally. I thought if I used my gift, it’d go away like it does for some people, but I can’t. It just made it worse.”
“Then don’t. Rest, drink some water, do what you need to do. I get it.” Cora probes at her flanks, grimacing. “I’m not doing too good either.”
“Or me,” Liam drawls, showing off his forearm. Even through the fabric of his long sleeve, the contours of a hastily wrapped bandage shows through. He looks at Callista. “What’s up with that bruise on your face?”
Cora can’t believe she missed it. Mottled purple, it stretches from the bottom outer corner of Callista’s eye to her jaw. She wants to blame the low light–human eyes are notoriously terrible in the dark–but maybe she didn’t pay enough attention.
You’re doing it again already? Typical, the Mari-apparition says.
Cora is dragging together another mental construction to shred when Callista distracts her. She touches her jaw, then winces, teeth flashing briefly.
“Did I almost get gridshocked?”
Cora has no idea what to say, so she shrugs and hopes Callista keeps talking.
“My gift is different from yours. You can understand languages anytime, anywhere, forever, and you don’t have to think about it.” As she speaks, she sounds bitter. Or jealous. Tired, maybe.
Cora frowns. What is Callista going on about?
“My gift takes and takes. I have to concentrate, and it drains me every time I use it.” Liam picks up on the connotations first, jerking his chin forward. Callista raises a hand, bowing her head. “Yes, I knew what I was doing, and no, I was not thinking correctly. I thought I was in a nightmare. I’m a walking disaster, I understand.” She huffs and rubs her temples again, glaring at her feet. “I don’t blame you because I’ve fucked up so many times.” She works her jaw open and closed, rubbing at her eyes again. She clenches her hands, slamming them down. Little clouds of dirt puff around her. “Sometimes I wonder if somebody else deserves my gift more–”
“Callista.”
It’s the same tone Mari used on Cora when she promised to go to the mall and ended up locking herself in her room while Mari waited outside, her disappointment and hurt palpable even through the door.
On some underlying layer, Cora understands Callista’s pain. The loss, the despair, the utter loneliness that creeps until she’s talking to herself long after reasonable sleeping hours, wondering how things could be different if she’d done something different.
She is painfully familiar with that feeling.
“It’s not your fault.”
Cora told her that once. A second time doesn’t hurt.
Callista wipes her hands off on her pants. “I could’ve saved them, though. I could’ve. It might’ve been almost impossible, but there was still a chance. You’d save him, wouldn’t you?” She gestures toward Liam.
He makes eye contact with Cora. He would, without a shadow of a doubt. He’d done it once, throwing himself like a fish before dozens of sharks.
“I would,” he says, and she gets her answer.
If he got captured by those monsters, the Transients, Cora knows, in a truth buried deep inside her, that she’d fight to save him. They barely know each other. Based on logic alone, running would be wiser.
But she is not a creature of logic. She is a messy creature built of hormones and emotions and half-baked ideas, governed by impulses and contradictions, and she would fight for him until the end.
“Me too.”
Callista gulps. “But Rhodes knew better. The odds favored us if we ran. Then he got shot because of me. I killed him. I should’ve listened to him and left Ravi. And now, because I hesitated, because I was too stupid, they’re both dead. Because of me!”
There is no roar. No flash of her eyes or bulging of her muscles or sudden screams. Callista, spent and defeated, whimpers, hanging her head low, limp as a doll.
“Hey, if Rhodes wanted you to run, then you did the right thing. You lived. That’s all that mattered to him until the end,” Liam says, landing a hand on Callista’s trembling shoulder. She sniffles and says nothing. He squeezes, then leans over Cora’s lap, giving Callista a one-armed hug. “We’ll get through this together.”
“We will,” Cora agrees. “We’ll get through this mess, okay?”
One wrong step and everything comes crashing down. But it’s not the fear Callista will snap and hurt or kill them. Yes, she hurt them once already, but that was accidental. Callista is a good person at heart.
It’s the trust that Callista places in them. In Cora. She wants to be like how Mari was, providing comfort and protection. Callista needs it, just like Cora needed it, even when she pretended everything was okay and the box would solve all her problems.
Callista looks at them with tear-stained eyes. Cora’s chest constricts. The pressure builds, a bomb preparing to explode in nuclear fury. “We’ll get through this. Through everything,” she says, more firmly.
If only she’d said that to Mari.
If only, the Mari-apparition whispers, voice brimming with sadness.
“I promise.”
***
As this world’s sun breaches the unseen horizon, the forest comes alive.
Shadows reel and retreat into shells of burnt sienna and molten silver, glittering amethysts and suave lavenders encompassing the trees. Mushroom and arrow-head canopies alike glow shades of green. The first shafts of sunlight trickles through leaves.
And with it, warmth. It’s delicious. Cora stops more than once to bask in pools of sunlight, almost crying in sweet relief. The sunlight is her armor against the occasional gust of wind, carrying icy remnants of the winds that buffeted them throughout the night.
Liam, despite his ragged exterior and constant yawns, perks up as they push deeper into the forest. Like before, he supports Cora’s weight, the two of them matching each other’s stride. Callista is quiet, constantly checking over her shoulder.
Then, the brook swells. Lapping water churns over miniature boulders. What used to be a few feet wide at most becomes a dozen. The water loses its lilac tint, crystal-clear like the water sloshing inside their remaining three bottles, one for each.
Which need to be filled somehow. No way does Cora trust the water, but it’s comforting to know it’s there.
“It’s peaceful,” Callista says once they decide to rest.
“Too peaceful,” Liam mutters, wringing his hands. “I don’t like it. Not one bit.”
“It’s better than finding the Transients.”
Cora wriggles off her backpack. This time, she’d volunteered to carry despite Liam’s protests. “How far back do you think they are?”
Callista chews on her lip. “I ran a lot. Very far, I’d say.”
“And you said they couldn’t catch up?”
“I promise they can’t. They had no gifts of swiftness, flight, teleportation, or strength, or I would’ve been captured easily.”
Cora and Liam share a look. It’s not like in the movies. She has no idea what’s going on through his mind. But she can tell he’s about to ask something very, very stupid.
She breaks their brief silence. “Oh, okay. Good. We have time, then.”
Don’t you always want to learn more? Mari says.
Nobody can know about Earth. It feels weird calling her planet that, like calling her parents by their first names. But it’s common sense. Wherever here is, it’s not home. Else magic would be everywhere. Wait, why am I responding to a hallucination?
“Mmm. We could leave in fifteen minutes. Does your phone have any charge?” Liam asks.
A timer. Cora nods and thumbs through her lock screen, setting a fifteen minute alarm. “Ready.”
Callista stalks off toward the nearest set of trees, scanning back and forth. Liam sits and fidgets with his knife, twirling and stabbing randomly at the air with it. The edge is stained dark with blood, but he doesn’t rinse it off in the stream.
By the time her alarm chimes, they’re stiff with tension. Callista works her fingers and fidgets. Liam is a nervous wreck, biting his cuticles, one hand kept on the sheath of his knife at all times.
Cora recognizes it now. His overt cautiousness, the way his eyes dart around his surroundings like he’s been possessed, running his hands through his hair enough times she wonders how he isn’t bald.
He does it again.
The mask came off.
“Are you okay?” Callista thankfully takes the lead, scrutinizing Liam like he sprouted a tentacle from his forehead. He pauses, hands threaded through his hair, tufts comically sticking out. “If you don’t trust me, I understand.”
“No, it’s not that.” He glances at Cora. She shrugs, because how is she supposed to read Liam’s mind?
“The Transients won’t come this quickly. They may send scouts, though. Scouts can’t hurt us, believe me, but I can hurt them.” She flexes her hands to prove her point. No light flaring inside her pupils.
“It’s not that. None of that nonsense.” Liam drops his hands to his sides. “I can’t keep doing this.”
Cora stares at him. “What?”
“Pretending that we’re like her. We have to tell her. About where we came from.”
Cora stares at him until her eyes burn. Until the painful dryness forces her to blink, and then she stares at him again, uncomprehending. “Huh?”
“We don’t know shit. We know nothing. The sooner we learn, the better. It’ll help us.”
“Yeah, I know. But–”
He pinches the bridge of his nose, then exhales loudly. “You’re still having doubts?”
Cora feels her face flush. She trembles with the desire to shake him back and forth like a maraca.
“We can’t give out information like that! Sure, maybe we’ll get hurt, but at least everybody back home will stay safe. Nobody finds out, nobody knows, and nobody gets hurt.”
“I won’t betray either of you,” Callista says quietly.
“Well, it's too late anyway, isn't it? The cat's out of the bag,” Liam says.
“Because of you.” Cora scowls. She softens when she meets Callista’s timid gaze. It reminds her too much of Mari. “Don’t take it personally. We’ve been on guard since we got here.”
“No, it’s understandable. You’re far from Magaram and the allied worlds, and you don’t want to reveal secrets about your world.”
Salvation. A thin thread of rope that Cora latches onto. She bites her lip as she looks at Liam. His face hardens and he gives the slightest shake of his head.
“Don’t–” Cora says, just as Liam turns toward Callista.
“We aren’t from Magaram.” Every word that comes out of Liam’s mouth punches her in the gut. “We come from a world called Earth.”
“Earth.” Callista mouths the word without saying it, puzzled. “Err-th?”
“Yeah. Like that. We know nothing like you do.”
“Nothing?” Callista smooths out her hair. With her immobile wrists, though, all she achieves is untangling the worst of the knots. “I’ve never heard of Earth, and I know a lot of worlds. Do you know about the grid?” A head shake. “Is that a yes or no?”
“No.”
“Parity?” Another shake. “The Empire, anything at all?” Another shake. “Enuscent? Arcego? Marpei?” Upon saying that last word, Callista grimaces.
“We have no idea what any of those words mean,” Cora says, resigned.
“Wait. Did you say the Empire?” Liam’s eyes boggle out of his head. “What type of fantasy bullshit are we in?”
Callista stares at him, dead serious. His grin drops and he frowns. “You’re serious, then.”
“The Empire. The Transients never gave it a name. It just is. Everybody knows what it is. Nobody names it. It’s too big to be given something as simple as a name. And it wants to capture me.”