Traveling through the alien landscape, even by road, was a horrifying endeavor. They were faster atop the beasts unless they took a jog, but then the beasts didn’t want to keep up. So atop the beasts it was. It was an excellent pace as long as one kept driving them.
Everyone became runny of the nose and had similar symptoms, including frequent sneezing, with Aerion an absolutely miserable wretch.
Persistent small clouds of tiny, fragile flies of some kind continuously pestered the beasts and them — they did not bite but made the skin itch. They had precious little survival instinct to stay away from flailing Hamaleen, as if they just had such numbers not to care about death. Most larger insects stayed away, though incidental flights and landings of strange bugs occasionally had one or another of their number crying out about it and perhaps overreacting. Sadly, this included Ryza herself.
All that could be done was to bundle up as much as possible and try to ignore it all.
The bigger fliers, however — the bird-like kind — could not be ignored: they’d soar overhead or even occasionally across the space between the forest lines to either side. The first time he saw one, Aerion literally screamed in a way she’d only heard from a dying man.
She had warned them, too. Perhaps he had thought she was exaggerating in its size. The body was close to human-sized, but with a mass of feathers, and an enormous wingspan that made them look twice as big. They had no interest in Hamaleen, though. They hunted smaller birds and other animals within the forest by all appearances.
Something to the air made Ryza almost certain it was the ‘opposite’ of high altitude thinness. It was thicker. While it was hard to separate all the discomforts to do with the air, there was an obvious offness to breathing in addition to the humidity, cloying cold, and tainted smells. And even sound was different as if everything were higher-pitched.
All in all, it worried her that the hellscape was going to kill them by a thousand cuts: combined physical and mental ones. Daexo scowled constantly in a way she knew hid fear, and Aerion seemed always on the verge of panicking. Ryza attempted to remain strong for them, but she had little doubt they could see her agitation and worry as well.
We just don’t belong here.
Nonetheless, they pressed on and suffered through it. One thing was clear: without some sort of aid, Hamaleen who were not Blessed would not fare well at all, perhaps even to death. Judging from the numbers the demons had brought through, they likely had some means to keep their slaves alive.
From Aerion’s reports, the trail was difficult to follow due to the environment and air quality issues, and it was possibly erratic, like Deros were alternating running and walking, and it was getting fainter. Their attempts to catch up over hours down the road seemed only to get them increasingly, frustratingly outpaced.
And then they saw smoke on the horizon.
They reluctantly moved off the road in their approach, but the forest cleared out and widened in either direction, effectively making a forced glade, with many strange weeds and tall grasses. They tied the animals off to let them graze a bit while they approached a fort or town deeper into the clearing.
There was a fog in the area similar to the mountain top, thicker than the persistent, mild haze of the world. But the billowing smoke was evident enough, particularly as it rose higher than the treetops.
As they made their way at a crouch through the grasses, guns in hand, Aerion murmured, “His scent is strong in the area.” His voice was rough and raw as to a sore throat and sounded like he was keeping in a cough.
“And there is a heavy residue of chaos,” Daexo added. “Probably recent.”
Ryza nodded and made hand motions to both of them, urging for silent movement, as they soon came within sight of the buildings. Or what was left of them.
It was a tiny hamlet, probably little more than a rest stop and a few farms, with an inn and significant but simple roofing, or so it appeared to Ryza from the overall collapsed state. Primarily, the stables were on fire and mostly collapsed. It was not a spectacular fire, almost entirely reduced to smoke. It didn’t surprise her in the constant humidity.
The big building she thought was an inn was merely collapsed and not smoking at all. One smaller house simply had one wall blown out and still stood, if precariously.
There were several bodies and parts of bodies scattered all over as if a storm of blades had torn through the place, apparently sparing no one present. Nonetheless, the party was cautious.
As they neared the inn, Aerion touched his nose and made an ‘around the corner’ motion. Ryza approached, and, using her abilities, did the quickest of peeks around some stone rubble blocks that might’ve been one literal corner of the building. Soon, she came around, the others following, all pointing their weapons.
A demonman was laying with his back propped up against the wall, his armor split open as if by a giant singular claw. His helmet had been removed, though it was nowhere to be seen, nor did he have a weapon. One hand seemed to be pressed to his gut, where his innards were half spilling out… he was literally holding them in, and blood was everywhere. He was clearly dying. His other hand was apparently propped on a rock, a piece of charcoal in it.
Ryza and the others approached slowly while pointing their guns, and the man watched placidly.
“Come to finish me off?” he asked weakly. “Might as well. Can’t move much.”
“Not specifically,” Ryza answered. “What happened here? Have you seen another dressed as us?”
He stared at her as if he didn’t hear for a long spell, a mild, tired grimace on his face, and she wondered if he’d die or pass out. But he stirred suddenly, then shrugged. “All I saw was death. A shadow. Like you?” He shook his head, then very weakly muttered, “Maybe…”
“Can you describe what you saw?”
He was clearly struggling to maintain consciousness. “Destruction… waves… cutting through everything… like the Ordenai — like a pack of them… thought it was war, but th-... that’s…” He shook his head, trailing off, his head dropping slowly in the daze of blood loss.
“Stay with us, warrior!”
He jerked his head up, grimacing. “Kemi! Kemi… please, you must…” He looked down at his free hand and lifted it, which caused him to pitch over sideways with a thud and a deep groan. But he held out the bloody thing that was in his shaking hand. “Please…”
His mouth still moved for a while, but no words came out, and the fire of his eyes soon died. In his hand was a blood-streaked piece of parchment, charcoal apparently written on the front. ‘Kemi I love you! Sorr’ written crudely, the material heavily stained with blood. Ryza took out a cloth to wipe it.
“This sounds very bad,” Aerion commented. “He’s being hunted by someone or something that can do this?”
“Was there some kind of fight here?” Daexo said, looking around. “Or Deros was running for his life. We’d best keep on this damn trail. We’re getting closer. To hell with this graveyard.”
“Yes,” Ryza said as she checked the fallen man for anything identifying. A necklace with a silver star. She took it, then looked at Aerion. “Which way does the trail go?”
He pointed, which was not the direction of the animals.
“Follow it,” Ryza commanded, “and I’ll get the beasts and catch up.”
Ryza made her way back through the haze, going by memory and landmark shapes, moving swiftly, though keeping a firm eye out for surprises. Between looking one way and another, she jerked her head and pointed the weapon as she caught movement.
Stalking slowly, she made out a shape, which she almost fired on immediately. Instead, she continued drawing near. The shape turned once toward her, just the head — a small girl, with an uncanny resemblance to Ellayone. Deros’s dead sister.
“Ell-” Ryza began in shock, but like lightning, the figure turned and just disappeared like a phantom.
Terrified truly for the first time in forever, Ryza nonetheless made herself walk over to where the spirit had been. There was no trace, not even on the ground, of any passage of feet or shoes.
Haunted, Ryza made her way to the pack animals, finding them happily grazing away on the tall grasses. She collected them to go, to which they groaned a bit but complied well enough. Looking every which way in paranoia, Ryza followed after the men, noting the actual road seemed to split. The hamlet was at a crossroads.
She caught up to them just as they were coming upon the road cutting through the dense forest, sparser grasses and weeds, and smaller trees just along the border. There were often lines of cut forest from the presumable work of lumberjacks, keeping trees from intruding too close to the road. At least it made the insects less thick.
Momentarily, Ryza arranged to speak to Daexo privately, trailing behind and whispering, “I saw… a ghost, husband. Ellayone.”
He looked at her sharply, but soon shook his head, frowning. “No. It’s the chaos, Ryza-”
“What’s the chaos?” Aerion called from ahead.
Daexo made an annoyed sound and called back, “Mind your own business, damn you!”
Ryza placed a withering glare on her husband. He always had a problem speaking quietly.
Leaning in to whisper properly finally, Daexo said, “You saw no such thing. Just the mind playing tricks in the midst of madness. It was thick there. Glad we’re out of it.”
Ryza swallowed and nodded, wanting to believe him.
Ghosts in this world. Perhaps we have died and this is the afterlife we trapped ourselves in.
They continued down the road, hopping up on the beasts and driving them as hard as they could, fearful of what could happen to Deros and urgent to help, though there was equal dread for what it would take. So long as it was a man, though, Ryza put her hope in a bullet being as good as anything.
Strange to no longer be an archer when you possess such a weapon as this. I don’t like it. Hopefully, there is a day to come when an arrow will be good enough again.
The nigh endless day continued down the road, all of them driving through tiredness into their second wind, or possibly third, knowing the urgency and also knowing sleep would be difficult to come by in a world that itched as soon as you stopped moving and doing something. She didn’t relish closing her eyes in hell.
The fast star came and went, came and went, every couple of hours. The slow star did finally seem to perceptibly move, gradually falling down to a height similar to the giant ringed orb. The latter did not seem to move… or it did only in reference to their own. They seemed to mostly move toward it, though not dead on. She wasn’t sure if it had risen slightly. Maybe.
Smoke on the horizon came again, this time in greater amounts. They first came upon a torn-apart wagon on the road surrounded by bodies of people and animals alike sliced into ribbons and chunks, blood staining the road. They looked all too ordinary in dress, like simple farmers or workers. The wagon had all sorts of foodstuffs scattered all over, mainly strange-looking roots and vegetables.
The party didn’t tarry over it. Everyone was slaughtered and it had been done quickly. It was hard to tell if there was any resistance, but it seemed doubtful.
“His scent is getting stronger!” Aerion called.
Hurrying onward, they began to see the signs of a village on fire, as well as the answering smells of burning wood. A few were screaming in the distance. Ryza hurriedly tied the shying beasts to a fence post and burdened her husband with her most important supply pack — an arrangement they’d conducted for her agility more times than she could count. She kept one of the splatguns in a holster at her back, in case it was needed.
Ryza made a shushing motion with her hand as they moved out to enter the village. They’d need the element of surprise to help.
At least the fog may be a benefit here.
They used the cover of buildings on one side that had not been burned, watching for movement, but most had obviously fled or hid, and what Ryza did see were just a few running shadows in the distance and the fog. Some of the buildings were damaged similar to what they’d seen before… cut down and collapsed, or partially so.
When they were passing through an alleyway, Ryza froze, as someone standing perfectly still was there, standing by a doorway, gun propped up on a barrel pointed right at her.
It was an adolescent girl with a dirty face, staring placidly her way — thankfully, she looked nothing like Ellayone. Slightly boyish, with a short shock of hair, she nonetheless seemed to have on skirts with boots, and she had on an oversized, thick jacket as if borrowed from a mother or big sister perhaps. The gun was cocked and ready to fire, her stance one of someone who knew what they were doing despite her age. A girl of the frontier.
Ryza had already half raised her gun that way by instinct but was not foolish enough to raise it all the way. She did take hold of the slowing sight, in readiness. When the men saw and began reacting, she made a hissing sound to forestall them. Maybe they underestimated the girl, the form they saw, but Ryza did not underestimate what she saw in the girl’s eyes. Eyes that had encountered death and accepted the new reality. Eyes she’d seen in a mirror.
Despite the discomfort of speech while in the trance, Ryza asked, “Do you know what’s happened here, girl? What did you see?”
Not entirely unexpectedly, the girl did not answer, nor even react. She kept the gun pointed and waited. Ryza understood. ‘Keep moving or get shot.’
Nodding slightly, Ryza said, “Let’s move on, boys. Let’s see if we can end this madness.”
She turned and continued on past the alley, peeling her eyes away from those disturbing twin orbs of her youth and focusing on what was in front of her. Daexo and Aerion followed.
There was an explosive crack, then a great racket that had to be a destroyed building, so cautiously they approached. They saw no one else in the fog — evidently, everyone knew what to avoid, by now.
Rubble and brick and dirt had been swept aside from a great, circular, stone slab in pristine condition, dug out perhaps a meter deep in the ground. It was otherwise plain except for two additional circular indentations carving it — one halfway in its radius, and the other making a small circle perhaps a meter in radius in the center.
Right in the center was a figure, one Ryza almost put a bullet in as soon as she saw it, assuming it was the one responsible for all the death, and its back turned. Above and around the figure, there was another kind of haze hovering, like a swirling dust storm. Her finger almost pulled the trigger. But she saw a familiar fur cloak on its shoulders-
“Deros!” Aerion cried out with every emotion at once, from the lip of the circle, and hopped down to the platform, tossing his rifle to the ground. Ryza for her part was too stunned to react.
The figure turned, and there was Deros, horribly different and the same as who she knew all at once. His eyes were wild and flagrantly mad, his countenance a twisted, too-disturbed grin like he was seeing a joke all around that he was far too amused by. Stretching across his body were something like tiny brown and gray-green vines or veins, enshrouding him like a poor facsimile of armor, but at his head was a black crown with two horns stretching up, reminiscent of the demons.
“Oh, you’ve come,” Deros said casually with a queer, mocking tone. “Sister. Brothers. Ha! That’s just grand. If you’ve come to help…”
Aerion had been half-caught rushing to his friend with tears in his eyes, Daexo trailing behind out of concern for Aerion, muttering something. But Aerion did stop short, finally stunned by what he saw. “Deros…” Aerion began, looking around. “Of course we want to help, but… what…?” He trailed off and gestured in confusion.
“Aerion-” Ryza began, her own voice breaking. And she could not break. Even with impossible, unthinkable things coming into realization about all they’d experienced that they now had to face as something Deros had likely done, she had to keep her head, because it was clear he was dangerous. Chaos had touched him.
Daexo had grabbed Aerion’s arm, muttering, “Stop, fool!” His face was hard and pained, eying his dear friend ahead. Aerion pulled his arm free in annoyance but didn’t move closer.
Deros was grinning at Aerion warmly. He clapped his hands together. “Perfect! Finally, someone bloody agreeable! Most don’t cooperate. Or just get in the way.” The last was like a sudden mood swing, muttered balefully with his eyes slanting away. The cloud around him swirled thicker.
But he took a breath. Then he eyed Ryza, and he chirped a laugh. Gave his most charming, boyish grin, recalling to her his youth, as it always did. “Why are you over there pointing a weapon at me, Sissy? Trying to bully me again?” Teasing, playful.
Ryza swallowed a lump in her throat, her stomach as sick as she’d ever felt it. He hasn’t called me Sissy in an age. But she let her rifle go limp on its sling because it didn’t matter. She couldn’t shoot her own brother.
She showed her hands and tried to make light with a shrug, though she knew it was stiff. “Just being silly. Deros, look, we should-”
Her brother burst into riotous laughter with his whole body rocking backward, hands still clasped together. “Yes, yes! Sissy is hilarious!” He mimed something that must be her expression suddenly, looking downward, saying in comical feminine tones, “What do we do to our enemies, little Deros?” And he made a show with his hand like he was patting a child’s head.
Then Deros gestured with his hands out wide and smiled big, full of mirth and smugness. He didn’t finish, didn’t give the answer, but she knew. She knew and she regretted the words, right then.
We destroy them.
“Deros, please, we-”
“We,” Deros interrupted, “have a task to attend to. Aerion: you’ve volunteered, which is splendid.” He looked down at the stone he was standing on and his arms folded together so one hand rubbed his chin. “I’ve zeroed in on the beacon, it’s down here, the resonance here brings it fully into proper resolution at this very point, but I can’t bloody go to it for some reason! It resists me! I-I can’t lock on to myself! It slides off into nowhere. So. I need you to go down there for me. There must be something to- to activate, or… something.”
Aerion was staring, and he did not respond for a long moment. Then his eyes slid from Deros’s eyes and he shook his head. He was haunted and disturbed, like the rest, but in him, there was utter defeat. It broke him to see Deros like that. “I… how? There are no stairs…”
Deros smiled and rolled his eyes to the heavens. “Not stairs, you dungbrain! This-”
There was no gesture, but Ryza’s hair stood on end as she felt makar’osa use. Between one horrible flash and the next, a sphere of warped air, of blurry distortion surrounded Aerion then was gone. As it disappeared, so did Aerion.
“Aerion!” Ryza called in alarm, looking around in panic for him — uselessly— soon dropping down to the stone finally.
With a roar, Daexo stormed forward, growling, “What in hells did you do to him, Deros?!”
Deros stared right at the coming Daexo without concern or fear, pointing downward. “I sent him down, deep, deep, deep. Like I said, to the beacon. Now back off.”
Daexo did not. “Bring him back right skrofing now, then, you crazy pólo!”
Ryza began moving quickly toward them, calling, “Husband, stop! Get back!”
It was no use. He was furious, scared, frustrated, absolutely crushed inside, and there was only one way he knew how to react, how his emotions responded. Physically. His farsense flared out and he rushed to grab hold of Deros at the speed of a blink, which Ryza knew would be with intent to subdue. Shake the sense into his friend, perhaps, or wrestle compliance out of him, even with a marred hand.
Deros seemed to take it in stride. With a sporting grin, he dodged and cried with throaty glee, “Wrestling, is it?! You won’t win this time, oldie!”
For the first time, Ryza distinctly felt someone else’s close-by farsense touch her skin, even felt it within her as if a thick syrup exploded out of Deros and coated reality in every direction. She felt like she was a swallowed-up babe in something vast and terribly beyond her. And beyond her husband. She was running — sprinting — with the slowing sense flaring, but she was entirely too far to stop an exchange.
Daexo’s good hand almost closed around one of Deros’s own, but the great cloud around her brother surged down and down at speeds she barely tracked, and seemed to reinforce that armor lattice-work like a skeletal frame. It surged to enshroud a hand and formed another, bigger one overtop it, slipping right in to grip Daexo’s fingers in a lock with a far superior substance than flesh.
That hand gripped and crushed with ease, making bones snap as it turned a wrist. Simultaneously Deros moved in over Daexo’s other arm, a black framework of a body slamming into a real one and grappling. Both were grappled, but one was superior. “How about that bearhug of yours, Daexo?! Back at you!”
With those words, and the sight she was seeing play out, Ryza hesitated — she stopped short, staring in horror, her hand going over her back to get the splatgun, even though logic did not suggest it would help. But she couldn’t make it in time, not to-
In the next instant, Deros was almost in a suit as his reinforced arm wrapped around his lifelong friend, then squeezed just as one would in a hug at the chest, one arm under, one arm over a shoulder. But from the power and force of what ensnared him, of which his struggles were wholly useless, Daexo’s torso was crushed utterly just like his hand was. His chest and ribcage collapsed and snapped in an instant.
He was crushed, squashed like a toy. Then he spasmed and blood sprayed from his mouth.
For what seemed like the first time in her life, the slowing sight just withered away from Ryza, in the shock and stress of the unbelievable thing she witnessed. As it did she tripped and pitched, almost onto her face, but instead ended on her hands and knees some distance from the two.
A scream of sheer agony erupted out of her. She was completely lost to the world but to stare at his senseless, dying face, sputtering blood and eyes cloudy in a visage of her worst nightmares.
“Crying uncle already?” Deros queried, his eyes looking right into Daexo’s in triumph. “Ha! I win!” He then pitched him away, a light underhand throw, almost gentle, as one would toss someone onto a bed. But there wasn’t one, only the hard stone for the twitching, spasming body with a caved-in chest to fall upon, back-first.
Ryza rushed to her husband, half-tripping, sobbing uncontrollably, rushed to touch his cheek with her hand, to see the last of his attempted-and-failed breaths. She saw, so briefly — so very, very briefly — his eyes turn to hers somehow, focus somehow one last time on hers before there was nothing alive left in them. He died.
“Stop crying about it, Sissy!” Deros admonished with embarrassed airs. “You never cry. He’ll be up and at ‘em in a few, you know he will! He always bounces back, just like you. You two are invincible!”
When Ryza’s head turned to him, Deros had a hand out flat at her, declaring it with conviction. Belief. Even pride, twinkling in his eyes as he looked upon his heroes. There was not a hint of mockery at all.
“He’s dead,” Ryza said, her squeaking voice a foreign sound in her ears. “You killed him, Deros. You killed my husband. Your friend, your brother.”
Her brother scoffed, shaking his head at nonsense. “Don’t be ridiculous, Sissy! This is no nightmare, this is a good dream weaved into reality! Haven’t you seen what I can do? Miracles! And we’re all invincible, I promise you.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. In the hollowness that had come into her, reason had returned. He was insane. Insane and destroying everything he came into contact with, by the poison of some agonizingly persistent chaos. By all rights, he needed to be put down before he destroyed even more.
When her eyes opened, and as she refused to look at him, she considered the gun on its strap. The real bullets. She considered it and she could not really deny the need. Could not precisely make the decision not to, rationally.
But when she summoned the slowing sight and pulled the gun on him and cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger all like one motion, all like a lightning bolt, it was not the lethal one after all — it was the splatgun. She could not reason why, she did not choose by conscious decision, she just pulled and fired with intuition and screaming pain. Perhaps killing him was just impossible for her, and she was doomed. Perhaps she accepted that.
The strange bullet fired out, its tails unfurling and spinning soon after leaving the barrel, the fat egg-like thing racing to hit her brother in the center torso. But dark tendrils flared out even before it was flying, his farsense seeming to track her movements before the trigger pulled. The egg exploded on a fanned-out shield of black substance.
Ryza was already on her feet when Deros shifted the shield enough to look at her. He was offended and enraged, eyes wilder than ever. “You would try to shoot me?! Who are you, imposter?! My sister would never try to kill me!”
She was cycling another shot while he was talking, and she fired again as soon as she could, trying to aim at an angle on the ground that was left open from the shield. Instead of even making it to him, however, the egg exploded not long after leaving the barrel after hitting a sudden branching ‘arm’ thrust in front of it. The tendrils rebounded immediately and stuck to the gun, almost getting her in the process but she let it go and ripped her hands away, reeling backwards.
Multiple arms descended on her, extending from his shield and turning into blade-like whips at the end, as Deros called, “Your speed is no advantage. Die now, imposter!”
She dodged several, the blades moving at a speed almost her match, but unfortunately from too many angles. She tried to flee and create more distance, though she was uncertain what she would do with it…
There was a strange stillness for a split moment, and then she felt a ripple in the air, her eyes just catching some sort of distortion coming at her like a bullet. She just dodged the near-invisible thing from slicing through her skull, if she had not pitched away and flicked her head aside. Instead, it sliced her left eye open, and she did not see that it was a line or a whip that extended further. She tried to contort her body in time, but it sliced right through her arm at the top of the biceps like butter.
She fell away from her own sliced-off arm onto the ground, a surreal vision as it landed and rolled away on the stone. Though stinging, burning, the most bizarre sensation she could imagine, she barely felt it within the shock and adrenaline of the moment.
She fell onto her good arm, and she stared at the nub left to her as it bled on her body. She couldn’t peel her eyes away. Not until Deros walked up to stand over her. He looked strange to her eyes, for some reason. Fuzzy. Deconstituted. Perhaps injury did such. And she was looking with only one good eye.
“You know what we do to our enemies, after all…” he said distortedly, shaking his head down at her with his blurry, blurry self.
This is it. Fine. Let it be over. I’ll die with my husband, die fighting as ever… take us back in spirit to Hamellion… please…
A shot rang out. Vaguely, there was a mild sound as it seemed to pass through Deros’s chest, right at the heart. It passed right through, between the significant gaps of the faux armor, as he’d spooled it previously out for the shield. But it passed through as if through air. Through nothing at all. And that form underneath the vines, it just… rippled.
Even he seemed to notice it. He looked down at where he was shot, and his hand went to it. His hand passed through it, into himself. He blinked, then looked back to Ryza, coughing a laugh. He was blurring into an indistinct form, now, and the shield, the cloud around him seemed to be sinking, going limp. Even the frame was buckling.
“You see? Invincible, Sissy…” Deros muttered, as if from a great distance.
Then he vanished, the body and the clothes but for the cloak just dissipating like smoke, and all the brown and green and black substance suspended in the air collapsed to the ground. The cloak seemed attached loosely to the collapsed framework. Real.
Ryza glanced over, to where the shot had come from. The little girl approaching, walking across the stone. She treaded close enough to get a look at the fallen bits of… Deros. Ryza simply watched and waited.
Not reacting to the remains, the girl swiveled the gun over to Ryza, and the two locked eyes, one to two. After a few moments, the girl simply turned and walked away.
A very large part of her wanted to die. Give up, bleed out, pass out, not care, not try. Because she failed everyone that mattered to her and didn’t know what she had left to live for.
But when she closed her eyes she saw her husband, and she heard the words he’d spoken before the war and the darkest battle and paraphrased many a time since — she heard the words she spoke back to him when he needed the reminder:
‘Promise me and I’ll promise the same: if either of us die, we fight on. Promise me you’ll fight, Ryza. Just for you, because if you can, I can go out there knowing you’ll never quit, not a single damn thing. War comes and goes and we can die any minute anyway. But to fight is to fight for the last gods-be-damned drop of blood. It’s forever. So are you gonna fight or not?’
“Yes, Husband,” she muttered faintly, tears leaking from her eyes. An oath was an oath, and where it counted, they were always obedient to each other. Sacred things, to which her prideful self had agreed to yield, and vice versa.
Ryza forced herself up with her good hand, aiming to keep dirt out of her wound. She trudged over to her pack that Daexo had dropped on the stone, retrieving the first aid supplies, namely the gauze material, and bandages. She was frustrated by the lack of a second hand but managed. It was amazing how much she took such a thing for granted, and also how much she tried to move and act instinctively as though it were still there.
It was a helpfully clean, precise cut that she guessed had a fair chance at healing. She didn’t bother with antiseptic directly on the wound, just used it on her hands before utilizing the bandages.
Laying on her back, she wrapped the wound up, using her teeth as an initial second anchorage. When one bandage was applied, she wrapped another, creating a thick layer. She held the arm nub upward, aiming to utilize gravity as much as possible. Then she applied pressure through the layers, gritting her teeth from the initial pain.
She wasn’t sure how long she did it, left with little to do but run through the horrible events in her head again and again, cry over and over even as she tried not to, and feel the growing throb of the wound. After a time, blood seemed to soak through, so she applied another bandage and kept at it a while longer, then decided it had probably stopped but for oozing.
No one showed up during the time, fortunately. Occasional shouts filtered from afar. Some people were still in the village. She knew she had to go, that the surroundings were going to be hostile to her eventually, so she once more forced herself up and got to it.
Maybe check if I can get to the beasts again. Circle around. Keep in the forest, off the road. I still have my right arm… I can shoot straight. Maybe… have to keep it cocked… one damned eye… I’ll never be an archer again…
She got everything she was going to get before she had to do the last, dreadful thing. She went back to her husband’s body, knelt down, and forced herself to look at the still, blank face.
“May you soar with your ancestors on the true and high winds, Daexo With Eyes Closed. I love you. Always.” She kissed her fingers, then touched them to his lips.
Swearing to have cried the last of her tears forever, she took his most valuable things — necklace, jewelry, knife, tool kit. She put back his cothvmesi, as that was not supposed to leave the body. She stuck it in his pants and hoped the demons wouldn’t bother with it. She took out the singular red ribbon in his hair, the one she’d tied herself. He’d allow no other color. She traded her rifle for the smaller gun, since the smaller would be easier to use one-handed.
She rose, taking the final look she’d ever have of her husband. Then she turned away. Heading over to the odd remains of the phantom, she stared a while, thinking of Deros.
Why, Deros? Are you dead, too? Is that how you leave us — with ghosts of madness, murder, and destruction? Why? How could you do this to me, to us?
She grabbed the blood-spattered cloak up, taking it with her, even though part of her wanted to burn it. Perhaps she would later, perhaps not. She didn’t know. But she wasn’t surrendering it to demons.
She paused at the lip of the stone disk, thinking of Aerion. She whispered, “I hope you live, brave Azakan. I’ve come to love you like a brother on this journey. I’m sorry, but you are beyond my reach. Good luck…”
Ryza Rainfeather deliberately cast it all out of her mind as she stalked off from that terrible scene of death and mutilation, aiming to survive yet again — yet again — the worst she’d ever faced in her life, one-eyed and one-armed though she was. For herself. For all she’d been through to get there. And for Daexo.
Traveling through the alien landscape, even by road, was a horrifying endeavor. They were faster atop the beasts unless they took a jog, but then the beasts didn’t want to keep up. So atop the beasts it was. It was an excellent pace as long as one kept driving them.
Everyone became runny of the nose and had similar symptoms, including frequent sneezing, with Aerion an absolutely miserable wretch.
Persistent small clouds of tiny, fragile flies of some kind continuously pestered the beasts and them — they did not bite but made the skin itch. They had precious little survival instinct to stay away from flailing Hamaleen, as if they just had such numbers not to care about death. Most larger insects stayed away, though incidental flights and landings of strange bugs occasionally had one or another of their number crying out about it and perhaps overreacting. Sadly, this included Ryza herself.
All that could be done was to bundle up as much as possible and try to ignore it all.
The bigger fliers, however — the bird-like kind — could not be ignored: they’d soar overhead or even occasionally across the space between the forest lines to either side. The first time he saw one, Aerion literally screamed in a way she’d only heard from a dying man.
She had warned them, too. Perhaps he had thought she was exaggerating in its size. The body was close to human-sized, but with a mass of feathers, and an enormous wingspan that made them look twice as big. They had no interest in Hamaleen, though. They hunted smaller birds and other animals within the forest by all appearances.
Something to the air made Ryza almost certain it was the ‘opposite’ of high altitude thinness. It was thicker. While it was hard to separate all the discomforts to do with the air, there was an obvious offness to breathing in addition to the humidity, cloying cold, and tainted smells. And even sound was different as if everything were higher-pitched.
All in all, it worried her that the hellscape was going to kill them by a thousand cuts: combined physical and mental ones. Daexo scowled constantly in a way she knew hid fear, and Aerion seemed always on the verge of panicking. Ryza attempted to remain strong for them, but she had little doubt they could see her agitation and worry as well.
We just don’t belong here.
Nonetheless, they pressed on and suffered through it. One thing was clear: without some sort of aid, Hamaleen who were not Blessed would not fare well at all, perhaps even to death. Judging from the numbers the demons had brought through, they likely had some means to keep their slaves alive.
From Aerion’s reports, the trail was difficult to follow due to the environment and air quality issues, and it was possibly erratic, like Deros were alternating running and walking, and it was getting fainter. Their attempts to catch up over hours down the road seemed only to get them increasingly, frustratingly outpaced.
And then they saw smoke on the horizon.
They reluctantly moved off the road in their approach, but the forest cleared out and widened in either direction, effectively making a forced glade, with many strange weeds and tall grasses. They tied the animals off to let them graze a bit while they approached a fort or town deeper into the clearing.
There was a fog in the area similar to the mountain top, thicker than the persistent, mild haze of the world. But the billowing smoke was evident enough, particularly as it rose higher than the treetops.
As they made their way at a crouch through the grasses, guns in hand, Aerion murmured, “His scent is strong in the area.” His voice was rough and raw as to a sore throat and sounded like he was keeping in a cough.
“And there is a heavy residue of chaos,” Daexo added. “Probably recent.”
Ryza nodded and made hand motions to both of them, urging for silent movement, as they soon came within sight of the buildings. Or what was left of them.
It was a tiny hamlet, probably little more than a rest stop and a few farms, with an inn and significant but simple roofing, or so it appeared to Ryza from the overall collapsed state. Primarily, the stables were on fire and mostly collapsed. It was not a spectacular fire, almost entirely reduced to smoke. It didn’t surprise her in the constant humidity.
The big building she thought was an inn was merely collapsed and not smoking at all. One smaller house simply had one wall blown out and still stood, if precariously.
There were several bodies and parts of bodies scattered all over as if a storm of blades had torn through the place, apparently sparing no one present. Nonetheless, the party was cautious.
As they neared the inn, Aerion touched his nose and made an ‘around the corner’ motion. Ryza approached, and, using her abilities, did the quickest of peeks around some stone rubble blocks that might’ve been one literal corner of the building. Soon, she came around, the others following, all pointing their weapons.
A demonman was laying with his back propped up against the wall, his armor split open as if by a giant singular claw. His helmet had been removed, though it was nowhere to be seen, nor did he have a weapon. One hand seemed to be pressed to his gut, where his innards were half spilling out… he was literally holding them in, and blood was everywhere. He was clearly dying. His other hand was apparently propped on a rock, a piece of charcoal in it.
Ryza and the others approached slowly while pointing their guns, and the man watched placidly.
“Come to finish me off?” he asked weakly. “Might as well. Can’t move much.”
“Not specifically,” Ryza answered. “What happened here? Have you seen another dressed as us?”
He stared at her as if he didn’t hear for a long spell, a mild, tired grimace on his face, and she wondered if he’d die or pass out. But he stirred suddenly, then shrugged. “All I saw was death. A shadow. Like you?” He shook his head, then very weakly muttered, “Maybe…”
“Can you describe what you saw?”
He was clearly struggling to maintain consciousness. “Destruction… waves… cutting through everything… like the Ordenai — like a pack of them… thought it was war, but th-... that’s…” He shook his head, trailing off, his head dropping slowly in the daze of blood loss.
“Stay with us, warrior!”
He jerked his head up, grimacing. “Kemi! Kemi… please, you must…” He looked down at his free hand and lifted it, which caused him to pitch over sideways with a thud and a deep groan. But he held out the bloody thing that was in his shaking hand. “Please…”
His mouth still moved for a while, but no words came out, and the fire of his eyes soon died. In his hand was a blood-streaked piece of parchment, charcoal apparently written on the front. ‘Kemi I love you! Sorr’ written crudely, the material heavily stained with blood. Ryza took out a cloth to wipe it.
“This sounds very bad,” Aerion commented. “He’s being hunted by someone or something that can do this?”
“Was there some kind of fight here?” Daexo said, looking around. “Or Deros was running for his life. We’d best keep on this damn trail. We’re getting closer. To hell with this graveyard.”
“Yes,” Ryza said as she checked the fallen man for anything identifying. A necklace with a silver star. She took it, then looked at Aerion. “Which way does the trail go?”
He pointed, which was not the direction of the animals.
“Follow it,” Ryza commanded, “and I’ll get the beasts and catch up.”
Ryza made her way back through the haze, going by memory and landmark shapes, moving swiftly, though keeping a firm eye out for surprises. Between looking one way and another, she jerked her head and pointed the weapon as she caught movement.
Stalking slowly, she made out a shape, which she almost fired on immediately. Instead, she continued drawing near. The shape turned once toward her, just the head — a small girl, with an uncanny resemblance to Ellayone. Deros’s dead sister.
“Ell-” Ryza began in shock, but like lightning, the figure turned and just disappeared like a phantom.
Terrified truly for the first time in forever, Ryza nonetheless made herself walk over to where the spirit had been. There was no trace, not even on the ground, of any passage of feet or shoes.
Haunted, Ryza made her way to the pack animals, finding them happily grazing away on the tall grasses. She collected them to go, to which they groaned a bit but complied well enough. Looking every which way in paranoia, Ryza followed after the men, noting the actual road seemed to split. The hamlet was at a crossroads.
She caught up to them just as they were coming upon the road cutting through the dense forest, sparser grasses and weeds, and smaller trees just along the border. There were often lines of cut forest from the presumable work of lumberjacks, keeping trees from intruding too close to the road. At least it made the insects less thick.
Momentarily, Ryza arranged to speak to Daexo privately, trailing behind and whispering, “I saw… a ghost, husband. Ellayone.”
He looked at her sharply, but soon shook his head, frowning. “No. It’s the chaos, Ryza-”
“What’s the chaos?” Aerion called from ahead.
Daexo made an annoyed sound and called back, “Mind your own business, damn you!”
Ryza placed a withering glare on her husband. He always had a problem speaking quietly.
Leaning in to whisper properly finally, Daexo said, “You saw no such thing. Just the mind playing tricks in the midst of madness. It was thick there. Glad we’re out of it.”
Ryza swallowed and nodded, wanting to believe him.
Ghosts in this world. Perhaps we have died and this is the afterlife we trapped ourselves in.
They continued down the road, hopping up on the beasts and driving them as hard as they could, fearful of what could happen to Deros and urgent to help, though there was equal dread for what it would take. So long as it was a man, though, Ryza put her hope in a bullet being as good as anything.
Strange to no longer be an archer when you possess such a weapon as this. I don’t like it. Hopefully, there is a day to come when an arrow will be good enough again.
The nigh endless day continued down the road, all of them driving through tiredness into their second wind, or possibly third, knowing the urgency and also knowing sleep would be difficult to come by in a world that itched as soon as you stopped moving and doing something. She didn’t relish closing her eyes in hell.
The fast star came and went, came and went, every couple of hours. The slow star did finally seem to perceptibly move, gradually falling down to a height similar to the giant ringed orb. The latter did not seem to move… or it did only in reference to their own. They seemed to mostly move toward it, though not dead on. She wasn’t sure if it had risen slightly. Maybe.
Smoke on the horizon came again, this time in greater amounts. They first came upon a torn-apart wagon on the road surrounded by bodies of people and animals alike sliced into ribbons and chunks, blood staining the road. They looked all too ordinary in dress, like simple farmers or workers. The wagon had all sorts of foodstuffs scattered all over, mainly strange-looking roots and vegetables.
The party didn’t tarry over it. Everyone was slaughtered and it had been done quickly. It was hard to tell if there was any resistance, but it seemed doubtful.
“His scent is getting stronger!” Aerion called.
Hurrying onward, they began to see the signs of a village on fire, as well as the answering smells of burning wood. A few were screaming in the distance. Ryza hurriedly tied the shying beasts to a fence post and burdened her husband with her most important supply pack — an arrangement they’d conducted for her agility more times than she could count. She kept one of the splatguns in a holster at her back, in case it was needed.
Ryza made a shushing motion with her hand as they moved out to enter the village. They’d need the element of surprise to help.
At least the fog may be a benefit here.
They used the cover of buildings on one side that had not been burned, watching for movement, but most had obviously fled or hid, and what Ryza did see were just a few running shadows in the distance and the fog. Some of the buildings were damaged similar to what they’d seen before… cut down and collapsed, or partially so.
When they were passing through an alleyway, Ryza froze, as someone standing perfectly still was there, standing by a doorway, gun propped up on a barrel pointed right at her.
It was an adolescent girl with a dirty face, staring placidly her way — thankfully, she looked nothing like Ellayone. Slightly boyish, with a short shock of hair, she nonetheless seemed to have on skirts with boots, and she had on an oversized, thick jacket as if borrowed from a mother or big sister perhaps. The gun was cocked and ready to fire, her stance one of someone who knew what they were doing despite her age. A girl of the frontier.
Ryza had already half raised her gun that way by instinct but was not foolish enough to raise it all the way. She did take hold of the slowing sight, in readiness. When the men saw and began reacting, she made a hissing sound to forestall them. Maybe they underestimated the girl, the form they saw, but Ryza did not underestimate what she saw in the girl’s eyes. Eyes that had encountered death and accepted the new reality. Eyes she’d seen in a mirror.
Despite the discomfort of speech while in the trance, Ryza asked, “Do you know what’s happened here, girl? What did you see?”
Not entirely unexpectedly, the girl did not answer, nor even react. She kept the gun pointed and waited. Ryza understood. ‘Keep moving or get shot.’
Nodding slightly, Ryza said, “Let’s move on, boys. Let’s see if we can end this madness.”
She turned and continued on past the alley, peeling her eyes away from those disturbing twin orbs of her youth and focusing on what was in front of her. Daexo and Aerion followed.
There was an explosive crack, then a great racket that had to be a destroyed building, so cautiously they approached. They saw no one else in the fog — evidently, everyone knew what to avoid, by now.
Rubble and brick and dirt had been swept aside from a great, circular, stone slab in pristine condition, dug out perhaps a meter deep in the ground. It was otherwise plain except for two additional circular indentations carving it — one halfway in its radius, and the other making a small circle perhaps a meter in radius in the center.
Right in the center was a figure, one Ryza almost put a bullet in as soon as she saw it, assuming it was the one responsible for all the death, and its back turned. Above and around the figure, there was another kind of haze hovering, like a swirling dust storm. Her finger almost pulled the trigger. But she saw a familiar fur cloak on its shoulders-
“Deros!” Aerion cried out with every emotion at once, from the lip of the circle, and hopped down to the platform, tossing his rifle to the ground. Ryza for her part was too stunned to react.
The figure turned, and there was Deros, horribly different and the same as who she knew all at once. His eyes were wild and flagrantly mad, his countenance a twisted, too-disturbed grin like he was seeing a joke all around that he was far too amused by. Stretching across his body were something like tiny brown and gray-green vines or veins, enshrouding him like a poor facsimile of armor, but at his head was a black crown with two horns stretching up, reminiscent of the demons.
“Oh, you’ve come,” Deros said casually with a queer, mocking tone. “Sister. Brothers. Ha! That’s just grand. If you’ve come to help…”
Aerion had been half-caught rushing to his friend with tears in his eyes, Daexo trailing behind out of concern for Aerion, muttering something. But Aerion did stop short, finally stunned by what he saw. “Deros…” Aerion began, looking around. “Of course we want to help, but… what…?” He trailed off and gestured in confusion.
“Aerion-” Ryza began, her own voice breaking. And she could not break. Even with impossible, unthinkable things coming into realization about all they’d experienced that they now had to face as something Deros had likely done, she had to keep her head, because it was clear he was dangerous. Chaos had touched him.
Daexo had grabbed Aerion’s arm, muttering, “Stop, fool!” His face was hard and pained, eying his dear friend ahead. Aerion pulled his arm free in annoyance but didn’t move closer.
Deros was grinning at Aerion warmly. He clapped his hands together. “Perfect! Finally, someone bloody agreeable! Most don’t cooperate. Or just get in the way.” The last was like a sudden mood swing, muttered balefully with his eyes slanting away. The cloud around him swirled thicker.
But he took a breath. Then he eyed Ryza, and he chirped a laugh. Gave his most charming, boyish grin, recalling to her his youth, as it always did. “Why are you over there pointing a weapon at me, Sissy? Trying to bully me again?” Teasing, playful.
Ryza swallowed a lump in her throat, her stomach as sick as she’d ever felt it. He hasn’t called me Sissy in an age. But she let her rifle go limp on its sling because it didn’t matter. She couldn’t shoot her own brother.
She showed her hands and tried to make light with a shrug, though she knew it was stiff. “Just being silly. Deros, look, we should-”
Her brother burst into riotous laughter with his whole body rocking backward, hands still clasped together. “Yes, yes! Sissy is hilarious!” He mimed something that must be her expression suddenly, looking downward, saying in comical feminine tones, “What do we do to our enemies, little Deros?” And he made a show with his hand like he was patting a child’s head.
Then Deros gestured with his hands out wide and smiled big, full of mirth and smugness. He didn’t finish, didn’t give the answer, but she knew. She knew and she regretted the words, right then.
We destroy them.
“Deros, please, we-”
“We,” Deros interrupted, “have a task to attend to. Aerion: you’ve volunteered, which is splendid.” He looked down at the stone he was standing on and his arms folded together so one hand rubbed his chin. “I’ve zeroed in on the beacon, it’s down here, the resonance here brings it fully into proper resolution at this very point, but I can’t bloody go to it for some reason! It resists me! I-I can’t lock on to myself! It slides off into nowhere. So. I need you to go down there for me. There must be something to- to activate, or… something.”
Aerion was staring, and he did not respond for a long moment. Then his eyes slid from Deros’s eyes and he shook his head. He was haunted and disturbed, like the rest, but in him, there was utter defeat. It broke him to see Deros like that. “I… how? There are no stairs…”
Deros smiled and rolled his eyes to the heavens. “Not stairs, you dungbrain! This-”
There was no gesture, but Ryza’s hair stood on end as she felt makar’osa use. Between one horrible flash and the next, a sphere of warped air, of blurry distortion surrounded Aerion then was gone. As it disappeared, so did Aerion.
“Aerion!” Ryza called in alarm, looking around in panic for him — uselessly— soon dropping down to the stone finally.
With a roar, Daexo stormed forward, growling, “What in hells did you do to him, Deros?!”
Deros stared right at the coming Daexo without concern or fear, pointing downward. “I sent him down, deep, deep, deep. Like I said, to the beacon. Now back off.”
Daexo did not. “Bring him back right skrofing now, then, you crazy pólo!”
Ryza began moving quickly toward them, calling, “Husband, stop! Get back!”
It was no use. He was furious, scared, frustrated, absolutely crushed inside, and there was only one way he knew how to react, how his emotions responded. Physically. His farsense flared out and he rushed to grab hold of Deros at the speed of a blink, which Ryza knew would be with intent to subdue. Shake the sense into his friend, perhaps, or wrestle compliance out of him, even with a marred hand.
Deros seemed to take it in stride. With a sporting grin, he dodged and cried with throaty glee, “Wrestling, is it?! You won’t win this time, oldie!”
For the first time, Ryza distinctly felt someone else’s close-by farsense touch her skin, even felt it within her as if a thick syrup exploded out of Deros and coated reality in every direction. She felt like she was a swallowed-up babe in something vast and terribly beyond her. And beyond her husband. She was running — sprinting — with the slowing sense flaring, but she was entirely too far to stop an exchange.
Daexo’s good hand almost closed around one of Deros’s own, but the great cloud around her brother surged down and down at speeds she barely tracked, and seemed to reinforce that armor lattice-work like a skeletal frame. It surged to enshroud a hand and formed another, bigger one overtop it, slipping right in to grip Daexo’s fingers in a lock with a far superior substance than flesh.
That hand gripped and crushed with ease, making bones snap as it turned a wrist. Simultaneously Deros moved in over Daexo’s other arm, a black framework of a body slamming into a real one and grappling. Both were grappled, but one was superior. “How about that bearhug of yours, Daexo?! Back at you!”
With those words, and the sight she was seeing play out, Ryza hesitated — she stopped short, staring in horror, her hand going over her back to get the splatgun, even though logic did not suggest it would help. But she couldn’t make it in time, not to-
In the next instant, Deros was almost in a suit as his reinforced arm wrapped around his lifelong friend, then squeezed just as one would in a hug at the chest, one arm under, one arm over a shoulder. But from the power and force of what ensnared him, of which his struggles were wholly useless, Daexo’s torso was crushed utterly just like his hand was. His chest and ribcage collapsed and snapped in an instant.
He was crushed, squashed like a toy. Then he spasmed and blood sprayed from his mouth.
For what seemed like the first time in her life, the slowing sight just withered away from Ryza, in the shock and stress of the unbelievable thing she witnessed. As it did she tripped and pitched, almost onto her face, but instead ended on her hands and knees some distance from the two.
A scream of sheer agony erupted out of her. She was completely lost to the world but to stare at his senseless, dying face, sputtering blood and eyes cloudy in a visage of her worst nightmares.
“Crying uncle already?” Deros queried, his eyes looking right into Daexo’s in triumph. “Ha! I win!” He then pitched him away, a light underhand throw, almost gentle, as one would toss someone onto a bed. But there wasn’t one, only the hard stone for the twitching, spasming body with a caved-in chest to fall upon, back-first.
Ryza rushed to her husband, half-tripping, sobbing uncontrollably, rushed to touch his cheek with her hand, to see the last of his attempted-and-failed breaths. She saw, so briefly — so very, very briefly — his eyes turn to hers somehow, focus somehow one last time on hers before there was nothing alive left in them. He died.
“Stop crying about it, Sissy!” Deros admonished with embarrassed airs. “You never cry. He’ll be up and at ‘em in a few, you know he will! He always bounces back, just like you. You two are invincible!”
When Ryza’s head turned to him, Deros had a hand out flat at her, declaring it with conviction. Belief. Even pride, twinkling in his eyes as he looked upon his heroes. There was not a hint of mockery at all.
“He’s dead,” Ryza said, her squeaking voice a foreign sound in her ears. “You killed him, Deros. You killed my husband. Your friend, your brother.”
Her brother scoffed, shaking his head at nonsense. “Don’t be ridiculous, Sissy! This is no nightmare, this is a good dream weaved into reality! Haven’t you seen what I can do? Miracles! And we’re all invincible, I promise you.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. In the hollowness that had come into her, reason had returned. He was insane. Insane and destroying everything he came into contact with, by the poison of some agonizingly persistent chaos. By all rights, he needed to be put down before he destroyed even more.
When her eyes opened, and as she refused to look at him, she considered the gun on its strap. The real bullets. She considered it and she could not really deny the need. Could not precisely make the decision not to, rationally.
But when she summoned the slowing sight and pulled the gun on him and cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger all like one motion, all like a lightning bolt, it was not the lethal one after all — it was the splatgun. She could not reason why, she did not choose by conscious decision, she just pulled and fired with intuition and screaming pain. Perhaps killing him was just impossible for her, and she was doomed. Perhaps she accepted that.
The strange bullet fired out, its tails unfurling and spinning soon after leaving the barrel, the fat egg-like thing racing to hit her brother in the center torso. But dark tendrils flared out even before it was flying, his farsense seeming to track her movements before the trigger pulled. The egg exploded on a fanned-out shield of black substance.
Ryza was already on her feet when Deros shifted the shield enough to look at her. He was offended and enraged, eyes wilder than ever. “You would try to shoot me?! Who are you, imposter?! My sister would never try to kill me!”
She was cycling another shot while he was talking, and she fired again as soon as she could, trying to aim at an angle on the ground that was left open from the shield. Instead of even making it to him, however, the egg exploded not long after leaving the barrel after hitting a sudden branching ‘arm’ thrust in front of it. The tendrils rebounded immediately and stuck to the gun, almost getting her in the process but she let it go and ripped her hands away, reeling backwards.
Multiple arms descended on her, extending from his shield and turning into blade-like whips at the end, as Deros called, “Your speed is no advantage. Die now, imposter!”
She dodged several, the blades moving at a speed almost her match, but unfortunately from too many angles. She tried to flee and create more distance, though she was uncertain what she would do with it…
There was a strange stillness for a split moment, and then she felt a ripple in the air, her eyes just catching some sort of distortion coming at her like a bullet. She just dodged the near-invisible thing from slicing through her skull, if she had not pitched away and flicked her head aside. Instead, it sliced her left eye open, and she did not see that it was a line or a whip that extended further. She tried to contort her body in time, but it sliced right through her arm at the top of the biceps like butter.
She fell away from her own sliced-off arm onto the ground, a surreal vision as it landed and rolled away on the stone. Though stinging, burning, the most bizarre sensation she could imagine, she barely felt it within the shock and adrenaline of the moment.
She fell onto her good arm, and she stared at the nub left to her as it bled on her body. She couldn’t peel her eyes away. Not until Deros walked up to stand over her. He looked strange to her eyes, for some reason. Fuzzy. Deconstituted. Perhaps injury did such. And she was looking with only one good eye.
“You know what we do to our enemies, after all…” he said distortedly, shaking his head down at her with his blurry, blurry self.
This is it. Fine. Let it be over. I’ll die with my husband, die fighting as ever… take us back in spirit to Hamellion… please…
A shot rang out. Vaguely, there was a mild sound as it seemed to pass through Deros’s chest, right at the heart. It passed right through, between the significant gaps of the faux armor, as he’d spooled it previously out for the shield. But it passed through as if through air. Through nothing at all. And that form underneath the vines, it just… rippled.
Even he seemed to notice it. He looked down at where he was shot, and his hand went to it. His hand passed through it, into himself. He blinked, then looked back to Ryza, coughing a laugh. He was blurring into an indistinct form, now, and the shield, the cloud around him seemed to be sinking, going limp. Even the frame was buckling.
“You see? Invincible, Sissy…” Deros muttered, as if from a great distance.
Then he vanished, the body and the clothes but for the cloak just dissipating like smoke, and all the brown and green and black substance suspended in the air collapsed to the ground. The cloak seemed attached loosely to the collapsed framework. Real.
Ryza glanced over, to where the shot had come from. The little girl approaching, walking across the stone. She treaded close enough to get a look at the fallen bits of… Deros. Ryza simply watched and waited.
Not reacting to the remains, the girl swiveled the gun over to Ryza, and the two locked eyes, one to two. After a few moments, the girl simply turned and walked away.
A very large part of her wanted to die. Give up, bleed out, pass out, not care, not try. Because she failed everyone that mattered to her and didn’t know what she had left to live for.
But when she closed her eyes she saw her husband, and she heard the words he’d spoken before the war and the darkest battle and paraphrased many a time since — she heard the words she spoke back to him when he needed the reminder:
‘Promise me and I’ll promise the same: if either of us die, we fight on. Promise me you’ll fight, Ryza. Just for you, because if you can, I can go out there knowing you’ll never quit, not a single damn thing. War comes and goes and we can die any minute anyway. But to fight is to fight for the last gods-be-damned drop of blood. It’s forever. So are you gonna fight or not?’
“Yes, Husband,” she muttered faintly, tears leaking from her eyes. An oath was an oath, and where it counted, they were always obedient to each other. Sacred things, to which her prideful self had agreed to yield, and vice versa.
Ryza forced herself up with her good hand, aiming to keep dirt out of her wound. She trudged over to her pack that Daexo had dropped on the stone, retrieving the first aid supplies, namely the gauze material, and bandages. She was frustrated by the lack of a second hand but managed. It was amazing how much she took such a thing for granted, and also how much she tried to move and act instinctively as though it were still there.
It was a helpfully clean, precise cut that she guessed had a fair chance at healing. She didn’t bother with antiseptic directly on the wound, just used it on her hands before utilizing the bandages.
Laying on her back, she wrapped the wound up, using her teeth as an initial second anchorage. When one bandage was applied, she wrapped another, creating a thick layer. She held the arm nub upward, aiming to utilize gravity as much as possible. Then she applied pressure through the layers, gritting her teeth from the initial pain.
She wasn’t sure how long she did it, left with little to do but run through the horrible events in her head again and again, cry over and over even as she tried not to, and feel the growing throb of the wound. After a time, blood seemed to soak through, so she applied another bandage and kept at it a while longer, then decided it had probably stopped but for oozing.
No one showed up during the time, fortunately. Occasional shouts filtered from afar. Some people were still in the village. She knew she had to go, that the surroundings were going to be hostile to her eventually, so she once more forced herself up and got to it.
Maybe check if I can get to the beasts again. Circle around. Keep in the forest, off the road. I still have my right arm… I can shoot straight. Maybe… have to keep it cocked… one damned eye… I’ll never be an archer again…
She got everything she was going to get before she had to do the last, dreadful thing. She went back to her husband’s body, knelt down, and forced herself to look at the still, blank face.
“May you soar with your ancestors on the true and high winds, Daexo With Eyes Closed. I love you. Always.” She kissed her fingers, then touched them to his lips.
Swearing to have cried the last of her tears forever, she took his most valuable things — necklace, jewelry, knife, tool kit. She put back his cothvmesi, as that was not supposed to leave the body. She stuck it in his pants and hoped the demons wouldn’t bother with it. She took out the singular red ribbon in his hair, the one she’d tied herself. He’d allow no other color. She traded her rifle for the smaller gun, since the smaller would be easier to use one-handed.
She rose, taking the final look she’d ever have of her husband. Then she turned away. Heading over to the odd remains of the phantom, she stared a while, thinking of Deros.
Why, Deros? Are you dead, too? Is that how you leave us — with ghosts of madness, murder, and destruction? Why? How could you do this to me, to us?
She grabbed the blood-spattered cloak up, taking it with her, even though part of her wanted to burn it. Perhaps she would later, perhaps not. She didn’t know. But she wasn’t surrendering it to demons.
She paused at the lip of the stone disk, thinking of Aerion. She whispered, “I hope you live, brave Azakan. I’ve come to love you like a brother on this journey. I’m sorry, but you are beyond my reach. Good luck…”
Ryza Rainfeather deliberately cast it all out of her mind as she stalked off from that terrible scene of death and mutilation, aiming to survive yet again — yet again — the worst she’d ever faced in her life, one-eyed and one-armed though she was. For herself. For all she’d been through to get there. And for Daexo.
