For my Dad, whom I can attest is the reason for all the great things I have done.

“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.”

(Joel 2:28 ESV)

Special thanks to Steven and his wife Jazz, and Amelia.

Thank you as well to my brother David for keeping me employed while authoring this novel, my family for supporting me, the two future children I staked reality upon, Theo and to be determined, my friends, and to anyone whom I sent this novel’s manuscript to before publishing it online or discussed pre-novel theory with, thank you very much.

And my largest thanks goes to Sarah, my sassafras, my golden wheat, my emerald grove, for assisting me on all fronts while authoring this novel. As well as for the beautiful cover art she painted for us.

PREFACE

Journey is a novel written on the premise of- ‘what could be accomplished in nine months?’. Now, it did take me less than that to sit down and actually write this novel, but that means I still have a few months to spare. Some of what I had realized going into it, and partially halfway through it, was that this novel had not begun when I started drafting it, but before too. Paulo Coelho wrote, (and, I’m paraphrasing here) that his novel ‘The Alchemist’-’s first draft only took him fourteen days to write, and that his story was- "already written in my soul"..

This novel’s first draft may have taken me longer, however I much attribute what he said about his novel in my life, and in why I wrote this novel.

‘Journey’, the land and the novel, are there to dare you to go out and explore, dare you to go out and find that story and write within your soul, even so that you may document it when you arrive back home. As I had, as he had finally sat down to do as well.

 And much at heart, ‘Journey’, is an allegorical novel, one that I wrote that much attributes some of my past into it abstracted, the story that was already written in my soul to begin with, why I went out to begin with, and why I had to return. But, truly, this novel’s story is not my own, it is the characters’. My view upon their story may enlighten things within me, but it is their sacred voice that shines through in all of the novel itself, just as it might for anyone else-

I just merely discovered it along the way.

Not only can a novel be birthed in nine months, but a life. A life to live, a newborn life, or even a reborn one. One I pray every one who reads this novel may find.. or maybe they could just revel in the tales of old adventures, because also at the heart of this novel, is the propensity to listen and revel in another’s adventure, to have fun, as much as your own adventure as you see..

For myself, the adventures I hope to hear in your takes on what the story means to you, because it means something different to every one of us that seeks out, and finds. So I ask, in the spirit of this novel, to listen to other’s takes upon the elements of this story and to respect them as your common man.

I hope that everyone that wishes to take this journey that happens within this novel do so carefully (whether it be these character's or yours after the fact).

This novel may be short, but I dare say that the themes can be deep, and I pray for all of you that may go to those depths to help any other that may be there. And try to keep it simple.

I also request if you find yourself in a space you can not handle the themes that you take a break, just because the novel is short does not mean you have to finish it all in one sitting.

But otherwise,

Enjoy the ride.

JOURNEY

Chapter 1

Renewal

The landing ship can barely hold all of us, yet that was just a secondary thought of what’s to come.

The jungles of this land only grow greater than my imagination could have imagined while we drift closer towards it, even if this ship sank I would find a way to swim to its beach- pack, weaponry, and all; not out of survival, but out of my pure desire to see what wonders are within it. It’s just like they told everyone, in story or in song, but it is more than they said, more than they could ever write in poems or of epics.

Us Knights discovered this land (that we named, Journey) only thirty odd years ago and settled in it in about fifteen. That’s about three decades of curiosity to fill the new youth within our nation- whether that be the kids, like me, who grew up knowing Journey, or the youth that fills old men’s hearts with the prospect of something new and interesting. It took fifteen years for it to become reality that we could go out beyond our seas and into the horizon of what we know to then come back with what we didn’t have before. The knowledge of the unknown land, the prospect of a settler or a pioneer, the boots of a journeyman. Men like on this boat?- well, not as much. The only man who has entertained my adventurous yearning is Montyr, a soldier who has been on-and-off enlisted since he was of age. And that’s about all he’s related to me, beyond his name and the half-toned silent-aired affirmations of my wonder. He did never seem irritated by any of what I said, unlike the other men, so he must have been okay with it. Every man here seems to have some sort of idea or story within their mind of what Journey is for them. The mysterious new land such as here always tends to mean something in someone’s mind, most aptly ambition. Based on their annoyance over mine, they did not want Journey to be what I wanted it to be.

No matter now, it’s easier to ignore with the lapping of each wave towards the shoreline.

The beachfront operations, Obsidian’s Landing, was the beachhead to the Wyvern’s Path, the area in which we were slowly expanding into the forests and wilderness of Journey. And speaking of the wyverns, they are half of the reason why I expected this boat to sink. The people were enough weight on the landing ships but the weight of the wyverns were that of ten men, maybe more- and we had enough men to begin with anyway. The landing division’s and my bubbling stomach is heightened with the riding beasts steeping the inertia of the up and down of the water, or maybe we were just nervous for what’s to come.

I always wonder how the wyverns always seemed content with the amount of heavy chains and shackles we harnessed them with. They always seemed obliged and considerate to us, most times without reproof or disciplining, and they always helped in so many different manners of our lives. Friends. It’s like our kind and their kind were best friends. They were noble dogs to us, fiercely loyal, admirable by everyone. I had never ridden one, nor had I really known one, but they allowed us to ride with them and connect with them and they always stuck around. Yet, they were like house cats in the way they usually evaded an intimate touch to those that were unknown; their scales were delicate to them. If you were honorable enough in their eyes, and you respected their ways, they would allow you to touch their scales and not suffer any negative consequence, so I always wondered- if they were so delicate, if they stayed around of their own volition, if they worked with us so closely anyway, why did they allow us to shackle them and why did we even feel the need ? Truth be told, the matter was souring my mood, so I stopped thinking about it.

Chapter 2

Arriving at Obsidian’s Landing

We were the second boat of the landing party to arrive at Main Operations. The men preferred to call it Obsidian’s Landing instead of Main Operations because of the obsidian-shaping on the outside of the wooden palisades. I had never seen it been done in person before, but from what I’ve heard from other people back in the fatherland is that the wyverns breathe their fire upon fortress walls or buildings after the men drench the wood or stone in a cold water solution. The process would take days to do correctly, but the benefits were all the more worth it. The reaction between the water and the thick magma fire encrusts the walls in this glassy sheer obsidian that the wyverns then shape like a potter does clay, by continually blowing their fire upon it. They always made it sheer and deep, some parts of it were even five feet in depth from the walls they were encased upon; some points of it you could see deep into it like it were a gemstone, and typically they had sharp points like spears at the bottom to dissuade anything further from climbing the sides. It is very beautiful in honesty when all is said and done. Shows how much they really do know despite being a beast of the land.

..

The docks were wobbly and busy with foot traffic and the offloading of cargo- so I stepped onto the dirt landing outside of them. I look up to witness that the tallest trees are even taller than I had estimated from the water, ranging from about ten to maybe even a hundred times taller than the walls of the palisades (which were as tall as five men) and the widest of them were about as thick as an inn to as thick as a town square. They surrounded the camp and the tree canopy made a window into the sky where our camp was and where the trees weren’t.

It was an interesting feeling to feel so small surrounded by them. I see why when people told stories of this place the stories of how big the trees were was the most common among them. It was like they were living conscious beings looking down upon us. They judge me like angels would a mortal in the stories of old. They each feel like their own guardians and that they each have their own personality or soul. It feels like they watch (or rather, they have watched) over our camp here, not allowing any being to come in and hurt us. I see why we still reinforced the walls, but it was nice feeling safer in their presence. If anything they were literally our walls too, being made of wood. There were smaller trees around too, a bit larger than normal sized, they were most certainly the trees used for the walls. I didn’t know how they must have survived with how dark some parts of the forest looked underneath the denser of the canopy. The larger trees around must have helped them somehow within their root system.

Within the palisades of the headquarters were many more tents and people than I had envisioned. From what I have heard, there were other settlements in the area but there were probably upwards to fifty thousand people here now in the camp alone from how many tents there were and about six hundred that are still sailing to the beach from the main ships our landing parties had ventured on. Maybe more. I guess I thought this was more of an exclusive mission than perhaps it is..

-

“Second Company! Front-and-center!”

Well it seems my attentions should be elsewhere.

The men of Second Company (myself included) get in line formation just outside of the docks away from the horses, wyverns, and men that were unloading the cargo.

The man who yelled the command is looking with a furrowed face upon an unraveled scroll, he wears a standard issue officer’s armor when in camp- a steel cuirass, unhelmeted, no celebrated regalia since we were in camp and in peacetime.

He furrows his brow further with a menacing smoldering fury. He crumples it and shoves it to a man to his side as he looks up to us.

“Today Knights, you have become more than men. From the moment you woke up this morning; in the cold crisp air of when you pissed into your chamber buckets or with the wind of the ocean!”

Some of the men laugh as he continues speaking, he doesn’t lose a breath between.

“-from the moment when you began polishing your silver and the tips of your dicks! -from the moment when you armed yourselves in steel and put your boots upon the sand of Journey! - You became pioneers.”

The officer began pacing slowly from end to end of the line.

“You were dirt before coming here ! But with the sea spray of the mother sea’s harsh waves and the sweep of Journey’s blowing wind that has scintillated upon your disgusting faces, you have become salted !”

I didn’t even think a man like him would know the word ‘scintiliated’.

Maybe I should check my bias’.

“..You have become like salty mud, her hands will either shape you and heat you to become hardened men or will crush you down at any step with her fat and leathery fist!”

He stops at the end of the line, pauses for a moment, and then turns back to pace again. “And you will respect her, for she is a maneater !- as much as a deeply seeded soul, and if you don’t respect her…”

He stops suddenly in his stride and turns his body slightly to look at us with an agape eye and patronizing look.

“I- will-kill-you.. myself.”

A tense second goes by, but then he grins with a sarcasm painted on his face.

Some of the men laugh. He reprimands the laughs by pointing to some of the men and drawing his thumb across his neck.

“You will be nothing but her next meal, or even her plaything, and..”

He trails into more of his speech, but I notice something. Where he had drawn his thumb across his neck there was this large scar that ran from the base of his neck up the side of it, to the very top of his head.

I couldn’t tell if it was some old war wound or not, but it was terrifying me. I was fading out of myself. I felt like this a couple of times before, like in my childhood, a dense dark night, a friend would be unafraid of the stalkers of the night, but I would be a victim of this intense paranoia, or.. or rather some sort of panic.

I would be anxious to my bones, unable to act, frozen in fear: like I was just waiting there for something to come and end me, then and there, right where I was standing. But he was facing that unknown threat, the unknowable dancing shadows of the trees around and had become the terror he expected within it.

I was always more afraid of people than monsters or ghosts, even then, he was the beast that I was afraid of. Not whatever was within the forest, or behind a tree, or deep in a shadow- but what he had to become in the preparation. That was worse.

I was sure that that scar came from Journey, and whatever gave it to him, was now dead.

“Dismissed !”

I awoke from my hypnosis.

I saluted along with the other men and went on about my mission.

Chapter 3

The great flood was coming.

Crimson life- now orange tears.

There were too many now, no- wait.

The doe slowly connected yellow eyes within brush with the death of her young heart.

The moss and grass of the forest floor

breathes- my lungs expand, deflate.

She wasn’t innocent, yet she couldn’t escape.

Sucking mouth. Hissing breath. Deep in the trance. I exhaled intently.

I was too deep in the wrong direction- this isn’t what I needed to see.

Do you not reconcile with demons ?

..

I was there now. The doe. She had seen many of the new-men that had come long ago.

Maybe two cycles ago. I had to have more to know.

It’s always sour.

That much is true.

He bites back into the carcass. The bones were devoured. Bending. Snapped.

I was losing myself, but I had to go deeper.

The fur around his face was disgustingly wet with blood.

I had to turn further into the lust but not drown into sickening madness.

I’m losing myself again.

His eyes filled over with black oil as he gasped deep living breath.

Their dogs were hunting her pack, no new-men in sight.

They must have abandoned the area a halfstar ago.

Couldn’t make sure. It was time to stop.

Finally, rest.

Shaken, but rest.

A fallen branch snaps.

A new-man.

Our hearts accelerate,

His eyes are like the doe’s.

He knows of yellow eyes within brush.

He knows of fear.

Chapter 4

The Wyvern’s Way

One thing they don’t tell you in books is how abrasive the sound and feeling of steel is when struck on steel. It makes my skin crawl, it’s like when you scratch your fingernails on something coarse like a whetstone or if you were to grate your teeth upon icicles- it sends such an interesting chill up the spine but is so perverse you can’t keep doing it or else you might lose some deep part of yourself that’s unseen. And doing something like that normally you’d want to stop, but there was something so intriguing about the way that vibration shoots through your system. And, that instinctually you cringe or flail your head as if a horse does as they bray. And, the perverse thing is that even when your body tells you to stop, it makes it feel as though you are scratching at some proverbial itch. I wondered what exactly that was or why if it wasn’t something I enjoyed doing deep down I knew that it was true that doing that was an intriguing feeling all the same. Such a weird but interesting phenomena.

The swords’ edges cutting into each other is that sound, that feeling. But too much for me. Even once and awhile I will grate my teeth on icicles or scratch at coarse stone just curious to see if that feeling is still there, and for what true reason do I scratch it ? I don’t know. I think it’s hilarious I don’t understand it, yet it still happens, yet I still do it. My curiosity is always moored from it when it comes up in my mind from a random moment in time, ‘Is it still there ?’, I always wondered when holding icicles or seeing whetstone.. but never the sword. Whatever that feeling I had in that, just hurt.

While scratching whetstones or scraping ice on my teeth is how I’d test that weird feeling in my body (even the mere thought would sometimes get me)- the sound and feeling of swords to no avail makes my stomach turn and fills me with disgust while still cocktailed with that weird phenomenon.

If I were to scratch at that whetstone or a coarse metal all day I would not come close to the level of disgust that the swords cutting into each other made me feel. It’s disgust with the weirdest, most silly form of gluttony.

I fear the man that wields his sword and lacks that feeling. I guess that means all that's left of what type of a soldier you are is either the man who itches metal on metal or the man whose stomach churns at the thought. Knowing neither of that of each might ever go away. Maybe the soldiers feel it too, either of those ways, and choose to ignore it or use it to their advantage within their battles, fights, or training..

Maybe they just practiced until it eventually faded. I’m sure if I scratched at that whetstone all day it would eventually just go away. Or I would have scratched off any abrasion it had to begin with.

In any of those ways, I couldn’t listen any longer to their sparring, it was making me sick and making me think too much on what should be my first sights in Journey.

..

There were about ten solid permanent buildings within the encampment and the one I had to report to was Central Intelligence. Central Intelligence was the headquarters for the people who made the greater plans of what to do to then order the people that then gave us orders what to do. I always thought how silly the whole situation was in the military and didn’t really understand why it was so convoluted, but I understand there had to be some order to the whole thing. I was told by one of the ‘middle-men’ before our boat expedition here that I had to report to Lieutenant Corporal Winstanley. I was to be under Captain Winstanley’s orders, enlisted as his personal messenger and courier.

My entire family line were people who could get something from one place to another ‘Quick. Efficient. And Safe.’ - ‘Point A to Point B.’ - ‘By Foot, by Horseback, or by Boat. Never by Pigeon.’ I’ve even heard rumors that my third cousin used to deliver by wyvern. But I don’t know what the credibility of that truly was. But anyways, whatever we had was too usually too important to give to anything or anyone else besides a Faryd.

Military clients are usually difficult as they really want you to be precise and punctual and they hold a high standard over their own mail and deliveries. They wouldn’t even supply me a horse stating, ‘it'd be safer to go by foot’, whatever that meant. I suppose if I was fast enough I probably could take some time to walk and see things and still make it on time with no one being the wiser- and as much as I wasn’t a parrot repeating for the welcoming officer (or for any soldiers for that matter), I did agree with him most on one thing- today, we did become pioneers. There were a few things I had heard about this land that were new that I was excited to see: the size of the trees (I can mark that one off), the unique fauna and wildlife, the bases here including the obsidian shaping(I'd have to take a closer look at that later), and the way there were whispered reports that parts of the forest would grow alive in the night with a mystical light and living vibrance. I'm not really sure what that last one meant or if it were just a story, but I was excited to see it and inclined to find if it were true.

One of the other interesting things I was excited to see here was the main invention that made its way out of Journey, the brightbulb. The brightbulbs are the whole reason why this operation on Journey is still up and operational.

I am not entirely sure of the science behind it, but I do know that something that’s unable to be found in the fatherland or made there is found in this forest that makes the brightbulb work, and that’s why the nobles and royals kept the expedition funded so they could keep manufacturing them. The story tellers back home told us they were the next big thing, but in reality they were mainly luxury to the higher echelon for now. I had heard they were abundant here, and hoped to see my first. From descriptions of men in bars and the storytellers in squares, they are essentially blown glass balls that could produce light without a flame. I had no idea what to expect, but my wandering curiosity looked for any glass that was lit up, but I sadly was only tricked by lanterns.

Maybe they only lit up at night? I couldn’t see something that had no flame or didn’t use the sun producing that vibrant of a light, but the storytellers really did make it seem like more than a dull stupid fad. Maybe they only had them in containers to be hauled back home?

I had a feeling I would see some sort of their spectacle soon, or maybe we weren’t important enough to see them, or it’d drive some people mad enough to accuse the scientists and engineers of witchcraft or some other nonsense if they laid their eyes upon them.

Central Intelligence was a sandstone brick building that stood defiantly near the middle of camp. It housed many of our fatherland’s unions and had guard towers on the corners of its crooked-by-hill outer walls. Pretty standard fortification. The walls weren't anything impressive, but we were surrounded by giant wooden palisades, so I guess they didn't need to be. They were large enough though to house some important structures and utilities that needed a more permanent structure. A large blacksmithing division is placed within the wall that expands from the ground level to the top of the wall. It houses about three main workstations, ten anvils of varying sizes, two main smelters, one central to the ground level and one cornered into the rampart. Of the other divisions of the fortress, there was a tented manufacturing bay where leatherworkers and other artisans worked and some sort of training facility. Surrounding the outside of the first floor of the main keep (where the higher officers met) was a large tented section. I presume that’s where the brightbulbs are manufactured. It felt like some sort of secrecy- but I don't know. Maybe there was something that needed protection from the elements that wasn’t that. I didn't have to wait long, the entrance to the Central Intelligence keep was within the tent so I talked to the guard and walked within.

It took my eyes a second to adjust- but there were the brightbulbs. 

Magnificent yellow lights, brilliant and bright. Some were different shapes and some were of different brightnesses and they were pinned within the entrance hallway of the tent- elongated, rectangular, oval, circular - some were bright, dim, moody or even blinding - some had two on one stem, some three, some just one, some even had no stem. Of all the bulbs the only similarity was that they were colored either white or yellow and that they were all encased in glass. I never expected the light of one of these to be as white as the sun, or even yellow for that matter. I guess I didn't really know what to expect honestly, but of the two I would say yellow made more sense. This thing didn’t really even make any more sense logically. It seemed to be lit from two intensely bright twigs or some sort of something in the middle, burnt to a white- maybe it was metal ? But there was no fire, how did something burn like that so incredibly without fire ? We were inside so it wasn’t sunlight that did it. Maybe chemicals ? I heard they would continually light, never stopping, unless broken that is. I really should be getting going, but I can’t help but stay here and enjoy this beautiful light.

How oddly warm yet not overtly filling they were. They didn't fill like a flame would, filling within the chest or on the skin, but maybe they shine in the eyes- but rather they were light, playful even. They flickered like fairies adjusting their slow-shimmering wings: shimmering hello; they remind me of the first time being with someone you love. It felt like home within a cool wind or a spring afternoon. Not even burning the eyes to look at, but rather felt somewhat refreshing to gaze upon.

Another oddity was how they appeared to flicker at times as though they were actually a flame, like they had a life of their own within, a soul; but they were unmoved by natural occurrences like a wind. Although I guess they were in glass..

I take one from off its stand and move it around slowly and it doesn’t seem to move like a flame either, staying completely still in the movement but making streaks within my vision. Still slowly pulsing. Awesome. I make sure to put it back before I go onward.

The showcase hallway ends into a large open area of workers. There were multiple lines of brightbulbs hung in series from thick twine from the outside edge of the tent ceiling to the center pole of the workshop tent.

Thirteen people are at workbenches stationed throughout the tent. The workbenches have boxes and containers of a generic looking bright bulb that had a standard circular bulb and an obsidian stem. They were making brightbulbs. Some talked to each other while working- casually, or for the job at hand. Some looked like apprentices. Some looked like they had been here for the entire fifteen years. But there was one common thing among them- they all loved what they were doing. Even the veterans, who looked like they had many years in their eyes, or the understudies, who looked as though they would shatter the glass just from their nerves- they saw the magic that it was. I could live years just laying up and looking up at the stars that we as knights had made, and I guessed they’d be ready to do the same, watching them glow, sparkle, twinkle until the end of time.

..

Central Intelligence's inner keep had brightbulbs, but the men within were more focused on their symposium. I guess the magic for them had been lost. My dad always used to say- “There’s no need to be the better man within a room of good people.” Something tells me that would not necessarily apply here just the same as it hadn’t on the ship here. These were men that picked food out of their teeth with knives and did not care if their gums bled, and I had to play a part in their game in order to stay in their land.

The man at the head of the table was no doubt Corporal Winstanley. He was a plump man- but was certainly built with iron underneath. He wore a steel cuirass with no other armor pieces and had cannons for fingers. I noticed his silver went up his neck; the sign of nobility or importance, like being left-handed.. Not that I paid into any of those things. He was fidgeting with the wedding band around his finger, it was some sort of black stone or material like an ebony. He was silent and intently looking upon a map back-lit by brightbulbs colored through blue glass. His sunken eyes were deep and dark (more so within them) as his officers awaited his next words or commands. “Corporal Winstanley, sir.”,

He turned his head for a second, raising his eyebrows.

“Aye son, can’t you see I’m busy here?”

...

“Agh, what is it Recruit?”

I saluted. Trying not to bother the other men with my presence.

“Taskman-Messenger Ethan Faryd, reporting for duty.”

I end my salute but his face carries the silent hatred of the process,

“I was assigned to carry messages and small cargo at your command sir.”

He lets out a deep sigh. Then grabs a seat nearby, turning and sitting in it.

“At ease, TM.”

I did my best to relax.

He eyes me from bottom to top then lets the silence pervade me..

“Do they teach you TMs to shoot a rifle in training son ?”

“I..”

“Have you seen combat before ?”

“-No sir I have not. As for rifle training, they give us the basic information on how to operate said weaponry and a week course on honing our skills with one sir, but they inform us we are best on our missions in carrying as little and as light weaponry as possible, sir.”

He snickers and steps up from his chair, letting out a hearty laugh with himself after,

“What was your name again son?”

“Ethan, sir.”

“No more need for the formalities, Ethan.”

He turns and leans against the map table again, the men still waiting for his commands, his demeanor fades to sour.

He looks deep into the map’s light like he's expecting some answer from beyond it. His eyes soak in that light as if it radiates him secrets.

..

“You’d think those that sent us here would know best for us, considering they’re our higher ups, or that they’re our noble leaders of noble blood.. and what we should strive for.. but you know what they are Ethan?”

“Um-”

“Idiots.”

He rocks back twice then off the table in the strength of anger, grabs me by the uniform, and yanks me closer to look into his scowl, keeping his fist sturdy on my chest.

He grabs up into my collar further with his left hand then prods his finger into my heart hard,

“Under my command- you,”

he reaches over, pulling my neck slightly but harshly with the movement, and grabs a long gun from a nearby gunrack and stiff-arms it into my chest,

“... will carry a rifle.”

He lets my uniform go, shoves me back away from him.

He turns and leans back on the table as if nothing had just happened.

In the silence of our conversation, he looks deep into the light. Then dodged-ly chuckles again like someone told him a joke- maybe the map, maybe the light.

I flip the rifle over on my open palms. I felt like it was like a broken guardian angel- it felt different than any other rifle I've held, like it would be a rock against a dangerous snake. Enough to feel like I had a weapon, but would it defend me enough ? But it was a Standard Issue Semiautomatic Action Rifle, or the SISAR 18 for short, developed just before the War of Veritun where it was slowly pushed out during it. Even so, it being new then, I haven't really seen them around the camp here. I fold it under my one arm keeping my finger off the trigger. They're standard for military personnel, soldiers carry two clips each holding nine bullets, so that’s where the 18 came from-

“A man like you seems to have some nerve and some hope to him, you can run fast ?”

I shake to attentive.

“Uh- Yes sir, I can.”

“Then you run fast if you see anything you shouldn’t.”

…

Chapter 5

A Way Out

My son must have loved the way the trees looked here.

Their sheer size really put how small we were into perspective.

They talked of this place like it was our second coming- he heard those stories. A land of new beginnings.. aptly named Journey. He always said he needed that.

I can see why he wanted to come here.

The way the tree's leaves blew.

The way the light reflected the waters.

The air and these waves as they gave comfort. The trees were like the walls of his childhood home.

The movement of it all. The sturdiness.

It all mimicked home.

Memories of her screen through my head,

“Sky, I love that name.”

She was a bubbly breast laughing on a beautiful day, an afternoon picnic.

Her hair was golden wheat, an apple tree arbor after vesper.

She could love a killer, a soldier. And bring him to peace.

It would take two centuries of finely combing each blade of grass, feeling each groove within the bark of each tree, and the breathing in of three times the amount of air within half of each cubit, all within this land three times over to coming even close to understanding how it was that I was nervous if I were even worthy to brush or touch her hair.. Or hold her tight.. Have a family with her.. Kiss her Springtide lips.

She knew I had a purpose beyond the destruction or desecration of intimate holy things.

But beyond any of that, she was the strongest woman I knew.

..

She was gone now. Sixteen years it’s been. I’ve found happiness since, don’t get me wrong. Found community as well as being alone. And I can’t admit that I am now empty because of it, because I can sometimes feel her in the hair rising on the nape of my neck from a cool wind or her support leaning against me through a wall or a tree, or in the eyes of our son.

She gives me peace, even after she has gone. Guidance, though she is dead.

But the nervousness has faded now, and I have once again become only calloused.

We had that son before she passed, Sky. We named him from that picnic day and, whether we made it this way or not, he always watched the sky. Cloud watcher. Friend of horizons. Sunrise- sunset. Blue eyes that peered deep sea. Always the witness, and the one to call out, to beautiful things.

It makes sense he wanted to come here. That new beginning, that journey. Finding something of her that wasn’t in a mistakeable me and that wasn’t so close to the faded dodgy memory of home, but rather looking for its old morning image here.

I didn’t take the death lightly. Deep down maybe I blamed myself for him wanting to go.

 I don’t know.. It was hard to think about.

The men of Second Company reminded me a little of myself. I could see inside them and their pain like they were a glass theater. They thought they hid it well, but it was upon them as if in thick paint. The military was a place for people like that to become more; but of the people who joined it, many ended up being enabled at points to turn further into that hurt. The rage and disparity, the hatred. I hate to say it, but it worked for when everything hit the fan and hell was apparent. It was good sometimes to have someone around who saw God in the other man and wanted to rip him out for the things he had let happen to him.

For the psychologically damaged like that, it was on the other men to really help each other. Some did- but it does tempt those that feel close to nothing to feel a little bit of something or for those that feel too much- to nothing at all. That was the grand balance of war.

Not that we were any longer at war.

I tried my best to keep away from all of that now. My mission here did not involve any of these men. Yet, there was one man I couldn’t help listening to, a messenger named Ethan. He talked just like my son, like this place was a new world with new things that could even amaze an old veteran like me, or possibly even change the world itself.

So when I had time, I enjoyed obliging him and letting him talk.

Chapter 6

Montyr Henrietta

The reason why I had made the voyage to Journey is that my son had come over here about three years ago and was now missing. The shipment and ‘new-enlists’ fleets would make their rounds between Journey and the father-land every four months, it's been a whole year since he has written to me back and I had decided it was time to go look for him three months ago. The sickness of the unknowing I feel not knowing where or what is happening with him is so immense it’s difficult to even think about it so I had to spring into action. We would argue about things, sure. But I.. I never..

I don’t think he would have not sent anything back home over any of that.

Regardless, I re-enlisted to come here. I didn't trust a single other person but myself to figure out whether he was here or not, or dead or alive. I had no other mission, no other connection here to the military, man, or anything else, but in finding my son. If he was here and he didn’t want to speak with me, for whatever reason, I told myself I would leave. He was his own man and he had the right to make his own decisions.

However, a dark part of me almost hopes he is missing. Maybe even a darker part of me almost hopes he’s dead. The alternative of him choosing not to talk to me feels oddly harder to bear at times. I fail to see the person I am where I would be more relieved if he were dead. I hope this guilt isn’t what is guiding me, but my love for him.

The men of the landing parties are still unloading, but there aren’t many ships still coming into the docks. Second Company is idling the time at our tent complex sparring or sharpening swords, on break.

It was time to get to work.

I slipped away.

The last time he wrote he spoke of being stationed at Fort Worth- one of the five or so outposts that I knew of within Journey. I find Fort Worth, I find Sky.

I had to find some sort of higher official's tent, and find a map.

Finding a complex of tents where a Captain or Lieutenant would be stationed was my best plan, the Central Intelligence was off the table.

I wait near a well trafficked road, looking for anyone or anything of note.

I pass the time watching all of the men walk by on the busy dry dirt pathway street before a man with an officer's uniform passes in front of my spot. I shadow behind his movement when a company of men march out of the headquarters and block my way. I notice them as the men of Second Company and dodge into cover, hiding my face. I wait for the last of Second Company to march past then resume my tail picking up my pace to catch up. I follow him through various tight alleys of tents and men idling waiting for other orders until he enters into a circle of tents to a central tent. He walks to the backside of the center tent where there is a man guarding, he walks up to him and hands him some form of letter. The guard opens it, looks upon it, and flaps open a secret entrance at the back of the tent where the officer walks in. Strange. Not anything I’ve seen before.

If I wanted to get in there my best chance was to enter through that entrance. It was protocol no one but the elite guard, messengers, and officers could enter into an officers tent without the officer’s express permission. That would take too long even if I was deceptive.

I waited short of two minutes, then walk up to the guard.

I keep a good act. He holds his hand out for a parcel, I pleasantry a How-are-you-doing-today, reach into one of my pockets, then knock him out cold. I tried my best to make it clean, quiet and efficient. Blood spilled from his mouth onto the dirt, I hope I didn't knock out a tooth.. I slowly peered inside the back flap, it was the officer's quarters. There's a desk in the middle with parchments laid upon it and a peculiar lightsource surrounded by glass illuminating it. No one was in the room, so I entered. Right in front of me upon the table was the map of the surrounding area. I curl up the parchment as fast as I can and turn away to leave- but something catches my eye.

A six cylinder hammer handgun and ammunition within a small chest. I grab the trunk, tuck it under my arm and I leave as quickly of the light as I entered.

Chapter 7

Fort Worth

Six days have passed. I have finally arrived at Fort Worth. The courtyard has a large pack of wild dogs roaming within the center. They look hungry and deranged, bordering emaciation. No dead bodies. There’s about three giant broken cages that are of a poor quality. No one within the top watchtower, no lights on inside.

Where could they have gone ? Where’s Sky ? Is this still an active outpost ? No way they would have just let the dogs roam as they do now..

I’d have to investigate inside.

I check my dagger at my side to make sure it’ll easily come out, and my revolver’s cylinder, even though I know it’s loaded. Then step down to my knee to retie my shoes.

The jungles here are no joke, the fallen trees could span entire ravines that had deep rivers, and the foliage was dense in most parts of the forest; long thick vines hung from the more normal sized trees that you could walk across because they were so thick and interwoven within each other. The bugs actually surprisingly weren’t that bad, which I was not expecting, and there were ample streams to drink from. And in my six days here the birds and wildlife have persistently squawked and chirped or whatever at all times of the day and night, not relenting, but I have not seen any of these dogs around or any predators in the night. I have seen, to my count, of twenty seven snakes of various sizes however.

The foliage in the camp and around was not bad. There were random clearing in the forest like this one where it wasn't that bad, random stretches too where it was more beautiful forest than untamed jungle.

The dogs down there looked like they were once ours but, I don’t know, everything here was feeling weird about this fortress.  The weather has been abusive too, extremely hot and humid for the cloth enlist uniform and my long pants, I needed them though for all of the foliage, I had no idea what kind of reaction I would have had walking through any of this without them. I made sure to stay parallel to the Wyvern’s Path and I couldn’t imagine why anyone would largely abandon a base such as this and not use the major roads besides people wanting to be unknown, like myself. Especially with how vertical all of the area around was, it was not an easy six day hike, the path itself didn’t really help either, but at least made it easier, and was walkable. But I needed to stay off the path and there were parts off of the path in this area where I was on my hands and knees just to climb it.

I finish tying up my shoes and begin descending from my hill vantage point when I hear commotion coming from the main path of the Wyvern’s Way- Men talking. The braying of and cleft of horsebeat. I steel the excitement it could be him and hunker down to observe.

The men of Second Company approach Fort Worth on foot, some on horseback, at ease. Shit! How do I warn them about the dogs without showing myself? If I did show myself, surely there would be questioning, or possibly even worse. The dogs outnumber them by a lot and Second Company only looks to be equipped with shortswords. They draw too close to the entrance of the main courtyard in my indecision so I have to act now. I whistle with the full might of my lungs and swiftly retreat further back into the woods, I quickly circle over to the back of the compound to the back wall. I throw my pack off my back and into the grass then begin scaling the stone. I hear the officer as he ushers commands to his men to scout ahead for the source of the noise but the deep growling of the wild dogs by the entrance of Worth takes their attention.

The dogs’ yelping and barking and the men’s yells and swords unsheathing spreads like a branching thunder and it isn’t soon after that the sounds of battle cascade into each other into a symphony of panic and pain- a gunshot rings out into the forest as I find difficulty finding the right hand holds on climbing the wall.

As much as I had not intended for it to go this way, I could use this as an advantage. I felt stupid for getting them into that, but I know I need to focus on what is important to me- and that was finding my son. Me being there wouldn’t make much of a difference and only bring me difficulties later.

I spread my arms out on the top of the outer edge of the climb and can see the landing of the back outer wall and the back courtyard up to the center keep was clear. The landing was clear so I kicked myself over up onto it. The wall is about ten feet tall- too high to jump down, and the stairs on the side wall could compromise me to more dogs.

Another shot rang out over the cacophony from the entrance courtyard and a dog’s yelp followed. I took out my revolver, just in case, and begin scaling down the wall into the courtyard.. But my foot slips as I climb down.

-

I awoke soon after in a hard pain and wooden dust. The wind has been knocked out of me, I fight for air. My vision is blurry, my ears are ringing, the sky feels too bright. My wings are clipped: I move to roll over on my stomach but my muscles barely follow command. I have to push wooden debris out of my way just to get to the regular ground. I crawl out and I punch for air in my lungs on my hands and knees. Trying to cough out with what little I get in.

I hear the sounds of a grunting and distressed man and I crane my head upward.

“Back I say ! Back !”

He swings a sword at three slowly approaching hounds. The armor he has on would not protect him from the attack, in fact from what I had seen, none of the men would have had anything to protect them from these dogs. Neither did I. Their mouths are drowning in saliva and their eyes pierce what they aim their teeth into- him. I punch again into my chest and try to heave a full breath into my lungs. He’s backing into the corner wall where another dog, the hunter of the pack, is perched behind him hiding on a stairwell that is in his upper left blind-spot.

He is being put into the kill box- I punch again and get a raspy breath,

“Hey..-hey watch out !”

The man looks over at me as the hunter of the pack descends upon him. The dog's teeth cut into his neck throwing him off balance. He goes to attack the hunter dog with his sword as the other dogs rush him and as I prepare my revolver to help him. I look away when the other dogs reach him and attack into his throat. He lets out fading screams as he's mauled down to the dirt but the moment lets my breath better catch up, but I hear a growl coming in front of me. I look to see the hunter hound is slowly approaching me with killer eyes as the pack was before with the guy I didn't save. I quickly assess my options. I can either shoot some of the wild dogs, six bullets for four wild dogs, scale the wall I just scaled where no dogs were, or scale the center building to my right-

A door I had not seen before. My eyes are back on the dog and I struggle up from my hands and knees - I turn and run and he begins the chase right behind me but I sprinted and got to it before he did me, slamming the door shut behind myself and crashing him snout-first yelping. I hold the door shut and the dog barks for a few seconds but gets distracted by something else happening in the chaos.

I take a second for a sigh of relief and reassurance the others in its hunting pack weren't coming, then look around inside, revolver prepared. No one else inside, not in this room at least, dust lines the stools, tables, floor, counters. I run my finger over it, it's been here for quite some time now. I stride inside looking to get the other doors quickly secured, turn the corner, and trip over into something alive by my knees. I fall forward hard with it and have to turn over flat on my back and scramble to aim my revolver to protect myself, but I see it was a man I ran into.. and it was none other than the messenger from the landing boat, Ethan.

Chapter 8

Holed up in Fort Worth

Ethan and three other men had made it to this building in time before being bit to death, one of them was close to it. He was stabilized in bandages, but completely at the mercy of God now. The other men outside were either now struggling to survive or finally at peace.

The men inside were angry, confused. I inferred through one of the men talking in hushed snips that the company weren’t expecting an attack or prepared for one either, let alone from ravenous dogs, and that everyone started scattering once people started going down, order was completely destroyed once the officer went down. They were among a group of seven that decided the main keep was the place the safest to go and that sprinted here.. The dogs already outnumbered the men, but more came to overwhelm them further, they had no idea where they were coming from there were so many. He fiercely inquired who or what had whistled in the first place in the forest that started the onslaught and how there came to be such a pack here. I stayed silent.

Very muffled sounds of ripping flesh, dogs fighting over bodies, and drowned out screams from the forest around came through the closed paneglass windows and door gaps.

There was a dense and morose lull after the hushed anger was let out, I decided it was best to just to keep going as to not get further sussed out,

“Well, seeing as we are stuck here for the time being, I say we should get a survey of the area and check out the rest of the interior of this building.”

There was no disagreement. Yet no one spoke up to join me. They all needed a break, my head was beating from the fall too but I had to keep pressing on fast for Sky. The one who had the tirade had grown tired and was out of anything else to give for the moment. The only other conscious man besides him and Ethan was sitting at a table with his head in his arms and tapping his foot fast anxiously in some sort of cloud of panic.

Ethan looks dazed. His eyes are sunken- he must have seen someone go down. He is the only one of the men who carries a rifle, the tirading man kept trying to hide that he was sliding his eyes upon it every so often. Ethan's knuckles clench it as he nervously holds it prepared to use it if he must.

“What do you say, how about.. you.  With the rifle, come with me.”

Ethan looks at me with shifty eyes like I committed murder, and for all I knew I did.

“Oh, uh, yeah- sure I guess.”

..

There were no signs anyone had taken any of their belongings with them, it was like the people here just vanished. There was a thick layer of dust on the furniture and the flags adorning this office too, no footsteps besides ours on the dust upon the floor.

Even though we are deeper into the building from the second floor, I hear the barks grow louder, I wasn’t sure how much longer they would not know we were here.

Ethan walks over to the stairway that goes up to the top of the watchtower and I follow.

I stopped before though because of a long gun on a decorative mount upon the floor.

A pump action shotgun, designed for trench warfare, recently protested as a war crime. I bend down to take it out of the mount but the latch is stuck. There are six shotgun shells on the mount too so I grab them. I inspect the trench gun closer, upon the barrel is etched the word ‘Steven's’. I wipe the dust off of the gun with my sleeve. It all looks operational but I am unable to check further internally due to the mount.. The air feels different in the room. I freeze. The sound of a gun shifting behind my head..

“You were the one who whistled weren’t you ?”

I instinctively gulp and raise my hands slowly in surrender, staying silent.

“No one else would have been able to, we were.. we were all there. But you.”

He was slightly shifting with the gun and his voice had a subtle unease but he was determined to find the truth and determined to keep that gun aimed at the back of my head.

“You didn’t use my name down there either, you just said ‘You with the rifle’, which I found peculiar.. The other men may not have noticed you weren't there on the way here, but I did.”

My heart accelerated in my chest.

“-I.. I did Ethan, I was the one who whistled. I admit it.”

I didn’t want to fight him or hurt him. Not that I was in any position to try.

“You know you don’t want to shoot me right now.”

Would Ethan really be a man to shoot me over this ? It was a risk, but I believed I got a good view of him on the trip over here, I really didn’t think he wanted to shoot me, but I wasn’t sure why he needed to do this, and truthfully I didn't really know for sure what type of man he could be besides what we talked about. I didn't know his past.

He was tense and his voice was pressured. I know deep down he didn’t want to shoot, but one wrong move and that gun would go off. I had to take my time here-

“I can do it if I needed to. You killed all of those men, it’d be.. it'd be justice. I have to bring you into Main Headquarters for what you’ve done.”

I gave a second for us to think.

The men wouldn’t believe my reasoning, but maybe Ethan would understand, I had to be calm and collected.

“I was trying to warn them, I swear. I didn’t know it would happen like this, I wouldn't have wanted it to happen like this. Please, believe me.”

I felt the confidence in his righteousness begin to break down, deep down I knew that he believed me. I trust him to make the right choice, but he steps back and I hear him regripping his rifle.

“I swear, you are a good man Ethan, not like anyone in this company. You have to believe I didn’t mean to get them killed, no one else in the company would trust that truth but you. What if I hadn’t whistled ? Second Company would have probably been attacked anyway, I was just trying to warn them, but it didn’t work how I thought it would, I was trying to help.”

I could feel my argument getting to him, I wasn’t even sure if he was still aiming the gun at me. Thank God, I didn’t want him to turn into any of what these men were. Or who I have been in the past. And I needed him to lower that gun, not only for my sake, but his as well.

“I need you right now Ethan, you’re my only chance I have to right this.”

In my heart I knew that was true, whatever that meant in the grand scheme.

“Just put the gun down. Please. We have more important things to do right now.”

A tense few seconds pass but I hear his rifle lower and he breathes in deep through his nostrils.

I was glad he didn’t question why I wasn’t with the company to begin with.

I let out a deep breath and got up off my knees.

“God damn, Ethan. Jesus-”

I give a slight chuckle and take a deep breath in. He looks deep in thought, uncharacteristically silent, characteristically still in depth. He still has a slight mark of betrayal or forlorn on his face, still processing what happened. I can’t quite truly look at him yet in the sense he was almost the man who could have just killed me. And I was still processing whether or not he made the right choice,

“Hey-”

He looks up at me but we evade our eyes from each other,

“Everything will be okay. Alright ?”

I move over slowly and pat his shoulder although it’s awkward.

“Ya, ya you’re right.”

I turn and step away from him,

“Let’s go up to the top of the watch tower and see what we are working with.”

I step over to the stairs-

“I’m sorry.”

He was faced towards me,

“I’m sorry- I shouldn’t have pointed my gun at you. I.. I didn’t want to shoot you. I don’t know what came over me. I don’t know why I thought you would have wanted any of us to get hurt.”

I step up on the first stair putting my hand upon the dust of the wood bannister and let him talk, still unable to look him in the eye,

“I just wanted to do the right thing. But I feel screwed up now about it Montyr, everything just happened so fast.. I don't know why I feel this way, I'm sorry.”

I can only think of one thing to say back to him that would do him any justice,

“It’s okay, Ethan. And for what it’s worth, I'm sorry too. It all happened so fast for me too. When things get out of control you can’t really always do the best thing for everyone and also what is expected of you. You’re a good person, Ethan. Don’t think too much about it. For what it's worth, I may have done the same in your position, but we got to the right outcome here overall, that's what matters.”

I step up the stairs-

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

I ascend up the rest.

The sun was beating down on us, there was no roof to this watchtower and the humidity was scorching today. The view of the surrounding corpses of men and some horses in the courtyard were wavering in the heat of the blood rivers that were accumulating a pond by the entrance. The smell was getting worse to my nose by the second. Dogs barked into the forest and fought over dead flesh in the area, and the worst of it, there were not only more dogs gathered than there were before, but more were coming in from the forests around.

We had to leave immediately.

Chapter 9

Dog Whistle

And we couldn’t be so hasty with this.

I needed a plan. I tell Ethan to go down and tell the men to prepare to leave. He understands the direness of the situation and goes, that leaves me some time.

There must have been some inkling of where these men had gone off to, and subsequently my son. I needed to search the rest of the building. I tear through the office looking for anything of note. Nothing. I hear a hushed commotion downstairs.

Downstairs, the men were doing exactly what they had been doing before with darting eyes or a panicking timbre except for Ethan, who was gathering his bag and supplies.

I began throwing the downstairs rooms apart in search of anything about the people’s disappearance but I heard wrestling bodies and grunting from where the men were. I walk over to see the man who was tirading before grappling Ethan around. I go to stop him but he gets a good hold on Ethan and turns him towards me with a dagger to his throat.

“Heh.. Heh... When were you going to tell us- huh ?”

Ethan and the soldier shift. He grapples at Ethan tighter and threatens him more with the knife.

“Hey, take it easy..”

I was too shocked to say anything else.

The panicking man’s tapping foot quickened as he shot a look to see what was occurring and he sunk deeper into his panic with a stifled cry into his arms.

“I heard you two talking up there- whistling to protect us from a pack of dogs, to ‘divert’ us away from them, Tsk ya right.”

He spits on the ground.

“That’s criminal whether you meant to help us or not- can’t believe you got this coward to believe ya.”

He guffaws sarcastically. The silhouette of a newly alerted dog peers inside the stained glass behind him but does not bark then promptly leaves. I focus back on the man,

“Please put down the knife.”

He puts it closer to Ethan’s wincing throat, his face tenses with anger,

“Why, WHY? Why should I? Why wouldn't I just gut him and kill you after?”

He began breaking down; he was losing it. In his sobbing, as he wiped his tears, I moved slightly closer. He grips Ethan tighter to him, then looks at me again.

The aimless barking around grew louder and more focused outside the windows. The man sniffles and goes oddly still and silent-

“You don’t know what you’ve taken from me..”

There are many moments in a man’s life where he understands what he must do. One of those moments are in when the time comes to do something, it is like when two fingers are snapped together in your brain. Everything else a man knows is erased, and he must go into action.

I saw that look in the man’s face- I felt that snap in his brain, his eyes shot to Ethan’s rifle.

..

The cloud of gun smoke leaked from the barrel and chamber filling the room.

The soldier was barely able to shove Ethan out of the way, grab and go to aim the rifle before a bullet from my revolver was embedded in the blood-stained wooden beam behind him.

Our ears rang from the hammer that struck life out of a man, the panicked man whines in fear, both of all still reverberating and permeating within the interior of the room.

The barking becomes hysteric outside and begins surrounding the building. Shadows darting in and on the paned glass windows,

“I gotta get out of here !”

The man cracks in hysteria, he jumps up from his chair pushing both the chair and table back and sprints up the stairs.

Ethan gives me a surprised but thankful-for-his-life look after staring at the man dead on the ground. He picks up his gun taking another second to look at the now dead soldier on the ground and darts the look that tells me he’s looking to follow my lead and for us to get out of here, now.

The silhouettes of dogs fighting to try to see in the stained glass windows, I check the injured unconscious man. His pulse is slow- he’s still breathing.

“Shouldn’t we get out of here too ? What’s the plan man !”

The barking was so loud now it was hard to think, I heard an intense scratching at the door I came in, that door was not the most secure. I go to look and I notice snouts of dogs sniffing under and a growing herd of barking behind them. The underpart between the door and the ground is halfway between stone inside and dirt outside and the dogs are digging at the ground.

“I don’t know! We might not be able to..”

The door begins barging in from the amount of dogs at the door. Ethan stomps fast over to the table,

“Quick! Help me grab him!”

I run over and Ethan has his rifle slung over his shoulder and is grabbing the injured unconscious man’s shoulders, I run over and grab his feet.

We ascend upstairs with difficulty, I almost slip on the first few stairs a couple of times and Ethan has a hard time walking up backwards-

The door bursts in as the barks explode into the downstairs entrance as we just barely make it up to the second floor.

We set the man onto the main officer’s desk in the office we had discovered earlier.

My heart races, my forehead sweats, my shoulders are tight, I haven’t been in a situation like this in a long time and it was messing with me- I can’t think straight-

A harsh shushed whistle,

“Hey- !”

Ethan is standing next to a dresser by the side of the entrance of the stairwell we had just come up with both of his hands placed firmly against it, in a whisper so as to not draw attention.

“We can use this to-”

A dog enters the room with his snout to the ground, looks up at me and begins barking aggressively downstairs to alert the others.

Another strike of the hammer and another cloud of smoke enters the room as the dog whimpers and struggles against its fate limping and falling down the stairs. I tuck the revolver in my waistband and rush over to Ethan to help him push it over. The dresser crashes down diagonally onto the entrance of the stairway. One of the dogs from the lower level shoves his snout and head into a place the dresser does not cover, barks, and tries to squeeze through the space. The barricade would not hold forever.

“Come on !”

I grabbed the man again,

“Wait !”

He motions over to a tall dresser on the opposite side of the room,

“We don’t have time to barricade any further! Let’s go !”-

“No!”

He rushes over and grabs him by the feet.

“For him !”

I weighed the options quickly, then agreed. We open the dresser with him in hand and try our best to place him in it comfortably and carefully and as swiftly as I can.

I slam the dresser door then barricade it with a small but weighty table in a way that he could get out if he pushed it but not be accessible by the dogs. Anything else was by fate for the man. Ethan began running upstairs and I followed but my attention was caught yet again by the shotgun on the mount. I gauged how fast the dogs would breach and took the risk, I got down and started to rip at it with all my strength, putting my foot down on the mount to try to wrench it off. It wasn’t coming loose. I began slamming down on the metal latch with my knife handle. The mount was too heavy to carry and be able to fight or outrun the dogs. The barricade dresser shifts heavily and I hear a dog's nails scratching the floor running towards me. As I turn toward it I hear the sounds of steel cutting through flesh and a whimper. Ethan attacks the dog running at me with his shortsword and engages it further with a yell,

“Hey! On me you filthy ravaging mutt!”

I notice the entrance the dog used under the dresser has become larger and easier for them to enter and another dog looks to be squeezing inside.

I shoot the dog Ethan is attacking and the one in the entrance, but the bullet hits into the dresser on my second shot, missing. As Ethan runs up the stairs, in the flash of the moment, I turn and I shoot the wood near the latch on the mount, and rip the shotgun off of the mount.

As I run up the stairs slinging it on my shoulder the dog squeezes through the hole and runs upstairs towards us.

I pass Ethan at the top of the watchtower holding his rifle down the stairs, he shoots at the first dog and hits him. The view from the watch tower is grim- another shot rings out from Ethan’s rifle.

“Come get some!- Son of a bitch!”

Many of the dogs that didn't know the back door was caved in were outside barking up at the watchtower and at the building we were in. Some dogs were on top of the outer wall, guarding what seemed like our best escape.

If there was something good in all of this, we were possibly diverting the pursuing dogs away from possible retreating men with our noise, but there was no other good besides it. I see the body of the panicked man from before on the roof below, he's face down, and his blood drains down the slanted stone roof originating from his head.

More shots ring out from Ethan’s rifle, and then another, and then his gun jams. I run over and pull him out of the way, aim the revolver down the stairs at the next dog coming up and pull the trigger on my handgun but it does not fire.

 The dog jumps up onto me and knocks me over, slamming me onto the shotgun on my back, we begin wrestling as I squeeze its throat and push its biting face away from mine. I grab onto its right ear and pull its killer’s teeth back from my neck, I hear Ethan attempting to rack his rifle, I punch the dog in the ribs and rip the dog off of me by the ear and hold him by the neck, and as I go to get up, another dog pounces Ethan and knocks the both of them off of the watchtower ledge.

“No!”

I take out my dagger and stab into the side of the dog's ribs. It yelps, flailing, and I rush over up from my knee to the side of the watch tower.

I get there just in time to see Ethan and the dog falling off of the edge of the lower roof.

My palms sweat, I had to hurry if there were any chance of helping him. I already saw dogs running to his location.

I instinctually feel the injured dog pounce from behind me and I dodge just in time for it to hit the wall and to grab it hard by the nape of the neck and heave it down into the stairwell where I hear it hitting the other dogs as yelping slamming body dominos. I step up atop the quarter-wall.  The walls downward don't look scalable, so I jump downward, bracing my head in my hands, aiming for the crazed man’s dead body. I land atop it as it squishes and breaks. The air is knocked out of me again, but he broke my fall enough I could still move. I pick myself up as fast as possible, the roof is too steep at the edge, I’d have to jump to the outer wall, which has that group of dogs barking at me. I take a second to get as much breath as I could walking up onto the ridge of the roof. I slip the shotgun from my shoulder and load three shells into it and rack it. I aim and shoot at the mass of the dogs, and they spread in fear and pain- I step back quickly and put the trenchgun onto my shoulder again, sprint, then leap across to the outer wall that’s perpendicular to the top of the roof. I land hard, hitting the wall near my solar plexus, just barely making the distance.

I push myself up from it, and stand myself up. I turn walking towards where he fell and look at where Ethan fell and see them ripping his lifeless body around, his rifle just by his side.

..

I kneel down on my one knee and rest my arm upon it and droop my head onto it.

I released out a deep breath and then breathed in from my nose.

I do this a couple of times until I feel less winded and hurt. None of the dogs dared come up to me.

I don’t dare to look at him again. I turn away, towards the woods.

I scale down the outer wall, grab my pack, and make my way into the forest, with a heavy chest and a broken heart.

Interlude

the root, the whole, and the deep

we call in the night for you,

what do you say ?

we’ve known each other's calls,

you must hear us..

we long for your embrace.

the feeling from the root of my horn

that I sound:

something that was once there,

now misses at the core.

it always sounds-

your call.

what do you say ?

we cannot hear.

we feel him deep,

searching.

where bathing water

wades our thighs in tender

touch and the feet are beat,

cut, weathered,

and rough.

discovering him,

a child birthed in blue

hues out of the hide of his

mother’s warm viscous heart

and loving hug of ivy,

he convinced me I was

whole.

it is never truly home

without you,

but you remind me,

remind me,

of

all my nights

ending in zephyr.

Chapter 10

Deep Blue Comet

Water and sap soothes out of the end of the log in the campfire I built. The bottom of my boot is uh.. lodged, uhhh no, - suctioned with mud. I poke off clumps of the mud with the stick I’ve been using to keep the fire going.

I take small bites out of a freshly killed freshly cooked squirrel-like creature kebab with my other hand.

...

No matter how many times you witness someone die you still are left with something after it.

The blood on your own face- or the visions of lifelessness- or how you may feel from either-or of those.. or something else. Killing someone yourself had no difference at this point for me. I didn’t take pleasure in killing that man in self defense, but I didn’t question whether I was in the right- or if I was in the wrong. It was something I left for God to judge me for when I met him face to face. Although I did keep thinking, or maybe questioning, about what I took from the man I killed, and the fact I’d never know what it was for sure. I had some good theories, none that were entertaining, all short of harmless. I just know I couldn’t let that man take what I needed to keep: myself going. I didn’t need to figure it out.

But I do pray he is now at peace, and not searching for those answers about where, whatever, or however, I took from him- like I was currently about in searching for my son. I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone, not knowing whether he were dead or not, that unknowing is what drives me.

It wasn’t a pleasant feeling.

I would probably roam this earth until I found him. As a ghost or by my flesh.

...

Ethan was another story for me..

I didn’t know whether I should blame his death on myself or not. For that, I felt God’s judgement. But I couldn’t tell his verdict. I don't know what else I could have done. I try to throw the similarity of him and my son down deep. I ignored the images, I tried to ignore the feelings, yet the milling of my heart remained. He’d see the sky in these moments, and I’d attempt to compromise with loathing. He’d see my anger or my tears as something beautiful- nothing to hate. Nothing to hate- yet he will never see. I would never show him those things, because he was gone. The hammer of God’s revolver struck yet another life out of the balance of this world, and nothing now remains of him besides what feeds the ground and what came of it. The hardest question now in my mind was, if he was dead, how much chance did Sky have of being alive?..

I thought it best not to hold on to that one. I still had a responsibility to at least try to find him.

I had a responsibility for my love for my son, and if not him alive, for some closure. I deserved that mercy.

I flick open the spinning cylinder of my revolver.

Six spent bullets.

I take the bullet casings out, lay down the revolver on a nearby stump, and thumb and fiddle around with one of them as I sit back upon a tree in thought.

I needed a cool head and a clear mind in order to proceed tomorrow.

It takes awhile to find the cool breeze again and the ease of the night, to be present again and not think of the deathly and difficult things such as before, but I find it with closed eyes.

I don’t know where my son could be at this point now. The only two areas he had discussed with me that he was ever at were: Main Operations, and Fort Worth.

I could try to reengage Fort Worth and get within the compound sneakily and see if there was any information still hidden within it ?- I had no other ideas that seemed correct. I suppose I would go in the morning. I sank deep onto the trunk of a tree knowing I had nothing more to add to the night, but I felt as if I were going a bit backwards, back in old ways.

..

I thought of him that night, in my calm, he was a deep blue comet in my soul. I felt as though he were the captain of a boat in the river of stars, slowly oaring purple cosmic waves as if they were my mind. And as he goes, I feel as he is traversing my memory, slowly calming the anger and bewilderment I felt in the wilderness of my own journey to find him. Protecting my mind from its destruction.

I love him so much. I missed him so much.. But even just his spirit was enough to calm me.

I squeeze the bullet casing with my thumb, the only worldly measure I could feel him in right now, and I feel a paper within it.

Six bullets.. but I only shot five.

Six bullets.

Five shots..

The sixth bullet didn’t shoot.

-I pull the paper out slowly and unroll it.

Upon the front was a codex of some foreign language I had never seen before in my life, and on the back were these rough sketches of these weird looking creatures with heads of spikes. The illustration wasn’t the easiest to decipher, but I got the general idea: The main sketch looked like a crude amalgamation of different animals, it had these sharp teeth, and bat-like or cat-like upside-down triangle nostrils, it had these long arms that spanned the entirety of its body, these two sticks at the top of its head I believe to be antlers or horns or antennae, and squiggles of fur or some sort of hair around its body. The hands had long fingers, four in count, was colored in places as a stark black, and had spikey toes at the end of its feet..

It was a cruel if not hasty rendition that God let me see this today and worry even more for my son as well as think how stupid something like this drawing would worry me further.

It was definitely some idiotic sketching of the officer’s imagination but I was dared to believe it was real like a child was in believing ghost stories or the folklore of a grandfathers' hunting cabin. I crumpled it up and threw it in the fire, feeling better about it. I would not have any more of things like that to tickle at my imagination. Bastard officer. Bastard artist. Bastard forest. I kick my feet up on another stump nearby.

A cool night breeze blew through my hair. It was a nice night and I was ready for tomorrow.

I look up at the stars poked within the drifting leaves, dreaming of where my son could be.

Chapter 11

sought for nothing

It was like waking up from a dream. Like I had died before I had even landed.

My life didn’t flash before my eyes, but that glint in the ravenous dog’s did.

The landing was so hard I didn’t see stars, I felt them. I felt nothing but the burning crack of a sun within my skull, but what I saw after were only the dark tides of tomorrow- then the second fall broke me further through- into the salty plasma of the sky’s tumultuous blackened ocean expanse. I galloushed from it like my body was a jar of water on a boat. I couldn’t move around, but within its motion, and at its pace.. And I was blinded of time and of sight. Something deep in me was the reason I moved, to where, or to when, I was not sure. Taste, I could still taste: a sour taste of blood in my mouth. My heart must have been restarting from not wanting to taste the sour taste of blood in my mouth, that moved to my throat, that moved to my lungs.. I somehow swallow a pint within where I would normally breathe.

Adrenaline is sometimes sought after, but not when it swallows the- swallows.. the swallows the.. I was too confused and injured to think properly. Adrenaline on the cutting edge only cuts at my deeper soul, I was losing something I never would know later I have lost.

I must have coughed, because I was no longer choking. I must have been safe, because I felt the shade on my back. It feels like there’s something lodged within the throat of my chest, and I can see only one shape within my mind and it burnt around the edges: only one thought permits and it was only this. Some sort of static plane, but the shape was in fidelity, but the fires burn behind it, it protected me from the full onslaught of all the pain. I was laying somewhere, my body trying its best not to relax too much or to tense too much- scared I would die if it did too much of either. It led me into this non-movement, non-anything, nothing. I sought for this nothing. I just was- but wasn’t. I don’t know what it was. But without it I was dead, or too alive? I couldn't understand. I couldn't understand anything here.

…

I feel something reach out and gently touch the shape in my mind with the back of a restful finger. They say something, deep within the expanse that I can not hear, not that I could understand it even if I wasn't in this state, and it pulses.

My body relaxes fully and I let out a deep release from the voice I didn’t even know I had, then the pain comes burning through me again, of some sickening pleasure, some sickening release, a breath of fresh air but from the shadiest parts and most stifled pits of my being..

Never believe someone in saying you can only feel pain in one spot; it was like my body was a series of gestations coming from the earth, but I just barely caught a breath. I could feel every heavy footstop upon her, my head and chest was tight and both hurt with every throb, every footstep, every little thing that happened to Earth I felt in that moment, and she felt me. That was my only comfort. What I thought might be a bone was within my chest where it shouldn’t have been and it rattled my core, hurting in every breath. My back was tense in a place my arms and hands could not massage it, little fibers that connected the larger muscles. Spots of a more healing waterlike light were ripping through my eyes through the miasma but I just wanted to break through. It felt like they were holes in my heart and I was ready to move into the light in my eyes.

I wanted to go back to the stasis, back to the shape, but I knew being there was taking something from me. The ground pumped a beat against my chest, pumping every heart beat like it was thrumming from the world around, to me, saying,

“You need to live. This is the path.” 

I coughed out a giant clot, or threw it up, felt an intense relief, then immediately fell deeply unconscious beside it.

..

I wake up in the afternoon, everything is still hurting as it had before. I must have drooled or bled more onto the ground around as I felt a puddle by my face, and there was definitely some blood that had slightly filled within my lungs again.

I wipe my face with my hand and take a second to look around even though it pains me.

I was most certainly underneath the stone foundation of Fort Worth’s inner keep.

As much as I was in agony, being under here felt safer. I don’t recall how I ended up under here specifically, but I was glad I did. I didn’t know how to get myself out of this mess, or whether I should to begin with.

I was so thirsty, and desperately needed to clean my throat and stomach out of blood. Luckily I had my pack still on me. It must have protected me from my fall somewhat. I get out my water and drink it fully.

I looked out of where I must have entered and saw a pack of dogs eating the scraps of a body about six feet in front of me. Once I looked, the smell of the contested body was apparent, and it sends shockwaves through my head, so I cover my nose and slowly stifled a thick cough.

Some of them are still barking around, even now. I’m surprised they weren’t when all of us arrived up to the camp. I take a better look at the foundation I am under and realize there’s enough room for them to come close enough to me for them to possibly bite me but not enough for them to fit standing up. They had not noticed me yet and that was nothing short of a miracle. It was a miracle I got under here in the first place after that fall. I made sure to make myself small, and stayed quiet just in case my mercies ran out soon.

My rifle was on the ground near the body I must have landed near. There were about a dozen dogs that were roaming around the back area of this courtyard. Five were around the body. Of the five, three were picking it clean, the other two were barking at each other fighting over some piece of him.. Other dogs roamed by with their heads down, scared by the fighting dogs. Besides them, all the dogs looked like they were at ease. I came to the conclusion there must have been no other people around the camp else they would be hunting or alert.  I think the best idea is to wait until night to retrieve the rifle and sneak back into the forest. I was still injured, and needed rest anyway.  Maybe after heading into the forest I could head back to Main Operations, my mission here was to establish contact with Fort Worth so that was a bust, I didn’t really care about that right now anyway. I scoot back as far as I can under the foundation and take my small pack and quietly stuff it between me and the entrance to conceal myself better. I lay up next to the wall for support and drift into a nap.

..

In my half-sleep, a woman I used to love lays next to me, in the dirt, unhidden by my pack, and I fear for her. I feel there's something.. I feel there's something I can do for her, to say to her, for her to hide or protect herself, that she hasn't seen or doesn't understand what's out there- but it wouldn’t help.

I am half-asleep, half-awake.

I can’t speak, or move. My body was in shambles, my head was in concussion, my mind was in her deep flashing tones of supernatural paramour.

She looks at me and I feel the same gaze I give upon her, but upon me.

I feel ashamed. Like I was causing her this misery.

I’m in so much pain. I hold myself tight, and in my deepest unconscious, when I can make no choice or see no difference, where there is no divide, she wraps me in a heavy white furry blanket, and I am in safety.

Why did I choose to come here ? Why did I choose to stay ? Should I go back home ? See my family ? Could I even if I wanted to ?

I think of my older brother: Old memories of our childhood in the afterglow. Playing in the yard, wrestling, fighting. I felt him protecting us under here, like he was outside the foundation, posted up, guarding any dogs from entering. I missed him. I missed them.

I missed home. I missed his embrace. I missed the comfortability.

My body is sweating, trembling, but I am in the cold winter night of my soul.

She keeps me calm, and the wind’s kiss is mountain rivers but strawberries on my neck. I struggle, I struggle to know how to live. I hurt myself, I hurt myself by living- for wanting more. I feel like I’m the one that caused this pain, for what.. I don’t know. 

A gentle tear tickles down the side of my face. I lick my lips and I snuggle down deeper.

I think of my older brother.

The afterglow of when we were kids, and how much had changed.

I think of my older brother.

 I know my body is in deplete, but deep within me is my soul, it's safe. But I still know the guilt. All the things I've done, all the things I could have done. It feels like I never knew the right choice. What I’ve caused by reaching so far, running away from what hurts.

The guilt leaks into me like a drain of a sewer or a well, down each stone slowly, and I’m scared it will drown me. I sniffle. I want to shut it down. I want to kill it, I want to wipe it from the stone or destroy the well. But safety, she lets this water reach to the bottom of my depths, she lets it reach where no other has seen in me and no other has touched, and then she pushes me further. Further, to know her love more, to know the love inside me more. I think for a second I know more than her, that this water will in fact drown me, but she sinks me deeper, deeper than that in which is drowning. The pressure is all around me, but I don't feel its weight upon me, my eyes are sunken as though salted, but the pressure seeps in in skin, around what makes my skin, gracefully caressing it, and protecting my pores- and then each parts of the pressure ease me, wherever they found themselves. The water washes me, until nothing of my guilt is left, they softly sponge at every tile telling me to rest as they work, then they say-

‘You are a golden child’,

they say together,

‘- and only because you are there, because you exist within the pressure, and you exist within the ease, will they be good together, for you, for us. Will you always be safe, will you always be loved.’

I will not fear that I had only felt ease in the worst of my loss.

I will not fear that pain. I will not feel the anger, the rage. I will not turn to that.

I will pressure through this, and become more for them.

They hug me and they say,

‘You will overcome.’

I will overcome.

I sleep.

Chapter 12

Escape from Fort Worth

It’s night time. I am awakened by an onslaught of howls and barking through the forest and the compound. I can’t remember what I dreamed of, but I feel oddly some relief. My body still aches and hurts, but test and see and realize my injuries are enough to manage movement enough to probably escape safely. And If I waited any longer the dogs might run out of options and end up finding me. I turn to my stomach and crawl to my pack that had hidden me and grab it and look to the outside. To my surprise, the courtyard is empty of dogs. I peek my head out to the left and right outside, still no dogs. I take the opportunity, I crawl out into the courtyard and pick up the rifle in my hands while eyeing the outer wall’s top. I crouch up then crouch over close to the wall where the moonlight shines. I drop to one knee, open my pack, take out some loose ammunition I have, pull the bolt back, press down on the follower and reload to a full clip, making sure the slide slides quietly. I sling the rifle over my shoulder and sneak over behind some crates that had been crashed through. A stairway was leading up on the wall opposite of me, but I heard dogs barking and howling on top of it. My best idea was to go up the stairs and try my luck there, I decided then that’s what I’d do despite the barking and howling.

I slowly ascend up the stairs and peek over the top where the stairway meets the wall’s floor. At the outer corner of the outer wall to my left, about thirty feet away from me, there is a group of dogs with their ears pointed up, alerted by something in the forest. They barked and howled into the night trying to call out to or at something within. To my right there's a pack sleeping, some were licking each other while one idly chews at some sort of bone. The path to the corner closest to me was clear and I quickly crouched-ran over to it. The grounds just outside of the wall were stark shadows. The angle of the moon’s light was in an inopportune state, I saw and heard nothing but the small movement of grass.. I vault over to the outside of the half-wall and drop my feet down the side still holding the edge with my hands. I get as close and low to the ground as I can and drop. I turn and take a second to listen and look- nothing but wind. I take a moment to breathe, switching my rifle over to my hands and begin walking to the woods, out of view of the dogs on the other corner. My heart was beating through my throat and the bone in my chest was making me want to cough. I trip on a mass, hear a sharp yelp, and stumble to my knee. I look behind me and see a young puppy running limping to the wall and a large shadow of what I assume is its mother. I take off running into the woods before any of them can notice me.

..

I run for what seems about a mile until I finally decide it’s far enough and begin walking instead. I take a look behind me one last time and as I turn back around I hear, no- feel, the intense snap of a bone and a muted and distressed pained bawl from a deer in front of me.

I slowly turn my head towards the noise and see what I can only describe as a nightmare. My heart couldn’t catch up to what was happening, I thought I was hallucinating. The moonlight was silvery and passed through the trees allowing only small glimpses of what hunched like a man but was silhouetted as large as a bear.

I heard meat and liquid squelching within a mouth, a body being thumped up in a disturbing rhythm from the ground in a suction, saliva being gasped through air from whatever it was’ teeth. I hear it breathe out heavily, like a man, it raised its head upward into the moonlit leafy shadowed sky, gasping deep breaths. The silver slivers illuminate the beast in the small gusts of the wind in the leaves showing brief dancing glances of its head- the thing had antlers spread larger than I had ever seen, it mainly had black sleek fur like velvet, glossy in parts, but the fur was shaggy in spots as well as his tail. It raised its face straight to the sky, the fur around its mouth soaked in blood, sheened, taking in the full moon. Its face looked sort of like a man’s, but not, it had a nose kind of like a snout, like it were some long ago relative of our kind, but like it were one of God’s mistakes. It was breathing like it had just sprinted, it was over double my height just based off of the way it was positioned and how far it was gazing to the sky. I was paralyzed in fear, or.. for some morbid unconscious need for knowledge of what this thing could be. To know the unknowable monster. To know just a little bit more, so I could protect myself just that little bit further, from it or the thoughts of it that would come after. It took a few deep breaths, trembling as it did, like it was sad, and then struck back into the thing it was feeding on as if it was taking another deep breath by doing so. I stifle my shortened breath, I slowly back away, rifle in hand, planting my feet softly, slowly, and step and trip right on a fallen branch, snapping it.

Chapter 13

the doe

Every single thing activated in my body at once, and I froze in this thing’s focus. The thing had snapped its head up from the doe with a surprised grunt deep from its chest. My eyes adjusted to the pitch of the night, that silver moon slicked over him, my heart was beating out of my chest, my hands sweating, but I could not even turn to run. I was trapped in this nightmare.. I couldn’t wake up.

It turned its head slowly to me. It moved less of fear, more of curiosity, ‘who would step up to such a beast ?’.

Its eyes were as black as oil and its mouth was slightly agape smattered with that same blood. Its eyes and face moved with sentient thought, weighing options, weighing knowledge, then the curiosity turned to anger- turned to murder, turned to death.

The words of the captain shot through me and I awoke.

The beast roared out muscle from its chest, I lifted my rifle to it, shot at it and started running as fast as I could away from it. Time fades. I trip and my gun goes off into the forest and I see its silhouette from the flash. I hear its call into the night. I quickly pick myself and my rifle up and rush into the trees. I can barely make out what’s ahead of me, slicing through thorns, bushes and sticks as they cut into me. I look back as I do and see nothing, but hear trees and bushes breaking and tearing with the force of the thing’s size as it searches for me. I weave through the large forest, under fallen inns, around the thicker denser foliage that might stop it, the more behind me, the larger of things to hide me, the better.

I charge into the root, bashing my shoulder against trees, heaving with each breath each root I vault over, pressing, pressing, pressing- until I trip on one yet again. I fall face first into a small valley hill embankment that has a tree throw atop it. The speed of the fall rolls me to my back after the fall. The mud softened it but I couldn’t catch my breath. My body was in anguish again, the dark tides of tomorrow were calling again, asking me to sleep. I threw coughs out of my lungs and my chest did the lifting of my rifle, I galloshed through the thick mud by my knees and butt my back against the embankment wall and ready my rifle at the direction that ancient relative would be coming from. I couldn’t focus well on the forest line from the pain but I quickly cleaned the trigger of mud and tried my best to clean the barrel of mud. Then aim.

But the silence pervades.

My breath watched into the night and didn't hear anything.

Slowly.. I realized something.

If one of my bullets did nothing to it, didn’t stop it in its crashing pursuit, what would any other bullet do ? There’s no way I outran that thing forever. I could hide, yes. But I didn't know this things capabilities, it could probably smell my fear once it calmed down enough.

But the chance of me killing this thing was slim.. to zero. The chance of that thing eating me like that deer..

I push myself slowly up from my back and sit on my legs with my knees bent.

I didn’t want to die..

I wanted to live..

I hear faint rustling deep in the woods, as if it were watching me, waiting. No more roars, no more intense breaking of trees or branches, it was calming down.

But I did not want to be here.

I take the rifle and lay it upon my legs. And felt an intense odd sense of calm. The vision of the deer being siphoned up into the mouth of the beast met my mind and I felt its pain. Longlasting, agonizing, sharpened, siphoning pain.

It didn’t kill the thing, it was feeding off of its life. I slowly stroke the wood of the gun trying to ease its own suffering as if it could know what was to come- I take up the gun and position the rifle’s barrel to my chin and the butt upon the ground.

I closed my eyes tightly and then look up at the window of trees not there: a night sky so full of stars, I see him there. I wanted to be back with him. Back with my family, back with the ones I loved.. so desperately I wanted that.

I am with him now again. I hear the thing coming closer now, the soft rustling of him definitely there was just at the edge, I felt it was about to strike.

I put my finger softly upon the trigger, as if I were hugging a pillow.

I have a choice, and I choose. I close my eyes again and huff and grunt and yell into the night letting go of any other reservation, finding my peace. I wouldn’t be taken like that doe. I yell into the night and I pull it hard-

Fire.

But the trigger doesn’t complete.

I gasp, open my eyes wide, being flooded with more adrenaline, fear. I check the tree line- the forest is again incredibly quiet. It only makes my anxiety worse, I quickly begin fiddling with the gun wondering what’s wrong with it. In my many sayings of ‘no’ and checking every which part- a yellow light flits next to me into my eyesight, gracefully landing atop my rifle, a firefly.

I look up to see the yellow lights of more of its kind expand around in the trees around me, the forest begins illuminating with them. The vines and all the other hanging vegetation from the trees around had a slight golden hue to them, all throughout the tree’s forestry in my surroundings were these radiant lightbugs, they slowly flitted around and colored the leaves or the grass they flew by in a peaceful light amber. And the embankment, and the ground, even the trees, had these underground white lights like veins within them that started spreading in the night time. Pulsing of light and pulsing like a vein would slowly, as the light coursed through them like life. Roots like arteries lead to this large mass in the center of the clearing deeper into the embankment, beyond it. The ground looked almost translucent because the white light was so bright underground. The shape was so well defined, you could see the root system branch out to the forest around in so many different ways from this central core or.. heart.

It beat like one, full. With life. The ground around thudded like it was its skeleton. It was like it was alive, whatever it was. Connected to the trees, connected in the ground, to the roots, to the grass. All blond within the firefly’s light. I look to my front, still stunned in the beauty, and there at the edge of the forest standing at its full height was the monster, in a new image. He leans from the ground off of a tree trunk with his full armspan. It stood there in an immovable unknowable sturdy silence as if it were not even breathing. It looks me in the eyes, its still eyes.. no longer of oil, but of a deep blue. He then promptly lets go of the tree and turns around and leaves. I let out a breath of relief. I throw the gun down hard to my side and lay back against the mud wall pressing into my face with my hands. The thrum of the underground thing at my back.

…

I took up the gun and inspected it further-

the safety was engaged.

Chapter 14

penance

The stream is bitingly cold even though it is the season of Splendent.

-

The forest always had a weird way of speaking like that.

Ashtail was by my side, her hand in mine putting pressure on the wound on my shoulder,

Do you remember that day the-great-star Hes (in all her radiance), was in Henelma ?

The underwater current washes the blood away from my hand like thin yarn that clouds by the darkness of the river.

It was the first time I had been shot by their guns.

I’ve been injured by weaponry before, but nothing like the searing metal of the new-men.

I counted myself lucky this was the first time, as much as others haven't been as fortunate.

..

She flickers in between the reflection of the waters and the leaves but for a moment while I cup the brisk water and pour it upon the heat of the wound on my shoulder, the water leaks down my back and my fur as she puts her hands back upon my injury.

Sometimes she would arrive in calm.

She always had a way of seeking that to be the case, even if that frequently tended not to happen. She always ended up being around too when I had ended up getting hurt.

Hmmh.

What do you think about the forest allowing peace upon that new-man?

I didn’t know what to think.

He was tired in all honesty.

He felt like a sleepless night. And the bullet didn’t make anything feel better. He was guilty about the doe he had to acquire, but he never really ever understood his own guilt, or why he always felt it, but he was glad that she was allowed to see him.

But relentless questions filled his head:

“When would this end ?”,

“How many more would he have to acquire, for how many times would he need to see in order to finally end his suffering ?”,

“How many new-men did he have to kill to save the shadow of his people?”

“How much life does..”

Enough.

The forest has a weird way of speaking like that.

Enough.

I adjure with it. I knew what I had got myself into. I had known for a little bit now. It was always seeding back into my mind and moving me in ways that angered and stirred deep parts of me.. With it here, it was easier to be alone, but it always had to be here.

I push against it until it lets me go for now. The ancestors have allowed this to continue, allowing its voice to stay.

I didn’t know how to stop this. And I hated how much I could feel similar to him.

She eases me and presses further around my wound.

Hm.

What I’ve done I deserve. 

That’s what it leads me to believe:

Like I had no reason to do what I did; no one else could understand anymore, what it does to you- I was alone now in it.

I don't know why it always shoved that in my face like I didn't have a reason, or that I could have known. That I didn’t do what I did for a good reason.

That it wasn't the only thing I could have done. Why did Ashtail always insist that I was on the right path with the forest but it always told me I wasn't?

Why did it feel like I was never on any path I should have been? It felt like it never knew the righteous way, or at least hid it from me, and it never saved me, never led me to greener places, even if we were supposed to have faith that it does.

I hated it. But she believed in it; and for a time, I did too.

I've had that faith before, but it's been too long of misery to believe it would ever believe in me again, or I, it. Or that I even needed it. Did I even really need it?

I don't think it even blamed me for my disbelief, after everything that's happened.

I felt the shape of her horn on the center of my forehead. An embrace that supports me.

She grants me peace yet again.

The bullet went through - which was good. It should heal in about a day or two.

A shiver runs down my spine thinking about what I did to that doe, the fear I had found in it in the moments before I arrived while it laid there on the ground, and of its extraneous string of injuries and suffering, more than half of which I caused - then my mind goes to the new-men.

I didn’t necessarily hate them anymore, or hate the one I had just chased. But maybe deep down I still do. I know I needed to keep them away from the last of what was left of my people. And what I did know is that they were like an infection upon the land that needed to be ripped out. Everywhere they spread in just fifteen years, they defiled - and with it, our memories, our culture, our hearts, our land, our people. Made us do terrible things.. took my Ashtail away.

The more land they took, the more was corrupted, and I would not accept it to be fully desecrated. Everywhere they went, the beauty fled and died out of the forest and became as dark as cinder. And they don’t live like we do, they don’t respect that our blood runs through this dirt, through the trees, through the leaves. The nature that made us. They make bonfires out of our bones, monuments out of our dirt and twigs, spin stories of their horror. 

That's why I did what I did.

To save our people.

To make sure there was something left of us still to live.. to make sure not everything was taken.

..

He always wondered where he began and the forest ended, but since his first act of acquirement the idea was more sickening. The expanse there was filled with termites, and of decay and death. 

And he was arrogant to go down the route of easy answer and of being so collective within that way- that was better for the onward ancestors and for the stable, like the trees; rooted so deeply into the earth: only a terrible torrent could destroy something as firm as that.

He didn’t understand a thing.

What he thought was saving, was actually destroying, delaying.. imprisoning.

Peace was a moniker for inclusiveness.

But he was at war.

And still is. He was the one who brought disease here to this forest- the new-men were nothing but ignorant.

Some things are forbidden for a reason.

A tree snapped in his mind and opened to a web of connections only we knew:

Enough.

I hate when they spoke of me that way, taking away who I was.

You knew it was forbidden, yet you did so.

I couldn’t lose her.

And now she is here, flowing through your mind-blood, flickering in between the trees and in the waters, knowing one day you will not be in this pain. Knowing one day you will be at peace.

Yet she says I must stay.

That is true. And you must.

I do not understand why..

How much longer? Will they return to me?..

...

You are scared aren’t you, of their judgment?

I more fear losing you, our people being taken from us. Me being forever apart from them. Alone-

I feel sometimes I have dug myself too deep to escape, that at my end I will be separated from you. Separated from everyone I’ve ever loved.

Yet, we love you. The forest loves you.

No. You. You love me.

-The forest does not, I am marked with the sign of guilt. I have done forbidden tasks- I have the shame that Lioneyes spoke in his judgement, how he had done heinous wrong to stop the Great-Fire and carried guilt to his end; I have the heart of daggers and the mind of whirlwinds that Leavenriver foretold, that those that sought the memories and life of the fallen’s blood would incur madness.. the forest took of me like Stillriver, that I should still have faith in downtrodden dry riverbeds- and yet, the forest gives me nothing but your image in trees and your incorporeal form - a touch that is half-there and half-not !

..

How is that fair ?

..

You always spoke that the forest was fair, that it knew of justice- but it is not just.

This is not just.

..

It has allowed everything to be taken from us. And now there is nothing now that it gives me but aimless searching for protection of the dead, and proven prophecies that I am the one who cannot - while the others have done..

The only thing I have left.. is you.

-

I don’t deserve this emptiness, I don’t deserve the pain the forest has put within me. I am ready for this to end.

I will find this emptiness, this pain, this thing that caused me to lose you, and when I find it, then I will kill it. To finally be free..

If we do not feel pain, then what does it all even mean?

It..

He huffs out a breath.

He gets so angry he grips the closest tree and snaps it into explosive splinters within his palm and shouts into the muted forest from his chest.

You..

Agh.

I just..

You are not angry with me are you ?

Your continued beliefs in this forest are infuriating !

Why should we feel this way ?

Why should I feel this way ?

Look at what has happened to us because of our faith in the forest !

He can not bear to look at her as he speaks, she breaks him down in grace and humility.

This emptiness within us? Allowing the new-men to destroy our lives, our people? Allowing the forest to just let us be placated against all these injustices thrust upon us? Then destroyed?

Allowing their disease to spread through us?

If I am not empty then I am full of dismay!

Why must I feel this way!

Why must I be in the sleepless nights of this constant call to serve to be a slave for some higher calling promised by our ancestors' ideas? When they do not even protect their own people!

To be there for them, when I am alone!

..Why?

..

You aren’t alone.

..

I am angry with you Ashtail- but only because you see the wrong way, because these beliefs are what has taken you away from me. Why I am away from our tribe- our people.

How I miss them so much. How I want to help them, but can not, and when I try, I am destroyed in the process.

He begins tearing up within his eyes like he were a cub.

Could you stop? I don’t want to feel this anymore!

-

I am done with your eyes upon me.

This only ends in one way, and it is death, death to the plague of new-men’s ideas, death to the False-ones, death to their perversion of our forest, with or without the forest’s way.

She eases me with her light and gentle hand upon my shoulder.

Her eyes flutter open in my mind.

I can feel her sadness.

I love you Starseeker.

I’m sorry.

I broke down and cried into her arms.

In his broken tears he is barely able to express,

I’m sorry Ashtail.

I never want you to feel this way.

I don’t believe in the lands around me, I don’t believe in the trees, the grass, the ancestors’ traditions, in the stones, oceans, homes or bones in the dirt, or in the cold wind in the night..

But I believe in her.

Chapter 15

Ashtail

I’m surrounded by one of the most beautiful spectacles I have ever witnessed. Yellow lightning bugs swarm around like a festival and I am at the center, vines like thin strips of lit ribbon that look like beings of light from other worlds, a plant like a heart that beats alongside my own; I question that which is truly alive. I am surrounded by the life of the forest I so sought, and yet… I could have just died.

The night was peaceful. In my broken state, just after the height of my hopelessness, it was so peaceful.

The lightbugs were luminence. They floated stilly, fading and flickering slowly. The many fireflies outside the clearing of where the white light veins were in the trees, they were blinking rapidly at random, but inside the clearing they were slow, steady.

I remember in my childhood there used to be millions of them on summer nights, like it was here. Golden and floating above the grass and in the trees- all the way to the ends of the forests of home. It was here now in my heart. It felt just like home here. But nightly oceany aquamarine with the veins flowing the very slightly bluish liquid like living water inside them.

When I had aged into my adolescence, those nights with fireflies started to disappear. You would catch a night with them less frequently until they were but the most rare of chance encounters. But even when you would finally get to see them one night, there'd be less and less in number over the days. And magic like that faded as I got older - not only in reality- but also within my mind.

Since this is what I was searching for, I tried to bask in this, but I was still so held up with the pain that I was in from my fall and going so near to suicide that I pulled the trigger, so it was kind of difficult to do. I wondered how many other people ended up coming here under the same premise as I had and were hunted by that thing. Or that were faced with the same predicament as I had. By my hand, or by the monster’s ? I wonder as well how many were saved like I was, or where it ran off for some reason.

But why? Specifically though, why me? Why’d it run off? Because of me? Because of the forest?..

I’d have to figure that one out later I guess.

The trees before were thrumming extremely steadfast like someone was mid-sprint but now they were a calm pulse. The forest floor’s moss and roots still illuminated the white tones with their faint blue hues and they too pulsed calmly alongside the trees they were connected to. And that something coursed through them like a small river. What exactly ? I couldn't tell. Water of some sort ? It looked liquid for sure.

I turned my body toward it and took out my shortsword and began cutting into the dirt to one of the roots and trying to extract it, but the pulse grew in frequency the farther I got in. Interesting. I dig deeper but it pulses now as if it's sad, or it is scared, asking me to stop. Like it’s hurting.. so I stop, it didn’t feel quite right and I didn’t need to really know that badly.

“-Sorry.”

I pat the mud wall and lean my head back against it.

The sounds of crickets chirp, frogs in the distance croak.

I take a deep breath and relax myself.

I had not eaten in quite awhile, so I took out a bit of salted meats to snack on.

…

It’s funny, because this magic spun by the story-tellers of home is what I have been waiting for this whole time- and you’d think after all that pain I had been a part of that it would be less than I wanted or I had imagined or not worth the journey here, but no, it was amazing. Serene. Beautiful. I was exactly where I wanted to be, in fact it was more interesting, more fulfilling, than I had even hoped. If I hadn’t had gone through my hardship I even doubt it would have been as mesmerising as it was. Even through my pain (and now that I’m more relaxed) my more curious mind was knocking at the back of my skull, wondering how the vines here were actually pulsing like veins or why they seemed to be all connected with the rest of the foliage and the forest around me.

I wondered how and why the fireflies had a faint green to their light instead of a sunny yellow.

I wonder if I could build a home within all of this and how.

The more I think about it- why were the military the only people that came here to Journey ? Was it because it was dangerous with those things going around ? Why did they tell no one about it- why was it a secret ?

I think even more about the operation as a whole, how could I not have guessed there wasn’t a larger threat here with the weaponry we had at our disposal ? Rifle manufacturing was picking up as fast as it could around the world but really even in the war not every man could have one, here the same, but it was enough to give a messenger one I suppose. And wyverns weren't exactly the easiest thing to procure to a place like this no matter maintaining them. What would have been the purpose of all of that if not some terrible enemy such as this ?

I take a step back from that thought line and wonder, did they even know about those creatures ? Why wouldn’t they tell us about them- here or at home ?  I guess I understood why that was a thing, but I wondered how many people have been hurt by one of those things that had no idea they were here.

Lieutenant Winstanley did say if I saw anything that I shouldn’t, that I should run. So I guess he did kind of tell me that if not backwardly, but at most I thought that would be a wild bear.

The mix of my injuries and the conspiracy of it all, and the questioning of it all, makes me a little sick.

I didn’t know what to do with all this information - I guess I was just lucky to have survived.

I looked into the dark of the forest where the frogs croaked, and dared to explore.

The darkness in the forest was weird here, like the shadow sucked in the light around it. I walk into the dense foggy shadow under some smaller trees, following some of the underground glowing white veins, and see a faded light in the distance. The frogs croaking grow louder over the crickets and buzzing cicadas and as I grow closer I see its a pond grove alit by the forest. A few rivers flow from streams tinkling into the naturally sparkling light blue pond. The water looks clean and, in earnest, delicious, refreshing. Warm or cold I did not care one bit; this was the relaxation I needed. Light white-blue threads of vine hung from low tree branches and pulsate slowly from dots of light within them at seemingly random. Upon further inspection of the reservoir of my earthly comfort, there were these silly moving white light water bugs that coursed through the water moving as freely as wisps or fairies. I decided it was time, I didn’t care one more bit- I took a sip of the water, and it was fresh. It was cold. Soulfully refreshing. It felt like the pond was telling me ‘You could have as much as you’d like, you’ve gotten this far and you’ve earned it.’- why thank you pond.

I wash my face with the chilly healing water and question for a second what truly brought me here; I put my hands just below the surface of the water and looked at them as the water rippled over top of them. I smile. The cool water makes it feel as though the pain is completely taken away from them.. I laugh in relieved joy- in some sort of unworthiness, in reverence. I was happy. Within three minutes I’ve taken off my clothes and am bathing within it, my body heals from my spine in the cool flame of the icy bath.

I sink my head under the surface allowing it to fill my hair with ease.

My head no longer pounds but goes into a complete relief. With childish wonder and whim I question if this is even the fountain of youth. I resurface and lean back on the side of the pond and put my arms on the sides and lean my head back, having my hair touch the grass on the outside of the pond, close my eyes, smile, then I cry in happiness.

I don’t know what I did to earn this, but I know I had. That something was there and knew my struggles and was watching over me and finally let me rest. I look back into the pond and notice the wisps surrounding me in a playful calmness. I couldn’t quite tell what they were in all honesty, I assumed some sort of bug that I couldn’t quite see the exact center of. They were honestly making me a little anxious. After a little bit of them moving and dancing or observing close to me they left to light the other parts of the pond. I decided they were probably harmless.

…

I didn’t necessarily believe in God.

My family were believers at one point, my Mom the most.

But over time we slowly veered off that course.

Like the fireflies of my childhood, it was just another thing that faded over time.

I struggled when I was younger thinking about why bad things happen and what we did to deserve that, but I guess he made some sort of point tonight.

I think of my family.

My Dad, I think of my Mom, I think of my brother, and I think of her.

I missed them.

I wondered if I could ever show them what I have found here.

How I could even show them, considering the path I had to take to find it.

My fingers were pruned, and I was starting to feel sapped.

I get out of the pond and lay down upon the grass outside.

I stare up at the brilliantly starred night sky trying to peer and see them through the blowing tree canopy.

‘Thank you.’

It seems like the first time in forever I’ve said that to him, but I know it was right.

‘Thank you.’

Chapter 16

counting sheep

I am awoken by movement in the forest. The fire crackles innocently. I pause for a minute and listen intently into the forest, my vision and my hearing turns into a tunnel staring into the shadow in the trees. Everything was eerily silent and still. Not even crickets.

I could hear my blood pumping and my ears ringing in the back of my head..

-

The crickets and cicadas begin chirping again. Whatever it was must have run off. Probably was something small looking for some of my camp foods. I checked the level of the fire, all good. I rested my head again and changed my sleeping position.

…

I have a nasty habit of sometimes not being able to sleep. It’s come quite easily recently, surprisingly. With everything that has been happening, and being on the cusp of possibly finding my son, you’d think I would have more issues, not less. But for some reason, I wasn’t really having those issues lately- but tonight I was.

It’s childish, but I enjoy counting sheep. Over the past years of doing it I have found many of different ways of counting them. Did the sheep come out of a pen ? Or did they go into a pen ? Was there a fence they jumped ? Or was there a gate ? It was a fun little game I had played- and I am sure it meant something depending on what I was feeling at the time, but I never dove deep into it. I just did what felt right. Tonight, I imagined they were coming over to me. The forest slowly drowned out into the music of clouds and grass valleys. One by one they herded themselves up to where I sat on one knee. I would pet them behind their ears, and rub into their fur sometimes, spending more time with one than the other as each needed, but always counting them and making sure they were all accounted for. My wife sits beside me in a flowing white dress that looks as soft as silk in the grasses of the hills. In her gaze, with her soul now leading my hand, I follow where to pet them and how, and figure out what they needed from me, how to love them right, and to make sure they are sent off in the right accord - I count three hundred and fifteen counting still even when I was still petting each, knowing they were being accounted by her within my mind, but there are still so many lined up on the hill. I retire from the herd and rest my head upon my wife’s lap. They begin lining up to her, their favorite, in honesty. Some even rejoin the line just to see her.

As she pets every one, I count, knowing they’re all accounted for, as they come, and as they go, one at a time, and no more, and no less, off they go into the rest of the field, to rest themselves, I drift off to sleep.

-

“Wake up,

 wake up Montyr.”

Half-asleep half-awake I hear her whisper and feel excited to see her, like she'd be there when I awoke, but I am just awoken in nerves alone. A gunshot rings off in the woods. I shake the nerves out of me and try to wake myself up further wondering if the sound were real or not, like her whisper. I hear the echo fading through the forest. Most certainly real. I pack my gear quickly. I grab my revolver, I grab my shotgun. Kick dirt onto the fire and jog towards a second gunshot.

Chapter 17

mercy

I smelled traces of spent gunpowder, I must have been getting close. I yell out if anybody is there, but no one answers me. I yell out Sky’s name, no answer. The forest is particularly dense here, yet the moon still shines through the brush and leaves. I step to leave the clearing when I hear a faint bleat of an injured deer. I turn back and approach the sound. The body was camouflaged by the night shadow but the moonlight cascaded in shimmering silvered blades across the doe’s lower body. She’s injured. Large wounds on her side. My heart breaks at the leaking wounds of crimson rivers that came from punctures in her side. I move over immediately to put my hands upon it. The mouth that bit into her was large, a beast probably double a knight’s size. She looks flushed and (for lack of better word) siphoned and squeezed around the wound. It was most certainly fatal. She cries out in pain when she can. Somehow, her eyes were bleeding- her tears were orange. I sit by her head and I pet the young doe and try to ease its suffering. I noticed there was another wound, a laceration upon the doe’s neck, smaller in size, of tooth or claw I could not tell. I laid its head upon my legs and lap, and pet it slowly, and softly, easing her what I could.

..

I couldn’t kill her. Nor could I look upon her any longer than I had. I stayed there petting it, holding the wound upon its neck firmly until it slowly stopped moving. Then it might have moved again- still clinging to life.

I’ve never felt this way before.

…

I sat there with that doe, just holding its head in my hands for ten minutes after it had finally died, holding its wound firm with my hand.

I decided it was time to head back to Main Operations. Fort Worth was a lost cause.

I.. I couldn’t do this anymore.

Chapter 18

In the Ponds of Glowing Light

The dream was still alive. I was alive even after all of that, even more so. I felt like a dewy night in the scope of the most brilliant summer days of my childhood.

My neck was growing sore again, my head still ached every so often, pinholes of light still ripped into my mind every so migraininely minute, but the pain of that light felt washed away. Ohhh-ya. That was the best part. I hated migraines. This probably was more of a concussion but still.

I wondered again why Main Intelligence didn’t tell us of these monsters within the forest. Why no one said anything ( besides the Corporal I guess, but that was more in vague warning ) about the dangers that were out here. But then I remember the officer’s speech, the one I zoned out in, the scar across his face and neck and up his head, the one that made me feel uneasy and looked tender or sensitive to the touch.

I took him seriously - yet, I was so flippantly unaware of what could actually be out here. I never sat down to think about it, actually really think about it. I followed the stories they told me, I followed my heart and my dreams, and I followed their orders because I believed this is what I needed, I was so ready to just be here. And, I guess I was now. I guess, right now, it is nice. I took a second to just take it in again, the tinkling stream in the silent forest, I smiled and looked up the plentiful stars above me for what felt like the hundredth time this trip and they lead me to look slowly down one of the plants with the many little bits of light in it down to my left and near to the ground - by the ground, in the forest, I saw two amber eyes gazing from the shadows in the forest silently. I tense up and my vision starts to tunnel, my wounds flare again. I wake myself up from being frozen in their glare and slowly rise from the grass to a haunch to get to my rifle. My gun was a few steps over. I see a trench to my left…

I run and grab my rifle quickly as the panther pounces as he and I dive into the trench. The panther gets on top of me but I am able to get to my back. The thing scurried and got a better position on top of me after some struggle. It’s two times larger than me and it's weight is too much for me to escape, it growls looking into my face, already defeating its prey. It walks up my body and pins me down by its paws easily by my chest and moves its paw up and cinches its claws into my right shoulder. I wince out and yell in pain. It goes for my neck but I cinch my head down to cover it using my left shoulder as a guard and he bites into my shoulder and his teeth scratch into it as it attempts to bite into the silver that is my birthmark, unable to pierce it. My mind and body vibrate at the teeth scratching into the metal - It’s disgusted by the taste, the sound, the feeling and stops for but a short moment but continues. I try my best to wrestle the beast and squirm and I am able to free my right arm and punch into its muscular neck with my fist but my punches are hindered by my rifle pinning me on both sides of my body. I get into the thing’s eyes and it goes for my throat again and is way too strong for me to fight but the pain of its eye being gouged deters it, but it pushes past the pain of its eye to try to bite into the right side of my throat. I retain as much strength as I can despite my injuries and it cinching my shoulders but it's too strong for me. Feeling abandoned by God, completely at its control, trying to accept my fate, I close my eyes as it gets closer, still trying my best to stiff arm this thing away from me and press as deeply into its eye as I can- but the massive panther is ripped upward off of my body.

I opened my eyes to see the monster I had run from before picking up the panther by the nape of its neck and maneuvering it to hold it by its back with his other hand. It lifts it above his shoulders and tosses it into the dirt where he lands with an extreme weight. I hear the panther hiss at the monster as it steps over the trench. I pick myself up and watch from the trench to see the panther pounce at the monster, but the monster blocks him mid air and the monster and it flail around wrestling and grappling each other as the panther tries to climb upon him, but the antlered beast gets an excellent hold on it and throws it down to the ground hard while still maintaining the grapple. The panther wriggles and claws at it, albeit weaker from the takedown, and the monster loses its firm grip but maintains the position over it and the two tumble and struggle around more in the kicked up dirt. The monster finally gets another excellently skilled hold on it and puts it on its full back again and strikes at its ribs and grabs a hold on both the panther's front legs, masterfully dodging the now weak strikes of its claws of its back feet and before it recovers he steps over it and steps on its front legs with all his weight- pinning it to the ground in submission. The hurt panther submits, unable to fight anymore with the rib shot, and is at the monster’s complete mercy.

The monster looks down at the panther in what I could only call remorse or maybe pity.  It gave up its fight knowing it lost to the antlered nightmare, still flailing as much as it could and whimperingly roaring when it could, but the monster reigned it from escaping. The panther looked around for any way to get out of this, and he looked at me. His eyes gave in to reinvigoration in anger, in hunt, wanting to kill me. The monster sees this look he gives me, following its eyes from it to me, and leans down and then completely tears the panther’s throat out.

Interlude

ripples

we were by the River of the Solace.

my finger caresses and immerses the still water.

the smile-that-never-fades is upon my face,

she faces away from me, but a smile is surely

upon her face too. she works on something, idly listening

to the water around, singing a smooth hum.

This is our peace, this is who she is, this is who we are.

my ear listens to the ground and the sounds of children’s laughter tickles my ear.

my giggles rhyme to theirs, my happiness, my joy, my comfortability, the same. One voice rises amongst the many; my eyes close, it’s a little girl.

She asks the forest for safety for her grandmother who is sick, to feel the heart of Peacetree. I console her, telling the forest- ‘this one’. Her grandmother’s spirit descends upon her, next to her, outside of her view, hugging her tightly as she was as an even younger child in the spirit of the forest.

I am there with them and we surround her and hug her in the glows of her love, but in the leaves, the wind, the sun and the creations around her as she sees.

for a moment, the image of her surroundings appear in my eyes,

she’s in the forest playing with a twig doll with grass hair.

a gentle fox approaches behind her, she notices

and she gasps, gets giddy with laughter and runs over and hugs it.

the fox allows it, and when she lets it go, it

follows and presses its head into her hand as it passes her.

as she pets it, the feeling of my wife's smile

passes into my mind.

the forest guides me to

say that her grandmother will always be

within the mind-blood of the people,

the potential of the ancestor’s ideation,

and be clean (without fermentation),

and be a part of all that is connected

within her roots- to always live, never to die. she might hear the words one day, in the stream of the mind, but for now the lesson and that feeling of love is enough.

the fox circles and wraps around her as she pets its length,

warming her and furthering the consolation while in her lap.

my smile is warm like her, the warmth covers me,

my finger instinctively twitches and

sends a ripple through the water.

the warmth of her heart is midday and the ancestors

bask in her rays. The fox lies on my back. , and I love its weight.

Ashtail brushes a knotted bundle

of grasses and she is like gentle sunlight, an illuminant care.

I cozy up in the grass and drift off listening to the others soothingly

 answering the people’s many other prayers, with the fox's weight upon my back.

Chapter 19

Aftermath

The monster stood over the great panther as its blood flowed into the ground. The initial burst of blood and viscera from him yanking that thing out had already gushed into a pile next to him. His scowl did not account for or perceive me. I think for a second he forgot about me and I think to slip away while he's not attentive to me, but I am too ensnared in his presence to do anything. He acts as if this was something he unfortunately had to do, not something he would have wanted to, yet he is unwavering in form. He leans down and heavily drags the limp body away from the site of its death- to a spot where he crouches over the corpse. His back is to me, and he is hunched over it like he was doing to the doe, but there was something different about this time. Instead of ripping into it with its teeth, he begins cutting into the corpse with something, skinning it. The sounds of him ripping the hide is explosive in power but calculated in measure. The sound sounds like such an act requires something from him, but his skinning is completely measured in balance with his strength. He must have seen me, so for some reason he didn’t want to kill me like before, maybe the panther was a better thing to eat. It was definitely the same beast as before, he had that weird wild look in his eye when I saw him from before. I gather the courage to yell to him, remembering that sentience I felt when he weighed his options looking at me.

“Hey!”

He doesn’t even flinch- continues his work.

“Hey ! I’m talking to you ! Why did you save me ? What do you want from me ?..  What even are you ?”

He tears another section of the hide off of the panther with greater force than before. Then stops.

“Hmmm.”

He continues his quartering.

I approach closer. I admit, I do have my rifle in my hand readied for anything that might occur, but it feels like I’m wielding a twig against a bear.

He begins to get up and I ready myself for what might happen, but do not raise my rifle.

He throws heaps of pelts to the side of him, stands up to his full height, doubling mine, and throws the flayed fleshy panther over his shoulder, leaving the organs’ waste in the downpressed grass.

He passes to my right about four steps away from me and meets my gaze for a second.

My heart sinks. He moves his face in a way that shoots derision. How much thought did this thing have ? Was that look intentional or truly communicative ? He decided not to kill me, that required a choice.

He takes and drops the panther corpse in a clearing that's near to the pond, where no grass is. He walks onward entering the forest.

I walk up to the panther and its throat and neck look gruesome. The ‘meat’ ( I have no other word to describe it ) and other parts of its neck is opened into its ripped off esophagus. I can see bits of its spine at the back.

I hear a large tree felling in the woods- I don’t know what to do at this point. I look into the forest past the dissipated fireflies and only save a few illuminate within that dense sucking fog of shadow that this forest seemed to have in multitude.

..

I could stay here with him. But what would that entail ?

I didn’t know his reasons why he hasn't killed me yet.

I don’t know whether he will change at any given moment. He may be saving me for later, easier to kill when I stay in my place.

I don’t even know if I would survive the night either way I went- to the forest, or staying with him, even this sanctuary wasn’t safe from the wildlife it seemed.  I was pretty lost at this point, and I didn’t really know where Fort Worth was, I could probably figure it out. I could most certainly make it to the shore by the Sun’s guidance, but would I make it back into Main Headquarters from there and survive ? Or would I end up on some random beach somewhere, aimless to then decide whether to go up or down its coast or back into the forest again not knowing which direction was my people ? Maybe I could survive until the ships came in, I would be able to see them from far away. Maybe see a fishing boat or something ?

…

-

The fire snapped the splintering and falling wood. Embers spread and fly within the stone encircled campfire that this thing built. I sat by it as he roasted some of the quartered panther on a spit. It was a makeshift setup, and I felt like a crazy man that I felt compelled to stay with this thing, also that it even knew how to build something like this. He turned the skewer slowly. The fireflies and the forest around had dimmed by this point, not being as lively, but they surrounded the campfire and us, that deep shadow or deep fog was more of comfort at this moment. I did feel safer here in the light like we were in one of those brightbulbs - contained within its glass, with the fireflies moving like golden snowflakes. Despite him, I was actually beginning to truly relax, but my God was it difficult with how monstrous he looked. But I could have died five times over in the past two, or however many days it's been, so if he liked his kill better relaxed he could eat me at this point and everything would probably be balanced in the world.

As I look at the ground idly, deep in thought, yet divorced from my own mind, a large flank of cooked meat slaps onto the ground near my feet.

He looked at me like he has seen this look before, of confusion and questioning of reality.

He himself was holding a leg of raw panther.

I picked up the cooked panther.

He began chewing into it.. I began eating as well.

Chapter 20

Back to Basic

Main Headquarters was bustling with soldiers today. There must have been some sort of something big going on. Small food markets and men selling luxury items lined the streets, everyone around looked cheery, lively.

I irradiated terribly into everyone around as I passed by. Soldiers like here at a camp this large were used to at least a few people feeling as awful as I did right now, but I didn't want to bring this into their square right now.

-

Despite that, in between those feelings, I have been shocked into nothingness.

During those moments, in the past few days I have been here, I have been brought in multiple times to discuss and debrief the council on what happened to Second Company in Fort Worth. No one questioned whether I was with them to begin with or not since nobody arrived back but me.

They told me that while they discussed things internally on what to do with me and the fort that I was to be put on hold/leave.

I wasn’t expecting it, but going back into military life actually made me feel a little bit better. It was the familiarity of it- the structure I guess. I didn’t necessarily believe in the cause or anything (at least anymore) or even the structure itself, but it felt like a weird safety that I knew. I couldn’t tell if the now deeper tinge of unpleasantness in me was from, it, or from the fact I found some peace in no longer looking for my son, or maybe that I caused the chaos at Fort Worth.

As much as all that was there, being here was a peaceful regression, but one that also brought up of all the wrong things I had done and hard times I had been through.

I still had yet to fully calm down from the past days. Being on leave helped in alleviating it at least a little bit, they actually had a decent R&R here, and the weather was good, the men were happy. That was something.

The boys here had the freedom to make an operational area where they had various areas and things to do to relax. Somehow, the people in engineering were able to make some of those brightbulbs so we could cool water underground and be able to see down there as well. They made a chilled pool bath with that where the injured folks were able to rest and heal up. Anyone put on hold. The cold stone of the cavern bath was a beautiful ice against the heat of my stress.

They told me there were cold showers to shower in around the camp too for anyone else, but I never seemed to be able to find any of them.

The wyverns were there to help too- the younger ones birthed here made obsidian stones and other rock alongside the soldiers’ guidance to use as hot stone massage therapy or even beds. God.. us soldiers loved them so much. I always liked seeing them help. I’m not really entirely sure why, but they were so loved by every man on base. They were strength in our eyes, the guys saw that too. The younger ones tended to not care as much about being pet or wrestled, or whatever have you. I guess when they grew up they just became more serious. I don’t know. I couldn’t help but let out a little laugh about it all.

That was one thing I kept from my time in the war: That despite all of the terribleness, there were still such beautiful moments to be had. And that honor you can hold as men. We were the purveyor of dragons. We were like the breath in their chest. We were the fire that they breathed. We were the scale that permeated. The claw, the tooth, that defended. We were strength. Just like them.

Various games were here too. Nice beds. Some decent polish for our birthrights. A decent bar with decent folk. I made use of all of the facilities I could.

Not one, no- not a single one, did I feel I deserved deep down after the fact or in the silence of my mind.

I was comfortable during, I was safe after, I was greatly chilled where I once was too hot, heated where too cold.

Yet there was an unapproachable fear that sullied the purity of my silver upon my back in that I had not chosen right, that I was not worthy of any of it.

Deep deep down. I could just barely make out the edges of its shape. Feeling bad was one thing, knowing the bad was something completely different. That fear that be for killing the men from my ignorance, from my mistakes, taking from the men I had taken by my own hand, or maybe that I was possibly leaving Sky out there. That he was alive: Looking for me. Or more that he is, or was, calling my name as he lay dying and that I was not there to help him.

…

Today of all days. I wrestled most of every day with the thought of him until I landed on that beach. I wrestled with my iniquity of my actions in getting to Fort Worth. I wrestled with what happened at Fort Worth, what I couldn't stop, what I very well wrestled if I caused. Letting Ethan die. Killing that man. Letting another die too.

I had done all of this, whether I knew it or not, around and within and about the edges of that shape deep within me- until I was there with that dying doe.

That pain had vanished, not even being apparent when I kneeled down to her, eased her.

I don’t know why. Being there with her as she was dying brought my depths to peace, my entire being, even if my surface pained for her.

As she suffered, I did less in a way. The shape had vanished there in my depth. And rather was of her image, her going to peace.

And I was at peace in that. I had to go on while she could not, and there would always be something to carry along with that, I’d always have that.

I lived on. Even though they had died, though she had gone.

I decided then, or at least sometime before now that I only just realized now:

I chose to not wrestle with my turmoil any longer.

I chose to only be broken to be reshaped in strength.

I chose to know weakness, but to let myself be washed away- even in my guilt.

I chose to leave behind the pain and suffering I supposed I had caused.

I chose to leave behind the pain and suffering I had supposed was caused to me.

I chose to live.

I deserved that at least.

I couldn’t control everything, but I could surrender to what could.

I would know the wyvern.

I would know the doe.

And because of that,

I could be anything

as long as I lived on

in their image.

I lay in R&R and think of my wife.

Her hand upon my head, drifting me off to sleep counting the sheep that she calls to her peace, and they journey into whichever pen or land they choose.

I choose peace. I choose love. She brings me to where that may be.

The truth is, it works.

Chapter 21

Apathy

The new-man is delighted to see my village and I realize that Ashtail was right about this one. He sees as we do, of new-bright, and he smells as we do, of fallen great-oak; of deep marsh and what comes of fresh-felt grass. The cubs run up with various gifts in hands surrounding him with old toys and as much as he is surprised, he is still delighted, he sits down and allows them to approach him. One of the girls shows him the beads in her brushed hair I know was knotted and frayed but a star ago, and she looks proud that it looks so beautiful and clean. The people have been waiting for this moment for a while. It has been a decently long time since we had last convened with a new-man and it was dangerous. The elders and others of my tribe are cross armed and smile as they watch the new-man and the children’s excitement, in a little bit of a worry. They acknowledge me for a moment with a sideways disdain but still of their love from long ago for me. But I know deep down they have been excited too to see what this new-man had to offer, as I had been excited. So whatever they felt of me or wanted to preach to me was not to be had at this occasion.

They really haven’t been approving of my actions lately, and I’ve been becoming more and more of somewhat of a pariah. Which sometimes helped with my role in the village, to allow me peace at the fringes.

I have a duty to fulfill to the people. Not to them. The people were what mattered to me. Ashtail sees me though, and she understands, she was the one who wanted me to bring the new-man here, so I did and I’m glad I changed my mind. I didn’t always understand her ways, and as much as I could read the vine of the forest floor, she understood its ways far deeper than I ever could. And the vine probably understood her far greater than I ever did or ever could, but I tried my best.

The new-man was deeply curious about all of the children’s gifts and of our home, our great-heart, the way things worked, but right now he was playful and loving with the children.

He was very much afraid at first of me- and by extension, us.

I guess I could sort of understand that looking at us from never seeing us before and our size differences. It wasn’t the best first contact on our end either in the past.

She wanted me to show him how soon our mother earth will birth the cubs, she said she thought he would find it interesting and would find something from it, she said she felt it maybe had to do with something with his past that would help him and that the time would come for him to see why. What do I know ?

The children learned their native language a while ago from one of the teachers that inevitably had to go from the risk of the new-men finding where we lived.

I was still pretty bad at their language, but I was getting better, the children are pretty good teachers to something that is new and foreign to our older generations and myself.

They ask him to show his mark, his birthright. The birthmark of all new-men (or as they call themselves, Knights), carry. Silvery brilliant metal that is their skin at parts of their body that they are born with- usually upon their chest near their heart or the left side of their upper body. He pulls the collar of his shirt down and shows them the top edge of it and they immediately go to touch it. He laughs as if tickled, but allows them to touch it again after he prepares himself. I did always adore their stories about it, the others in the village relayed to me how one man was bound to be different in society based on any other just based upon their marks: the mark of a warrior was one that had silver around either their forearms, arms, or hands, the mark of a noble new-man would be it extends up their neck slightly, nothing up to the ear or jaw, and the mark of a kind soul was that mark would be upon and over their heart. I loved how the children were so fascinated by the unique shape and by the shine when they could see it, and even, if looked correctly, you could make out a shape of yourself within its faded reflection. It gave them a sense of purity that I think I needed to see in order to better empathize with them, especially since of our difficulties in the past.

They never had it upon their heads, below their waist line, or on more than one finger. Which I was most curious about. But their hair would sometimes be silvered because of whatever made that naturally occur within them, and their eyes could be silvered (but that was not something they commonly saw as some sort of destiny or marking upon their prestige).

I’m really not sure how it works, but they are able to move it and bend it like any other muscle and it didn’t sound like metal when it moved, similar to how you couldn’t always hear your own internal muscles move, but it sometimes grew alongside them as they aged, sometimes not.

The silver on any unique knight would sometimes flow like a river in its shape, or be sturdy in shape like their armor or a shield, but it was always solid. They were rather short too. Only growing to be about half our size, up to our hip. The older children were almost the same height as him, our youngest not as much.

They were weird, that was about all else I could say.

We were able to protect our faces by forcing our antlers to grow in particular ways but it must be pretty useful to have that protection at all times and not be so heeded by it like we could be in that process.

We tried to keep them out of our lands for the most part because they normally tended to have little respect for our forests, and our forests were what we were at the core.

But Ashtail tells me he’s different, like he was some sort of an answer to that, maybe I believed that.

Chapter 22

the silver lining

My eyes drift open slowly in the dust of the sleepy sunny new morning. The sun beams warm up my back and the air, the breeze eases through the room of an open window. I’m in my log cabin.

The sheets are soft.

I move my hand into the sunlight allowing the rays to further warm me.

The cast iron in the kitchen clank together.

“Sky ! Wake up ! Go out to the garden and grab me some onions please !”

I.. I love you..

It’s a moment out of time. It comes back every so often. The first few times I’d fling up. Like if every moment that had occurred after this moment in time I saw were actually just a dream, not this. I’d try to run up and go hug her or ask her anything about what was happening, but every time she’d be so confused about what was happening, or scared, and I’d wake up from the excitement. I almost just did it earlier. But I relented, and I was lucky I was able to relax enough still to stay, not for lack of skill. I was usually prepared by now just to live and be a part of it, else it would go away, but times like this where I forget it would sometimes slip, but I had to not be anxious about it either.. It was an incredibly hard balance that I had to not yearn for it. I just had to live here in the moment and enjoy it as it always played out, like it was a gift that I could ruin by feeling rushed or over wanting or that it was something I needed to have.

These are one of the moments you’d never want to not be a part of or move around anyway. This was when it was simpler, when life didn’t involve such uncertainty, and it was better just to be a part of it.

Get up, do things around the house, maybe go into town, be with my family- simple.

I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Yet it all went away anyway, after this of course.

Sky finishes his chores, which weren’t a lot today, and I see him running outside in the grassy yard moving with his arms out as if he was a bird. I never knew how he’d always find something new to do in a day, he would always find some sort of way to go about his imagination.

I was just so glad to be able to be there again. I’d always try to guess exactly what he was or was doing at any given time. I think right now he was a frog. He hopped around in the grass trying to grab at bugs and other things in the grass all with his tongue flipped out of his lips and trying to keep his cheeks popped out. It honestly looked like he was about to faint.

He always loved playing with sticks too, swinging at trees and swinging at the ground, breaking them in half or bending them over his knee just whacky stuff I did as a kid too.

He had a pile of them that mimicked specific things he would want at any given time that he kept in a basket. One that looked like a rifle or a handgun, or one that would mimic a sword or a club, extended hands or larger fingers, staves. He even found one that looked astonishingly very similar to a little man, with a knot as a head that even looked to have eyes, a nose, and ears.

I drifted back off into a nap in the warmth of his childhood. I knew what was coming and needed to rest in this perfection for a second more because I loved him so much, and missed him so much, and because I did know what was coming after.

I awake again, slowly, an afternoon with rain clouds and storms. The window still open, the cabin cool and saturated from the rainy air. The rain is bordering on violent, hammering on the wooden roof of my old cottage. The house was quiet besides this, the bed no longer as warm. I got up and shut the window and went to make breakfast.

I throw cast iron down and cook. I wasn’t the best at it.

-

I call to Sky that it’s finished, but he doesn’t come out. I walk over to his room.

Sky is inside watching out the window at the rain flowing down the window and the clouds lighting up in the valley, his window open, just a little.

I tell him breakfast is ready and he grunts an affirmation. He looks outside for the next five minutes while I wait at the table looking outside myself.

At the table, we don’t talk about much- we don’t even really look at each other. If we even asked about how each of us were doing- we wouldn’t really even know what to say, we try to but it just kind of goes in circles- the, ‘Yeah, I’m doing fine’-s.

It made me sad that at one point he was this defeated, maybe I could have done better for him. It makes me even sadder on second thought that I was this defeated, or this angry. But I was lucky that the cabin was not too cold, or too hot right now.

And I couldn’t change how I went about it back then, else I would wake up.

I’m just glad he turned out to be a wonderful boy in spite of all of it. In spite of me.

In spite of my beliefs at that time and the way I parented him through my own pain and suffering. The way I filled a room with my loss.. I wasn’t the best at seeing it before, I was worse at seeing beyond it.

But he was always there to be my leaven to happiness, to purify that rot, or to even make the rot feel like he was doing something right, something to love, that it had a use, and that it would rise.

And I was there to be his strength, the thing to fight for him, the wall that kept all of the bad at bay, while he let in the cool wind into the cottage.

Sky was what cleansed the room within my heart, within that cabin, and he is my pride and joy.

My silver lining.

Chapter 23

The Mark of a Man

We all have gathered in the Forest Glade of the Great-Antlers, the festivities have begun.

The people dance and they sway as drums are beat in a rhythm of the crowd within the Great Antlers large hug, men and women sway in rhythm and pass each other in arms touching intimately and lovingly in skinfully stirring ways. The antler’s jewelry sways jumps and rumbles at the great beat of the forest’s footsteps and dance. The miracle-paint (of-new-life) upon the drum skins jump with life themselves, every little bead and stream of it a new beginning, smashing through into this world with each slap of the drum, charging in to begin from the peace of before; bringing it, with it- themselves, to help us hope for something more of life: the new souls find the energy to burst into life. The tribal horns blow, giving the deep manna and strength needed to stay sturdy against anything, to fill the beat of the drums and the great heart, and even our hearts, with purpose. The new-man dresses in our tribal garb, for him, a wooden mask with twigs out the top and an orange poncho our people have crafted just for him- he rattles with maracas and shuffles within the crowd, dancing with the Natives as they smile together moving in towards each other and away again. Moving like one of us.

I was never one for participating in the festivities, I just enjoyed watching, being a part of it from the outside, seeing the life others gave to it- but earlier today, the middle cubs coerced me strongly, and the new-man, to go to the Radiance dive, a place where the children and middle cubs proved they were growing up and that they had enough courage, enough faith to leap into the unknown that was life, that was freedom. It was a dangerous cliff dive to be specific, it could only be dangerous if you didn’t do it just right. When I was younger, I went for that dive, I went for that leap, and my grounded foot I tried leaping off of slipped. I was so close to hitting my head upon the side of that cliff, but I had already imagined before why I hadn’t. I jumped well this time, as I had many of times after to perfect the jump after, and it was just as I remembered it- the deep dive within the cool brilliant water. I love days like this. I’m glad they pushed me to go again.

But tonight was the day that the gestation pods were forming. The people would dance. Stomp their feet, and love with all their might. Yipping and yeeping into the forest above and around our calls of heritage, playing instruments, calling out to the forest to protect our people in our many callings of love, calling the souls to gather here to be born. As well as eating and celebrating that which is our life. The women that were ready to have a child, by choice and who were of age, and would attempt to bring on child, would have to be around a certain cycle and would sit atop the ground of the great-heart and bleed from their uterus, although the birthing process however would only work when the men granted them what allowed the woman fermentation, through intercourse. What the man provides also allowed that fermentation to root in the ground and what allowed that seed to route correctly within the protection through the parents’ lineage. The new-man said he believed the logic of how a child was conceived internally was kind of opposite in ways and similar in others for his people's men and women, but was unsure.

Our blood is our memories and our thoughts as people and upon explaining this to the new-man he explained that he and other new-men have these central organs they call brains that allow them to think and to feel and things of that nature, but we do not have it. Not exactly as they do at least.

Our blood is what processes these things, from thinking to how we are born, grants us life. But the great heart is what supplies us life, without it, our hearts would not beat themselves.

The gestation pods begin forming underground following the man’s rooting protocol, from there, the gestation begins. Naturemother (in all her greatness, in her forever spirit) supplies the nutrients, while processes begin that allow growth. After that the gestation pods grow, and the woman.. well actually it was about to start.

From the movement of the crowd surrounding the center where they would emerge from, from the singing of the choirs, and from the love of young people roaming the outskirts, the ground begins bursting, bubbling, like it were lava erupting.

Explosive. The explosions of the great hearts pure mind-blood could rupture over ten feet tall, the conductors of the choir and the orchestra were the safety and assistance behind them, the drummers were like the conductors of the ground, each burst of the drum helping the spark at each site to explode into life, all while the paint exploded all around the stage and over themselves, covering them in the colors of life itself.

From it, there- the leathery forms of the pods would begin breaching out of the ground like a bird birthing out of an egg, forcing themselves into life itself from the force of the roots of the great-oaks and their thanks for the seeds and the tribes calling them to push into life. Some would succeed, some weren't just yet ready to arrive. The pods are hard skinned leathery armor that holds the baby in vitro, glows a vibrant green into the forest around it as it breaches further.

Every one growing out of the ground and reaching the surface would send explosions in your own soul, a fire that grew tenfold by each that came out and battled for life. The birth of life would send tears in your eyes, encouraging yourself to farther. To punch through into belief, into ambition, into the new world, like they had the courage to do.

…

Until finally the chorus, the drums, our souls, our excitement, and the pods would slowly cool and rest to a serene reverence. Twinkling the scintiliating green snowy air of the dirt. A soft mirth of my benign. High tined tide of starry splendor.

Every single time I would wonder how it happened, despite being taught the science of how it occurred, and the forest always held if not just a little bit of mystery- the parents would go and search for their children like they were as young as them, they placed and brushed their hands upon the leathery rocky hide and knew instantly if it was or not, or whether their child was ready to breach, or not. We celebrated both, they'd return when they were ready, or stay in peace in the great-before, whichever they chose, whichever they were ready for. The new-man was curious about such things and we allowed him to be with some of the parents, the families, to see. I saw the same look of awe and wonder in his face, he knew it just as much as us. Tonite was like a new birth for us, or a new beginning, but it was for him too. From there, it was all up to us to protect the Glade and for the parents to perform within what we call the ideation phase. The parents would think of all the potential their children could become while the woman mimicked the birthing pain that the mother forest has in growing them, their stomach growing alongside hers, having to carry around that weight that Naturemother (in all her greatness, in her forever spirit) would too. The women would normally later stay near, always really, praying next to them, laying next to them. It was hard to get them away from sleeping next to them either.

Not only would they think of all of the good things they could become, but of all of the wrongs we as people have committed, not allowing any one of us to take on that personal burden. Even if sometimes we cast judgments as the elders did to me. It was just as important to forgive such things as that than anything else. At the end of the process, when the baby was ready to be born, the woman would be a part of the pain of the process of childbirth to then leave the bag of waters that is within her uterus that is to be buried within the ground- that in which was the potential of their ideation of their child and the clean blood (without fermentation), that was opposite of the blood of the initial conception and seed that allowed the birth to take place, the clean blood that we bury, that is said to relieve us of sin. They would leave behind what they believed their children could or would become, good or bad, and leave them totally into the hands of the forest itself, allowing their ideation of the beauty of their potential to go back to the ancestral blood within the dirt for the forest to determine where and what they would do.

And we would have it no other way.

At the end of all of it, it’s quite balanced.

Chapter 24

The Trenches

-

It’s the 8th day of Sprintship.

The War of Coalitions started two years ago, but the past years have aged my soldiers twenty years- and myself, well.. I was getting old.

The Coalition of Veritun has been intermittently assaulting and harassing our position for a few weeks now, our supplies are running short and our chain of communication has been injured by roving small-fire wyvern strikers. Bravo Squad has just enough ammunition for our twenty men to hold two full clips..

I was one of the four that had armor too, but the rifles we acquired were becoming more common-place on the front on both sides and fazing armor out of need, still worth it and useful for bayonet and shortswords attacks though, but we actually had less of those blades than firearms right now.

There was food and water to last us a week if we ration as though we are fasting, hopefully we could last that long. But, thankfully, we hold a good position, an aging school ruin outside of Tombs near a destroyed bunker with mostly clear fields of burnt trees and wyvern’ breath foxholes with some natural hilly embankments at parts.

The obsidian shaping we luckily were able to acquire has been getting hammered in frequent dive assaults by weaponry and by those swift small-fire wyvern’s breath. We haven’t been able to take down any of the small wyverns with the weaponry we have at the range and speed and tactics they have engaged us, but Tommerick swears he bloodied one. We’ve been sending up signals into the sky for help but no one seems to be responding back. We were on our own for now. We would need it soon since we’re the decisive point of the Veritun's surrounding position that, if taken, would result in Tombs being put into a siege. We must hold our position for its safety despite our lack. We’ve been stopping their foot soldiers from entering into Tombs on the flanks, so we expect an attack on our position soon. And each night has been an additional struggle with guarding due to heavy rain. Nothing came of the nights, not even stragglers, so we suspected they were waiting for the rain to end to advance. It was only a cool drizzle now and the sky was mostly clear. And the sky was getting darker by the second drawing closer to night.

The men are on edge, and I don't blame them. I try my best to raise morale, but I was never really the best at that, and the situation is truly dire. However, our leading priest, and arguably best marksman, Spade, has been holding candlelit vigils in the dry parts of the ruined building every night that have been helping the men a lot. And sometimes the gunfire from other areas actually sounds pleasant if you don’t think about what’s actually happening where they are: the rhythm of war as an outsider was strangely music- I tried my best to take it as our gunfire was the one winning. But there was one thing, one sound that would always strike deep to every soldier's fear, no matter what- the sharp wail of the incoming Firestorms; the coordinated wyvern raids the Veritun were known for. After the initial panic settled of the screeching in the horizon, if you were precise, and were lucky to have one, boys we named “medicine men” would be able to determine how far they were, how many were coming in the total wave, and if any of them were headed in our direction. They say that each wyvern has a distinct shriek and wingbeat so you could pin out how many were in the cacophony and of what type. The Big Boys, the largest and most uncommon and hard to care for; they could level a building in five minutes or through two slow sweeps (for cities in ashing runs), the Mediodrakes, medium sized; they were used for general purposes but were uncontrollable in craze without handlers or pilots so they were dangerous and were more used for infantry and front warfare, and the small-fire ones, the smallest of the three were used as covert and sometimes sent outside of raids; they were many in kind but they were also used for soldiers, but mostly skirmishing, and used as anti-wyvern dog-fighters mainly.

The Veritun loved sending all their raids out at once to intimidate us and scare us, even if they would go to different areas. It worked every single damn fucking time. The sound of them was like death itself screeching from the horizon, far away, calling us to his prism. They could be heard through the entire battlefield. We were expecting them, and heard the newly starting wingbeat and starting calls from the far reaches call into the outpost as a spreading moving fear.

L.T. Short (who was respected as a Lieutenant, but L.T being just his initials), one of our medicine men, after a minute of dedicated listening determined in a yelled announcement that there was within a seventy five percent chance there would be a swarm of five, three medium and two small, headed in our direction that would arrive in twenty minutes. And with that, I determined the men were going to swarm our position with their help-

“Listen up everybody ! Get in position ! There’s no way they won’t be using that for their forward advance onto our position ! Keep your rifles loaded, and watch over and keep to your buddies ! This could mean the end of the war ! Let’s make our families proud !”

The men cheer and hoorah and rush into the positions where they were all needed and that we had discussed, handing consolatory cigarettes to each other and doing various pre-battle rituals.

The ruined school we were in was our best chance of defense. Our men had recently made trenches outside the entrance perimeter, but we were unable to hold them with all of the small-fire wyvern skirmishing, so we suspected that's where they would attack from, unfortunately as well we were unable to booby-trap them or destroy the more outer ones. The school had an outer wall perimeter, but they were destroyed in the south-west and north-east corner, and the gate in the entrance was destroyed. The school also had a belltower Spade and Hoggs crows-nested within, they were honestly our best chance here. We barricaded the north-east corner of the wall but decided it’d be best to keep the south-west one open in case we needed to retreat because that was the direction the destroyed and dilapidated old hidden bunker was. The sky was getting even darker by the second. They'd be here soon.

Our snipers, S&H, holding up in the belltower, hand signal to me, and I to the rest of Bravo squad, notifying us no men are in sight as of yet. I set my rifle upon the windowsill for greater accuracy and brace for the incoming assault when I hear L.T notify everyone of the incoming wyvern force with a five minute approach window.

We have one saving grace in this upcoming battle besides our skilled snipers. And our riflery. The wyvern’s can’t approach within twenty foot engagements for two reasons, with the latter being more vital: The fact it's a risk we could injure the pilots from said range and angle orientations, and the newly developed Jerry Bombs. A wyvern of similar size can test another wyvern of similar size alone with no doubt -  the exception were dogfighters, they were ruthless- but besides the wyvern-on-wyvern our bullets have a hard time piercing the larger one's scales. Even an ace marksman would be lucky to but blind one, so foot soldiers were hopeless against a well trained pilot or a trained-solo wyvern as we were never supplied the high caliper machine guns we had, so there was no hope for a foot soldier in that - that is, until the Jerry Bomb was engineered.

One of the inventions out of Journey’s R&D department. They are in short supply, but, if thrown correctly, one of those could take out two wyverns that were close to each other, making the use of Jerry Bombs incredibly efficient. They fired into the wyvern due to something about the wyvern’s internal heat or something, I don’t even think the scientists know why it works, but it does. But the Jerry Bombs tested the amount and intensity of wyvern raids as now the Veritun are scared of assaulting positions they once knew they could take with ease if they knew wyvern forces weren’t there and that the position was mainly foot soldiers. You’d think that only our side would have something like that since we developed it, but you’d be surprised how Veritun seems to have acquisitioned some. Nonetheless, we had two. One from our men and one we found here at the ruin’s makeshift armory. If done right we could take out the five with ease, then it was just the men we had to take care of.

-

A bugle blows through the air for a minute and a half from the trenches. Silence protrudes through my pores, sweat follows suit. Spade’s sniper cracks through the air and the first Veritun soldier that I had not even seen advancing falls.

The wyverns are arriving over the horizon, nine in total. Three large. Six medium.

“Oh- fuck man !”

“Keep it togetheeerrr !”

The bugle blows again.

The Veritun soldiers begin charging us in a warcry against bulletfire as others cover their advance within trenches.

I hit two, killing one- injuring the other. Another in trench aims, then fires, but I already have my back upon the wall in cover, but I feel one of the shots hit the stone behind me. I shot two bullets- I had 7 left in the clip and 16 left in total.

-

My breath shuttered as I ready myself to turn out of the window again. My back is strong against the wall. I firm my chest and turn out to the window again but shots ring out and splatter rock into my face. I take cover again; next to me, Short gets hit by a shot and lit up by two additional bullets as he cripples to the ground with his hand still on the windowsill. He coughs up blood onto the wall as he uses it as a support, not fully fallen. I thought for a second to rush over to help him, but I reason there is no help I could give him now. I lean back out the window slowly peeking with my rifle planted at the corner, I see the bugleman being sniped by one of the S&H boys, and I take out two of the trench guardsmen. 4. I see a squad of four horsemen riding in with trenchguns and death in th-

I fall to the floor. A loud ding hit into my head and I fell down on my side concussed and dazed. I sit up still in cover take off my helmet quickly and see a bullet struck through, piercing one side of my helmet but not the other, barely missing my head. I feel a burning sensation in my hair and quickly brush off the bullet to my side.

The men are yelling, I hear pain in some of their voices, fear in others. I take a moment to collect myself.

I am outside of it for a moment. I calm myself and get ready to engage again-

“Wyvern forces approaching ! Half a cli-!”

That same loud metal ding I heard but in the belltower.

A body falls out of the dilapidated belltower into the school. There was no time.

I crawl and reposition to the window L.T. was at, push his dead body out of the way, lean against the window’s wall and lean out. No soldiers in my view are looking upon my position, rather the constructed barricade we had created in the north east hole in the perimeter wall. I take a second to breathe to better my aim. Then fire upon one, the others begin to panic and I am able to get a second one in the shoulder, but I hear the snap of the bullet into his birthright. I reposition back into the window wall in cover and look for more as a stream of flame begins hammering the side of the building I am at, the outer edge of the main spew vents into the window and scorches the air around me. I quickly reposition over near the watchtower where I look up to see Spade being lit up by wyvern’s breath- flailing around in screams trying to put it out, and him tripping and stumbling and rolling down the stairs to the landing of the floor I am on. Parts of his skin are already boiling and are peeling as he screams in agony and I rush to grab a large blanket in my pack that I douse him in. The flame is smothered, but I see a horseman rushing in the school with a cavalry sword and a revolver. I fire twice, killing him with the first shot and accidentally injuring the horse with the second. My empty clip automatically dings out of the rifle as the horse flees and I check Spade and see he is unconscious and in critical condition, his form smoldering. I quickly press down and reload my last clip- I could maybe carry him over and down into the bunker, but as I think, in front of me, I see a Big Boy fly above an outcrop of the stone wall and crash itself into the ceiling where four of our men are crowded inside. The men yell in fear and surprise then agony as they are engulfed in flame with a wyvern spewing airy lava down upon them. It all happens so fast I am only just now able to take my rifle up to shoot upon the pilot, but a sprayed array of punching bullets pierce into him through the back!- One of our men upon a wyvern has swooped in around the back of the wyvern in a quarter circle formation firing a light machine gun upon the enemy pilot's back- our pilot rears up and stops his wyvern midair and the intense flame from his throat engulfs the Big Boy's back, melting into and inside it before he can pick himself up and flee- our gunner on him turns around his swivel and shoots his light machine gun towards the incoming assaulting forces, within the moment of its concentrated fire.

I yell out and hear a couple of the men do too. The pilot pulls the small-fire wyvern up and into the air again and I hear belt fire cutting into men at the front of the assault.

With renewed hope and the strength of his determination and skill, I bend down and using my rifle and blanket I secure a dragging sling and begin dragging Spade down the stairs carefully so as to not injure his burns any further as best I can. As I rush to the bunker with Spade behind me I see we have two of those dogfighter wyverns on our side. They easily weaved between the heavier Veritun wyvern forces, but wouldn’t last against a continued assault, or one moment of the larger wyvern’s burst of fire. One distracts and fights two wyverns while one assaults another, the pilots doing their best to as well distract and pelter against the wyvern forces engaging against the men in the school-

I hear the distinct lighting up of a Jerry Bomb’s trigger ignition and its explosion within the air. Wisp looking bolts of yellow fire explode outward from it and seek into the closest enemy wyvern that tried to get the small-fire wyvern weaving around it. Each tailed bolt explodes on each of the impacts as much as its initial explosion; scales, flesh, and its roars of pain fly through the air, the pilot ejects from its back.

As it all happens, I am running with rifle and blanket in hand to the bunker entrance past the south west hole in the wall with Spade dragging behind me. A bullet enters my calf and I drop to the ground in pain as a loud ding of an empty clip sounds in the air. I look to see it was a lone Veritun soldier hugging the perimeter wall surrounding the school wielding a Sisar 18. He quickly tries to reload. My rifle is stuck within the sling I made for Spade, and he hurriedly begins trying to reload- I grit my teeth and plant my healthy leg down pressing myself up and rush over limping at the Veritun soldier and go to tackle him before he could reload or I can even think of the pain in my leg. I rush into him and am able to grab onto his uniform as he pushes me away from the tackle, still being able to bring him to the ground. The more watery of the mud splashes in our struggle but it is mostly of the consistency of cake batter, but I quickly maneuver up on top of him, landing a cross across his face and getting my hands around his throat in a choke in his shock. He gets his thumb up into my throat and tries his best to squeeze into it like it would pierce it and it damn well feels like it could. I stop choking him to land a blow upon his face again that sends another shock through his body. He grabs up into my nose and tries to rip it off, pulls me closer by grabbing into my ear and bites into my face - but I knee him in the groin before he is able to bite anything out. I attempt to stand up but forget about my leg and I cripple and tumble from the bullet wound in my calf and fall over to my hip, my side getting caked in by the mud and my face slapping a puddle of water. He gets up on his side and switches his stance then tackles me to the ground and pushes my head over within that puddle. I grab onto his cuirass trying my best to pull my face up out over the surface but he has me by the neck and chin with his arms fully extended out..

My vision begins going out from the sides as I yell.. I fight, punch at what I can't see, getting small breathes in, water and air, and I choke down until my last breath..

Then he suddenly pulls his hands hard away from me.

I stayed under that water for a second, without realizing I could now pull myself back up.. I whipped my head up by my chest from the puddle for the struggle of air I coughed out, wiping off the excess water from my face. I was too dazed to retaliate, and my eyes were still filled with muddy water, turned over and I coughed up the volume of water that had filled the bottom of my lungs.

I turned back onto my back and I looked at him with my chin to my chest and he had a look of intense fear within his eyes that looked at something behind and away from me. Disregarding what just happened, or that he was about to kill me, he runs off, scared.

I pick myself up and look to see what is there- but there is nothing.

Chapter 25

Bunker

…

My waterskin needed a change or a cleaning. I must have fallen on it, or got muddy water in it when I was fighting that guy. Luckily there was still some water left here in the bunker.

Spade has been sleeping for the majority of the past four days, the burns really take it out of him, he could speak, barely- but I understand why he doesn't really want to. He drinks his water in the light of the lanterns burning smelly old oil and eats the grueling food the bunker has had since the last great war; and I change his clothes and bandages, then wet his new bandages. We do that, then wait. We always hear rumbling from the surface and the wing beats of wyverns flying overhead but I can never tell which way they are going, and by the time I try to figure it out they are past or too silent already.

..

My ears are still messed up from my brawl and the fight, and my eyes and face and calf are killing me. Luckily, or- not luckily, no one has discovered or entered our bunker yet, but that includes people from our side. I fear that the enemy has taken our above ground holdout because no one else has retreated to it and I am too worried to go up there yet. My responsibility was Spade right now anyway.

My best plan for now is to wait for help while tending to him, I couldn’t tell if we were winning up there, or losing - in the grand scheme, but we had enough supplies down here to supply us for a few weeks. I don’t think I’ve ever been more dirty, exhausted, and soggy in my life.

..

I’ve been replaying the moment in my mind, wondering what caused him to retreat.
I’ve had run-ins with the enemy before, but nothing quite like that. His fear was something I had never seen before in my life.

Most logically, it was the movement of the dogfighters. But his gaze and focus was stricken as if God or one of his angels was there and commanded him to stop with all of his power. I never thought I was a man who would deserve something as rare as a guardian angel, or his presence, and now I was just wondering what the greater purpose of that was if it was his divine grace; I had a family, maybe that was the reason. Maybe that man also just wasn’t a killer; never done it before and stopped because he didn’t want to become one, scared of what he was becoming. But why go so close to doing something like that then to stop just at the most critical second ? He fought like he knew what he was doing, albeit as dirty as possible - I mean, when your life is on the line in the hellscape of war you throw away all the honorable rules of ‘fair’ hand-to-hand engagement just as we had when you have someone you need to return for- so I couldn’t blame him, the men that did follow those rules were dead or the scariest men you could ever meet. Nor did I think anyone could blame me, besides maybe them. But the timing.. the timing really did come down to as if someone above clicked open a stop watch imbued with primed precision waiting for the exact ticked moment to call it off. If I had stayed but moments more under that water, I would be as worse as Spade is here - in fact, we’d probably both be dead then.

The thought of them was impossible to keep out of my head.

But maybe I was saved to help Spade-

“-Monty”

I look over at Spade who had the bandages across his entire face.

For a moment I think something or someone else called my name deep in my dream with how unmoving his face was under them.

Or from the shadows, or mocking me from my squadmate’s burnt form-

“Montyr..”

 I lean on my rifle like a crutch and I crouch over down next to him on the edge of the bed, until he stops coughing.

“-What is it Spade ?”

His one eye pokes through the bandage, an unrecognizable man of scar and pain.

“I don’t want to suffer any longer.”

It’s difficult to understand him through all of the bandages, burnt flesh and damaged throat, and his rasps, but that's what I conclude he says. I try to alleviate his worry as much as I can. I take out a cool towel and blot at his body with it,

“Spade.. you may not have seen it but we..”

I take a heavy gulp,

“- we had reinforcements come in just after we were attacked. We just have to wait.. maybe a little longer, and then we can get out of this.”

I dunk the towel into the water in the bucket again,

“We just have to wait a little longer. We'll be okay. We'll be okay..”

I put his bandaged arm on his chest again and blotted him just a little more. I pulled over a chair to sit on and hung my head down. His breath is smooth but you can hear the pain in its constriction. He sniffles and I can tell his breath is spice for his nose and throat.

“-Everything hurts man. I.. don’t think I can take this any longer.”

It takes him a while to get the words out. I look solemnly to the ground, he lays his hand on my shoulder gently, comforting me,

“-And I don’t want to live like this after the fact man.. and you know I was usually the one that had to keep everyone’s worry down.. you weren’t always the best at it - and I have made peace in my death when I was sent here. I’m ready to see Hoggs and my creator now, my time here is done.”

It takes him a while to speak that entire message but it feels like seconds.

My eyes are tearing up. I didn't want him to see me tear up, so I lifted myself up by the chair and hobbled over to wet another fresh towel for his forehead. He didn’t have any family at home, but that didn’t mean no one was looking forward to seeing him when he got back, I know I was looking forward for us all going home,

“You still have to be here for me Spade, who will keep my hopes up if you weren’t here?”

I wring the water out of the fresh cloth so it’s not so cold for his head, but dunk it again,

“We’ll find a way, and you’ll be a hero.. you're already my hero, so.. all it will be is a couple of weeks, at most.. I promise.”

I take a second of sadness to wring out the water again before I turn around to go to him..

I’m tired. Hurt. The cloth feels nice in my hands even if the bunker was already damp.

...

I realized I didn’t take my rifle crutch with me when I finally decided I was ready to walk over to him - he coughs and grunts in a movement that had already been made,

“I’m sorry Montyr.”

I look around to see my rifle perched to his chin and positioned to where his finger could reach the trigger-

“No!”

…

There was really nowhere to put his body in the bunker that offered me any solace. It’s been maybe five hours of agonizing thoughts in the dim lantern light and pervasive contained smell. I wasn’t even sure how many days had passed or what time it was down here. I vowed I would go outside soon to see how we fared because I couldn’t hole out in here any longer after that. Maybe I could bargain with a Veritun soldier to be taken as a prisoner if I needed to.. I decided just to go now. I hadn’t heard wyvern beat in awhile so I prayed for my family's safety and prayed I would get back to them and then began walking outside with the crutch.

It was early morning, incredibly silent. Even the little sunlight that came through the overcast above the little hill I had to climb over out of the front of the bunker blinded my eyes. No distant gun fire, nothing coming from the direction of the previous front, nothing from what would be their advanced front- my ears were still injured but I focused before going over where others could see me. I heard a horse whiny and people chattering, in our language.

-

I look down to it and see a large regiment caravan of people marching in the direction of our held front. They looked peaceful, clean, even in cheery moods. I had mixed emotions about it but I hobbled down toward them. I guess we did something right while I was down there. Some look over to see me and some wave over and call others and call medics over to me as they walk over to me.

Middle Stories

Montyr Henrietta

The Father / The Veteran

I swing Sky around in a circle hanging on to his hands tightly. He giggles and I smile and I twist him slightly as we both spin. His mom watches us while sitting in the park grass trying to hide her worry that I’ll drop him and fling him across the city, but..

“Fahahahsssster !”

He is barely able to say it with the amount of smile he has in between all of his laughter.

“Woaaahh !!-”

I speed up for a couple of seconds then I slow down a tad and fling him into the grass, tumbling safely. As I laugh he hysterically giggles running back for more. I catch eyes with her,  and she joyfully smiles over in her grassy picnic, resting in the warm summer sun.

She was slightly annoyed that she couldn't stop me from messing around with him, but truthfully she wouldn’t have stopped me for the world.

“Alright, one more time. Then we are going to watch the town ball-game, okay ?”

He lifts his arms into the air to be picked up and smiles a wide missing toothed smile. I take the opportunity in his weakness to launch an attack on his armpits and launch him up into the air in a fit of laughter.

Before he has time to react to me putting him down, I take him by his back and scoop him up into my attacking embrace where he picks a backwards assault onto my nose, grabbing it with the strength and discretion of a seven year old.

“Hey! Aghh!”

He tugs down at it with a wickedly devious smile and a daffy laugh-

“Aggghhhhhh !”

I get his hand off my nose and swing him around upside down and devilishly think to drop him on his head for a second. I have to take a break as the whole thing took it out of me and he had a lot more energy it seemed than I did-

“Hey! Let me go, jerk !”

I playfully think again to drop him on his head but decide against it.

I start swinging him slowly side to side. He helplessly ‘woahs’ with each swing..

“You know what happens when you start digging into other people’s noses?”

“Heahea, what?“

“You start finding.. boogers..”

I start snorting out air from my clear nose, and he screams in terror, the night-time boogey-nose monster chasing from right behind him.

I stop once I started laughing because I didn’t actually want to drop him, so I put him down, other people were looking at us but I didn’t really give a shit.

Unfortunately, no boogers.

Once I put him down he runs up to me and embraces me strongly with a large smile.

…

I feel heartfelt for a moment hugging him back, until he starts exploding snot onto my side and rubbing it into my clothing with his nose,

“Aw, you sneaky little shit!-”

I begin chasing him and he runs and hides behind his mother giggling like the little mischievous deviant he is. I have to catch my breath, which surprises me, but that is what my life of leisure gives me I guess. His mom gives him sanctuary for a second.

“Tell Daddy it's not okay to say that word.”

He does.

“Now say you won't snot on him again.”

He doesn't.

A laugh coughs out of my labored breath, she chuckles with me.

She lets him go off to do whatever,

“Maybe next time, Monty.”

I look at her and smile, and when I look into her eyes too long I have to dodge them. She sees that weakness in my face, the one that believes I don’t deserve her.

She steps up close to me and plants a gentle hand on my cheek and a gentle kiss on my other, though my eyes are away. She rests her hand on my chest and I look to her and we smile. She’s still a little coy, but I can never figure out what she is alluding to; she was good at walking that line. She steps back gently and I wipe Sky's snot off of my clothes- Egh.

I look over to see him kneeling and curiously picking at grass,

I walk up to him respectfully and offer him my hand,

“You ready to go see them ravage each other?”

He looks up to my hand then down back at the grass.

“Yup!”

He drops the grass and takes my hand without looking.

Are you ready to see blood ?

We loved this time of year, we’d come into the local city where they hosted an annual city-wide mob-ball game. Sky was way too young to participate, not that we’d ever let him. It was honestly way too brutal. But luckily I knew someone who allowed us to go on their roof so we could watch the mayhem but not be too close to the violence to become a part of the mash.

“1 - 2 - 3-  hup!”

I launch him up so he sits atop my shoulders.

My loving wife wipes off the rest of the snot on my side with her handkerchief, kisses me again quickly then pulls Sky on the cheek, then takes my hand and hers together.

The weather was perfect, my family was here, we were all happy, I was seeing an old friend later, today could not get any more perfect-

“Can every day be like this Dad ?”

It was as if I were punched in a deep place within me, my one knee even buckled, and I felt that it was too perfectly timed, despite it- a wave of goosebumps went up my spine, and I get emotional,

“Uh, why don’t you ask your mother ?”

I let him down from my shoulders and she picks him up and carries him for a minute close to her chest. She senses that question stirred something out of me, something I didn’t really want to relay to him.

“Uh.. why don’t you ask your mom ?”

I repeat myself by accident.

She puts him in the crook of her arm and looks at him deep in the eyes as we walk and his question disintegrates in her eyes. He nuzzles deep into her shoulder and deep within her comforting breast.

About halfway from the building we were going to set up atop, the players crowded the street and, although it were a perfectly sunny cloudless day, it began suddenly heavily storming.

She and I quickly found shelter in a bakery and Sky was still asleep, somehow.

We found a nice place to sit next to each other with our backs against an empty wall, placed Sky laying between our two laps, and rested our heads upon each other’s. Hers on my shoulder.

She falls asleep shortly after we hole up in the store.

She could never stay up while it was raining..

I fiddled with my wedding band and toyed around with Sky’s question in my head, basking in that deep rest my family always gave me.

Ethan Faryd

The Messenger / The Pioneer

Renegade buckles and brays as I dismount. I kind of mucked up stepping down off him, sorry old pal, I gave him a good ol’ pat and rub.

It hurts me to see the old guy still in service.

I pet under his chin and he goes to lay down in the dirt. His old knees are rugged and his taut hide and lean emaciated muscles don’t look at all comfortable, but he still finds comfort in the warm sun. I’ve tried my best to feed him more, but it seems it just runs right through his system. I think this will be his last route and then he can live happily in retirement, thankfully.

It’s my first time ever being here. The village is kind of a mountain village, if you know what I mean. The locals look at me as if they’ve been out in the sun for twelve decades. But beyond them, my god, the snow capped mountains that surround this area, the cool wind that blows through your hair, the fact it is so remote, it’s breathtaking- breathmaking. It was fulfilling to the eyes and refreshing to the soul. I felt as though I was nothing but the wind. I was released. But now, as the wind blew stink into my face, not so much, the farm animals walking the roads made everything here a little less ideal.

I tuck the package under some deck of a dilapidating building and walk over to a hilltop where I could see the mountains and the view better. Yaknow, to really get that sweet crisp air into my lungs and system again and to calculate the distance my mind could venture through the trees and the grassy hills I could see in the valley.

..

The only other scenery I have ever seen that was as beautiful as this, was that night in Journey I almost killed myself, and the night it was time to come home.

I wondered, if this valley were there, how many of those fireflies would have filled it? How it would have lit the night so brilliantly. I imagine the veins that ran through the mindblood of the trees branching within each tree of the forest of this valley and moving like a great river, I along with it. The thrum of the ancestral heart that saved me that night. I wondered if that light that night even spread here.

…

Sometimes I wondered, and I wondered again at this moment, if I truly had died that night. I wondered if everything after were some dream or gift I was given by some higher being, rewarding me for going out to begin with, to starting what I had always dreamed of doing. I honestly didn’t even care if it were a dream, or even if I woke up from it. I did pray I never woke up from this, but I was pleasantly happy with what my life has given me, I would risk that all just to know I could do it all again, in this life or in the infinite heavens. I thought of my old friends and of my brother on that hilltop- how much they had shown me since coming home, how much they have guided me since.

..

I wonder what the people would think of what I saw there. What they would think of what I went through. Whether they would make it as some tall tale or hallucination, or believe every word as it were. Whether it'd make them want to venture out, or stay home.

Whether that life was for anyone, I guess wasn't up for me to decide.

I enjoyed it. It was scary, it hurt, it was fulfilling, beautiful, it was a lot of things. And it was all good in hindsight. Even the suffering. I counted it now as all as joy.

I felt a sublime sense of peace from the mountain. I feel as though in this moment I was not alive, that I was peacefully.. not.. there? Peacefully dead.

My family was there in that faraway mountain that looked as if it was within the sea. And some accepted it and knew that peace I had found, while others raged against that light thinking they’d lose me, or their lives, forever. - I think both were correct in some way, but I was in the sublime peace now, and allowed myself to stay there, as long as whatever it was that allowed me would allow me to stay here.

I was nothing in this wind,

I was nothing at all.

Nothing (in the sense I was at this moment) felt like that night in Journey.

I was completely within the firmament of nature and being, where beauty is in the resolve just to be at peace forever.

..

But that was just the dream.

And my rifle didn’t truly go off..

But something in me did die that day.

-

I walked down to Renegade again. I spend some time brushing him, massaging what muscle he had left, feeding him some food, bringing him some water, hell, I even purchased some hay for him to lay on- of course he chooses not to.

I still wondered what I did to deserve such a good horse. He was so good to me. He carried me through so much when I returned home, and also in my childhood. He was there. He had carried me through what I could not do alone.

I didn’t even have to tie him down, or use a lead with him, he would just stay where he was or go as I did, and be happy to let me go anywhere with him and him with me, at my command.

…

The folds and wrinkles of his skin do smell like shit more than half of the time, but he was the best horse I ever had or probably ever will. He still had a few good years in his eyes. Maybe three more solid ones after that.

…

I decide it’s finally time to go.

I go and pick up the package where I had stashed it, my knee buckled as I stood up.

And I begin my hike into the valley next to the mountain.

Starseeker

The Native / The Pariah

“That one !”

He smiles, chuckles and jeers,

“How did I know you’d say that one ?”

He snuggles up close to me as we lay with our backs upon the stone overlook. He raises his arm up at the sky in my sight as if it were my own arm and moves his hand upon the night through the guardians’ leave’s silhouette. He lazily points his one finger and loosely loops around the sky at random, but he stops firmly at the star I had pointed to- he tells me to close my eyes and to be ready.

I do so, but I open my eyes just enough to slightly see.

He moves his open hand to the left most part of the bright night sky, then moves his hand across it, slowly, deliberately, and the stars and cosmos begin moving with the sweep as if a liquid sand. The cosmos moved with his hand but faster as if they were a great flowing stream cascading through time faster and more rampant than his hand smoothly moved across it, I try my best not to react but my heart is beating out of my chest. He moves about three quarters through the sky and he slows his hand down. The stream decelerates in ease, then stops flowing slowly past the right horizon after he takes his hand out away from it.

He dips the back of his fingers over the surface and then his hand into the deep blue purple cosmos like it were a river of sand. But unlike sand, it was sweet, but satisfying, like you wouldn’t feel bad or sick for having too much and it was filling like bread but not too much and just enough. He gently closes in his hand something I can not see, but I see light escaping it just before he clasps his hand gracefully fully around it. He holds in his hands, now, it, gently- whatever it may be and moves, it, slowly down from the sky. He does so as if he doesn’t want to crush or hurt it nor does he want to comfort it, neither absorb, demand, nor hold against it.

“Open your eyes.”

I do. He smiles.

In his enclosed hands, he opens them slightly- like you would to drink water from a stream, and allows me to look in. Floating there in his held hands is a white condensed mote of pure light that pulses very slowly.

“It was a good pick.”

I’m astonished.

“May I, hold it ?-”

“Gently, don’t force it.”

He guides it to be just above my palms. It bobs as if it were a fishing lure within water. He gently but deliberately closes my hands around it, allowing it some room-

“It wanted you to look at it for a second, it was saying ‘hello’, however..”

The light slightly came out of my clenched hands and fingers but he squeezes them closed so no light shines out.

“.. sometimes it wants its privacy- like all beautiful creations. And it’s so beautiful, so pure, you wouldn’t even want to witness it while it's being or creating in its wanted sacredness, otherwise we might never see what would be of its true potential without our influence upon it.”

“Why does it need me to hold it then ?”

He moves slowly.

“Your hands are warm.”

He smiles as I laugh.

“They sometimes also want our support. Our focus. That direction. But only when they really need it.”

He smacks my back firmly, leans back down to lay upon the ground on his back, smiling.

He puts his hands behind his head, closing his eyes and basking in the night-time air.

I don't know what to do with the thing.

“Hey wait! How did you even..”

“Hm ?”

He opens one eye. He looks rested so I let it go, maybe I’d ask him later,

“Nevermind.”

He settles back down into his lazy smiling lay.

I hold the mote within my clasped hands, making sure not to smother it, as if I were holding air for it to breathe, but made sure to protect entirely around it, just like he said.

. . .

I look around at the forest cupping the star within my hand as if something was supposed to happen. I didn’t feel any different. In fact, I feel as if I am restless, maybe even worse than before. I close my eyes but it's so impossibly hard to stay totally still. I wanted to know how he had done that in which he had just done, I wanted to know what this all meant and why he brought me out here, I wanted to know what this thing was, I wanted to know if I picked the right star, I wanted to know what it was creating and why or how-

I get anxious that I might crush it or press upon it and after what seemed like it was a long time, when my arms begin growing weak, and my eyes grow tired even though they're closed, I can’t help myself- I slowly open my hands to see it..

There, in my hands, was a green firefly shining- not a star.

“Hey ! You tricked me.. somehow !”

He raises his eyebrows keeping his eyes shut.

“Hm. What could you mean by that ?”

I move my hand over to him as the firefly stays on my hand.

“Look ! This isn’t a star at all ! It’s just a dumb firefly !”

He looks at it, then me, and I realize I outed myself in having looked upon it and I feel embarrassed. I feel guilty for a second, but he chuckles again smiling and sitting up.

“Haha- he likes you. It’s a good sign.”

He punches me on the arm firmly and rests back on the ground with a playing sneer upon his face.

I’ve heard of what the forest may gift to anyone based on those that are good instead of mean, but a star that turned into a stupid firefly ? There’s literally millions of these things everywhere.. Egh.

I shooed the thing off my hand, then blew it away with a blow- he still seems proud of me that I was able to do that.

I just think he's an idiot. He smiles like an idiot. And I see a stupid idea pop in his head.

“Hey, Starseeker,”

“What..”

He stands up and walks behind me, kneels down and puts his hands on my shoulders. I sit there wondering what kind of stupid thing he's going to teach me next.

“Have you ever heard of the story of the first little cub who had climbed up from the dirt on the first night of his life ?”

“.. No?”

He pushes me down the hillside and with each tumble and roll I grow more angry. But I maneuver and end up rolling by my side down the rest of it, only winding my hatred.

When I finally reach the bottom, in my shocked and crumpled heap, he deeply laughs and points at me.

“Maybe I'll tell it to you sometime ! It has a really good beginning !”

He pumps his muscles and then puts his arms out in triumph as if to say ‘Come get me sucker’. I begin to laugh too.

I giggled and began chasing up at him as he ran into the woods, both of us with a fiery determination to get at one another, the only clue to follow after him was his laughter.

…

Chapter 26

The Muddied Vine

Shrieks through the night wake me up. An ungodly torrent of wings-storm descends upon the camp, the lifeblood of tree and root tenses into the central cavity of our camp retreating as far inward as it can and pulses in an anxiety.

New-men yelling commands at us- the people of my tribe are terrified and our screams go into the forest around.

We are being ambushed. I look over to where Ashtail was the night before, she is missing.

She can handle herself, I had to figure out what to do myself. The mark of anger that Newsoul was branded with sears across my brow, the tears of the many-horn council could not quell such a rage. I grab my Vaobow and ascend one of the nearby trees.

The amount of their flying devils that soar overhead are innumerable, and they have some upon the ground intimidating my people into submission, my people couldn't kill any of them over the sacred ground, else it would certainly pollute the great heart. Chaos breaks out as the new-men threaten and imprison my people, one of their wyverns hawks a line of orange firecloud in a line into our forest and the trees and green instantly begin alighting as they try to scare us. A group of eight of our warriors that ascended the trees were in the circle of woven tree limbs above the main glade I was just in and they prepared their weaponry and their sacred body into the warrior mark of Barkhide, wondering what they were going to do. They quickly painted war paint and did stretches Wrenblood scribed that activate the warrior’s strength within- to my surprise, the new-man is here too and is being painted by one of them-

I walk up in anger at him but the others stop me. They explain that he had nothing to do with this- I don’t believe them. We cover our tracks so intensely it’s impossible. They see the mark of Newsoul upon my brow, they know I am the one to lead this- but I had to leave the new-man alone for now, out of respect for Newsoul's spirit and them.

The new-man says he’d be honored to fight alongside us: It gave me disgust in so many ways, traitor, deceiver of our people. As if he could even know to begin with how to honor us. They returned to painting black stripes from his head to his toes to better camouflage him with the night as I surveyed what’s happening down below.

They inspect the gestation pods, the people would never leave them, but they also wouldn't risk their survival against that. I count among all of us- none have died, but they have all submitted, including Ashtail.. damn it.

One that talks to her that looks a higher rank above all the others; I draw back my bow aiming at, gritting my teeth, but I notice a form just above me in the trees- one of their demons. His head is rears back and the firecloud that comes, engulfs around the center of the braiding and burns the entwined web of tree limbs underneath us. As I fall, I see four of the seven of my tribesmen engulfed in flame all flailing in their descent and the new-man holding onto part of the fallen web. I landed twice over, once from the fall and once from the fall of the fall, knocking centuries out of the breath of my blood for a minute, dazed. I see one of their guns aimed at my head- I look at Ashtail who has pleading in her eyes, knowing how I feel. I look up at the new-man’s face, swat the gun from his hand with a force akin to killing, cinch my right hand claws into the underpart of his stomach and my left just under, stand up with him in grip above me and rip him in half over the great heart.

-

Their bullets storm just past me as I sprint into the forest farther, and farther, and farther.

…

Chapter 27

The Umbra

There is a large movement of their people to move all of my people. It takes everything I have not to give into the mark of Newsoul right then and there at the sight of my people in their chains. They got to us at a terrible spot. Any other place and we would have been able to attack and fight, but since we were in the Glade, we couldn’t. Killing that one knight was already a great offense, and would tarnish the mind-blood for decades. It was even especially worse with the newborning there, but I’d reckon with the elders about that later - this is dire circumstance.

..

They must have been leading my people to one of their strongholds, the others hold a small defensive position over the gestation pods and their scientists are preparing their various horrifying instruments of measurements and desecrations to test on our newborning and the greatheart. The beautiful green that was here was as like an emerald pond illuminating off of the pods but now is a sickening putrid stomach bile reflecting off of their faces. They have multiple snake-riders patrolling the skies and in the tall of the trees, but none on the ground; they’re around their complex they've set up on our glade, on the route to the glade, and looking for where I ran off to, and the glade and the gestation pods themselves.

I take no time to make a plan, the children are of our greatest importance, the ancestral heart a close second, and I and the tribe know this- I will lead the new-men away and hunt them one by one as the great panther does, brutally and efficiently.

From the shadows that they have never reckoned with once.

Their winged beasts were another story, but I would kill them too if I had to-

A small stone slaps the back of my head. I turn, extending my Vaobow fully, loosing the arrow.

-

It’s the new-man we kept sheltered.

I missed him by a mere hand’s length out of a flash of instinct and extend my bow fully again aiming at him again. The brand upon my forehead and brow burns throughout my entire body.

I am disgusted by him, traitor. Ashtail is the only reason I do not loose the second arrow right into his face.

He speaks to me in his language and I irritantly only catch a few words, he is so startled by the loosed arrow still stuck in the tree that he speaks in a rapid succession that I can’t interpret, I admit I am flustered by everything too which only adds to the difficulty.

I could not tell what words he was speaking in harsh whispers at that moment, and I was starting to get more irritated by the second trying to understand him.

I command him to speak in my language-

“Oh ah- Sorry, I know.. little words- in your tongues-”

He is still efficient in our language if not a natural speaker,

“Why are you here, traitor ?”

We still whisper, even though the wings are like small storm winds above our head and the foliage acting as soft hands muting our noise.

He still fears for his life, raising his one hand to my arrow in defense and he can’t look me in the eyes.

“I.. could you please rest your, uh.. weapon ?”

“Why should I, betrayer ?”

I spit through my teeth as I say it, I look deep into his eyes, and for some reason feel stupid,

“You’re the one that caused this, there is no other explanation, my people that were down there in your chains with your people were your doing.. not that you'd understand, not that you'd even care.”

He didn’t quite understand when I called him a betrayer, I couldn’t quite care. I was ready to kill him. It meant all the same, traitor, spy, betrayer, defiler- some of our words cut into a soul, marked it, or persuaded others more than others, and the forest always remembers. My hand that holds the bow tenses in the anger of Newsoul. Seeing the mark of betrayal waver around his form like a hot stone that I had cast upon him. I think of Ashtail and falter for a moment and he takes the opportunity,

“Please, be calm.”

My chest tenses, I couldn’t let him move me. Opportunist. Manipulator. Traitor.

“-I didn’t bring the new-men here, and if I did, I.. I did not mean to,”

He did seem to live alongside our people, but..

“-I want to help you drive them away, they have no right to be here in your lands without your permission.”

He could say that again-

It seems impossible there wasn’t any treachery here, or that there wouldn’t be any more to come. And if there wasn’t, or wouldn’t be, how there was any logic within that, they were his people.

Maybe he was telling some of the truth, but maybe he could be useful, even if he still was a traitor. He could give me an edge to get them to come out into the wilderness.

My brow relaxes. I give myself a second to think and really wonder if anyone would do as the new-man had, live so happily with us, live our ways, be with our children and love them as the tribe does, only to then want to betray us. I couldn’t tell what exactly the new-men were at heart, I know she believed they were as good as us, and I've seen that in him. But there was a greater chance he did this.

The belief of Ashtail does nothing to alleviate my disgust, but it lowers my bow- for now.

I sigh.

“Alright, let’s make a plan.”

…

Their scientists have yet to do anything to the gestation pods outright, but I know the time is slowly ticking away that they do. The new-man approaches their new camp in the Glade with the old uniform he stole back from his sleeping quarters and freshly bathed from the paint that was upon him. He hails them, and I see him speaking with them, and for a second I grow anxious he’s telling them where I am hiding - but instead they look troubled or confused as if he is not supposed to be there. One of the more kind and markably idiotic souls among them stopped preparing their measuring instruments and explained what the soldiers are supposed to be doing and to stop wasting their time, and to help move other things and to stop commanding around each other or try to display who’s in charge.

My new-man ally mimes the whole charade as I get into position.

There are thirteen scientists setting up experiments, some look like underlings following others’ orders, but they all are obviously of one group.

The thing that surprises me is that as much as some are doing an initial study of the gestation pods, the main force of them are preparing a dig into the dirt of the ancestral heart - which is as much of a concern. I can feel their preliminary digging digging into the veins like they were messing with strings in my chest. They seem to be extracting the mindblood, and for what sinister use, I could not, nor wanted to even conjure.

I can feel their tools slowly digging even further into the veins of my entire species and imbibing what they could not understand as we understand it. Bloodsuckers. Disgustful. Trespassers. New-men.

Within and just outside of the Glade there are fifteen soldiers on my count, the new-man explained that despite the heavy force of people here, the mission must have been secretive or a smaller operation - He said there were an incredible force within their main tribal grounds- despite that, we were still outnumbered in our warriors versus theirs by at least 3:1; even more so when you consider their flying snakes.

Our weapons could rival theirs, even pierce their armor, but they had the speed we did not in their executionary striking patterns. For every arrow we loosed they could potentially fire two shots, but both our arrows and their metal shot were of the same lethality if placed correctly. And all the soldiers here had them.

I have the information I needed at this point, I give the signal of a half-toned Yellowfeather. A tone that would cut into the ears of only those keen, as the Yellowfeather chorused around this time of night but never at the tone in which I called. The new-man sneaks into the wilderness again, where we had discussed before- where our distraction was built.

My signal strikes the ears of one of the scholars who grows a puzzled look, but this is no matter. He brushes it off as a large arrow of a Vaobow lands in the center of the Glade. A message all of the camp receives-

“That one that got away is back !”

Their scientists and their soldiers go on high alert.

The new-man soldier blows into some instrument that produces no noise and one of his snake charmers in the air descends into the forest clearing. Eight of the soldiers and the rider go in my new-man ally’s direction and all of the snake air force at the Glade camp scouts in the air for them. Four of the men rush to guard the scientists and three guard the outskirts of the Glade in the direction the arrow came from.

I remind myself one of them dying is one that won’t be able to haunt us later, and an eye for an eye, then I take on the spirit of Shadowhunter.

..

Within the darkness of the forest, just beyond the outskirts of the Glade, I stalk behind them in the shadows and the small grasses. They hide behind the gestation pods like they were barricades, not children..

I rush in with the power and strength of Newsoul’s passion, the fang and claw of Darkstar’s maw, and Shadowhunter’s lethality. I take two of them by the back, cinching my claws into each side of one of them’s spine, and launch him into the forest. I quickly heft up and push the other one, in his metal armor, into the air towards the forest behind me with my now two free hands. His rifle flings into the forest by his side and before the others have the chance to aim their guns after turning their heads to me, I've cut into the dirt getting to the other two nearby warriors that protect the bloodsuckers. Dodging the other's bullets, I swipe one’s wooden gun out of his hands and snap the other's like a twig in my one hand. I palm the one on the right’s head and crack his neck to the side in the curl of my hand, trying my best to not draw blood on the sacred ground, and throw the other into the forest like Huntmaster would a spear. I’m trying my best not to get any blood on the sacred ground, so pick the other one I killed up by the legs and swirl and toss him into the forest too. The scientists retreat to the small force behind their covers protecting the way the others went after my ally - but I am no longer there.

I’ve already pounced where I just threw the man I had not finished killing before. It is like slaughtering livestock in how much weaker they are than us and how easy it is for me to do it. If they hadn’t met us on this sacred ground it would have been a massacre of their people, instead of the capturing of ours.

I rip the one in half, that had broken his leg from the throw and was crawling away, get down close to the ground and rush on all fours around the edge of the Glade to the one that I know still had a gun- But he was unmoving, paralyzed from the cinching of his spine, besides his facial movement. Despite my hate for them, I do him the peace of clawing his neck off from his head, the only mercy I would give these trespassers.

The new-man warrior with the armor had turned tail, he wasn’t worth the time it would take to kill him at this moment.

I sneak back into the embrace of the forest’s darkness prepared to stalk the others.. but it meets me with the sadness of our beloved Naturemother (in all her greatness, in her forever spirit) and the disappointment of the ancient father patriarch.. and for a moment, the questioning of my choices challenges me, but I overcome it quite quickly.

What did they have to be so upset by ? Wasn’t I doing what was necessary ? I was keeping them off our sacred ground when I killed them.. Egh. Now was not the time for pondering morality when they desecrated it to begin with.

The glow of the sanctuary mindblood pulses faster and has brightened more of the forest around as if I were the one to fear, not the scholars or their warriors. And maybe it was right. My anger began to leave, it was though even Newsoul was being taken away by my actions.

I was there to kill. To cleanse.

I relinquish the fact of them fading from my actions and keep pursuing.

The rest of the three soldiers in a circle looking around at the dense jungle defend and yell out commands and yell to the head scholar- but his intellect is met with an arrow through the chest.

I pounced in between the tree tops, the new-men retaliate, firing upon the branches that were our sacred memories within the trees that I was once at but was now further onward. They attempted to hit me, but I am way too swift in my movement- pouncing down at two soldiers closest, throwing them into the forest outside of the Glade as well as tossing the dying scientist to make sure of no taint.

The other warrior, I knock into the ground with a startling force for their bodies, unsure if I killed him outright or if he is now unconscious. Nonetheless, I hammer throw and launch him into the forest as well. One of the braver scientists looks down and reaches for the gun the soldier had dropped but I am swifter and take it from him. To show what the fate of that was for the others that watched me do it, I broke his arm by his bicep.

In his beginning agony, I pick him up by the throat and carry him into the forest. The disgust was still in my body, I knew he was the most guilty among them, and I would prove his sentence.

I walk to where the others had landed as the brand upon my brow sears again; towards me or towards them- I was unsure. I didn’t care how I felt at this moment- sickened by my own actions or theirs- I have spent decades watching these people destroy this forest for their own gain, and I know what we needed now was action. I relent to the stories of old, if the forest wanted to do something about it, it could, and it hasn’t done anything in so long, so what would it do now about me ?

I go on all fours to the spot I threw the man while still carrying the one scientist in my hand, splattering him around on the ground as I do so, but do not find where I threw them. A shot rings out from behind me that I instinctually dodge, he shoots again but I’ve used the scientist in my hand as a shield and before another fires I am upon him.

A sear burns throughout my whole entire body, this time in the image of myself- I burn as bright as the fire of star, it burns everywhere within me- as if it pained the great creator when he first gives it life. I seek inside this new-man that life, no, I seek for more- his soul. His soul that I so desperately wanted to find and rip into pieces, hoping it somehow tortured every last one of them here in my anger. I prayed in my butchering that there were some part of his spirit that were tangible, the center of all of this issue, I ripped at every little string of the cloth of his being, like they did ours, I toured every tear in the speed that there were no enjoyment but rather that I needed to find that smallest part of him and squeeze it for all the pain it could endure, let it rest, then do it all over again.

But it was something and somewhere they hadn’t but we did. Soulless creatures. I sought that scurrying mouse in him that was his most innocent being- knowing that it was not in fact innocent, that it could not escape from my anger or from me understanding it- so I could destroy it, like they destroyed ours, like they dissected us, like they had something that would be even similar to our physiology, like they even had something that could resemble closely to an innocence.

I ravaged this new-man more than I have ever ravaged another being, not that I ever have done this before, not that I ever knew I felt this way before, not that I have ever felt this way before.

Once I determine I am unable to find what I was looking for, I cut at every piece of viscera that were still left and pound it into the ground with great roars and tears with either my feet or my hands, as if it were just destruction, hate, and I, nothing else. I ravage him as if I were a beast or a child, full of wrath and tantrum until there is nothing left but his blood, his silver, and the splintered shattered bone, meat, and whatever other liquids his body held that would fertilize the dirt.

I hammered then into his silver, over, and over, and over again, planting it further and further, deeper into the dirt.

..

I came upon a realization at the end of it.

I was certainly angry at the new-men, the transgressions they have persisted upon us since arriving here, but I was even more angry at my tribe, our leaders, and the forest. Their inactions, their prayers that lead to nothing. How they did little to protect us, but we were told since young they were our guide in all things.. but it did not guide or protect when it mattered most.

Its way of subtlety did nothing. At least anymore.

Newsoul grows angry at me, but I damn him. I am the anger that's past him. I am the passion beyond his naivety.

I am a newbrand upon the future of my people.

I grow as hot as the Sun, burn brighter than fire.

I close my eyes and within the steam of this dead man’s being, I see Ashtail’s eyes, like a light burned into mine,

I love you Starseeker.-

I clench my fists. My chest cries out, for I grow angry at my Ashtail.

She was of no use in my anger, and would only lead me astray in the protection of our people.

..

I go back to the Glade, sticky as the sap of a man’s life and as red as the anger in which I extracted it, to the helpless whelps that were their scholars.

Some had run, but for some reason- some had stayed.

Chapter 28

Mission Sky

“

Private Henrietta,

In our time discussing what our orders were going to be for you after our discussions of what occurred at Fort Worth, our first consideration was sending you home with the sympathies the board of directors have upon you due to the violent nature of what happened to your company that day. However, during said process and discussion, I had been enlightened on why your name was ringing a bell within my head, and why your face looked familiar. Why, you aren’t Private Henrietta- you are Staff Sergeant Henrietta of the famous Bravo Squad who held the line outside Tombs.

Your bravery that day extended past the standard expected of you, and because of you and your men, we were able to turn the tide of the war in those following weeks and finally end the war.

The fatherland owes you an incredible debt, and I myself was personally stationed in Tombs commanding Lent Company - and saw first hand what horrors were happening at that time. So I must extend a personal thank you for all the men that returned home because of you and your squad that day.

Because of my newfound revelation, I questioned why you enlisted here under a separate rank, why you wouldn’t come here of your past service’s rank and honor, and I admit, I researched why and found your son having enlisted years ago. I found then records of him that had last been noted of him to have been stationed in Fort Worth, and realized then the extent of what was occurring from what you had told us too.

Due to this, in accordance with your prior service, in which you have already served to a full degree already, we would like to extend our gratitude in the form of assistance in finding your son, Sky Henrietta, and have information that could lead you to finding him, and would humbly ask you to join us on said mission.

But technically, due to your new rank, you are granted Honorable Discharge if you so wish to take it and return home. But I believe you to be the type of man who would not do such a thing when your son can be found out there.

Thank you again for your service, Staff Sergeant Henrietta,

• Lieutenant Colonel Winstanly”

…

The officers at Main Intelligence share with me that Sky’s last known location was in fact, Fort Worth. They say due to my prior service, and the nature of this mission that the Colonel was giving me additional temporary higher security clearance.

After inundations of said clearance, they tell me that there was an exclusive mission close to Fort Worth of top priority to harvest resources from Journey for the production of the engineering department’s development of Brightbulbs, Jerry bombs, and other technologies.. They say that that base, named New Jericho, had the clearance to commission nearby soldiers for labor, and might have commissioned Sky and some, if not all, of the men of Fort Worth for said mission. The mission was top secret, as well as the base itself, the only thing that came in or out of it were the caravan shipments of raw material from the forest as well as  small situation reports, which could have excluded the information of their commandeering of soldiers from Fort Worth.

I had an inkling they were lying to me, but for what reason, or in what they weren’t telling me about it, I could not tell. I just knew they weren’t telling me the whole truth. It was my only lead on Sky.

They tell me it is heavily guarded and that no one is allowed in but cleared individuals, which I would need them for. I doubted it would be as easy as Fort Worth to access or even find and it for sure wasn’t on any map.

The Lieutenant Corporal wasn’t there, rather those under him, but they told me again I am still technically on leave, and that when I reunite with my son, we can both go back home to the fatherland having served our full service.

I don’t know what else to do but accept the mission, I thought I was done with this, but if there was a small chance Sky was there I would go. Better than the vast wilderness.

..

Lt. Colonel Winstanley arrived back and shook my hand and we discussed and related on the nature of the War of Coalition and the Veritun- then he told the other men to leave. He also awkwardly relayed to me he had a gift for me and that I would like it for what’s to come..

He told me what he was about to tell me was top secret but on a need to know basis for his rank, and said out of respect, and need he would tell me.

…

He told me about these beasts, like the drawing on the parchment I had found in that revolver's cylinder.

Giant beasts surmised to be far-relatives of the knights but off of some distant common ancestor, he said the original pioneers had found them here upon landing..

At first it sounded kind of ridiculous, and it took a minute for me to believe him, and he gave me the look of the same understanding, and he brought out evidence.

First accounts thought they were giant bears, big cats, or some giant deer or moose. But people later said these things think like a man. Hunt like one too- if not better than us. They had giant antlers, or horns- standing double our tallest men's height on two legs like us, and with raggedy black fur.

The other men rationalized at first it was men’s minds filling in for what they could not explain, or the tricks that our brains could fill in the dark. Or that they were animalistic, some new animal and not knight-like in its thoughts at all- yes, some animal that we had not discovered until now- protecting our reality saying it was just some myth, or a trick, or some story they made up for God knows what reason. Like bigfoot, or vampires, or something like that.

But trusted reports had found some men ripped apart in the forest, some even looked.. the word the Lt. Colonel had used: siphoned. He reemphasized, ripped apart. Not clawed, not bit, not even eaten after the fact. Though their claw marks cut deep into the men like they were soft bread. No animal could have done this, the killings were deliberate; men spread out on patrol, taken down one by one, dragged off of the paths and hidden at times, hanged up or sprawled up in trees. Even a bear might not have mercy in its hunt, but would never kill in such intelligent ways, and he says the kicker is- they found crude, yet lethal giant arrows in the forest of the men that were pierced, even through armor, even men's birthrights.

The stories passed down from it have been kept within Journey by the meticulous work of the higher-ups, but the men that have seen them and heard of them went on to calling them the Natives, and the stories that had been told later and spread, despite the ones trying to keep them from spreading, would only be tales of speculation. But over time the higher-ups came more to the realization these things were real, and not only that, but communal, but more than that, useful. Here and there, he would hear stories of men making contact with them, turning into wilderfolk themselves, if not corpses- but he wasn’t of high enough rank to know more than what was fabled in the past, and what they told him about, so he could do what they planned more accordingly. He had heard on whispered tongues that they apparently had a connection with the forest we as knights did not that has proved useful for our benefit. Something in their bodies helped us gather some of the resources that helped with our means and protections as we went further into the forest.

In the beginning, he had only heard small immediately hushed reports of the Natives coming through where he had heard even less of what he just conveyed to me, until they heard about reports of what happened at New Jericho.

The higher-ups blamed the Natives for what happened: destroying the base, killing the people, they say they came in and slaughtered them for building on their land. The wyverns subsequently torched the place down trying to kill the rest of their people because they were so upset by what was happening.

In my unease and anxiety, he relayed to me it was possible that Sky wasn’t dead, and that he could be around the area, that some survivors were found around it and had arrived back here, where the stories were heard then confirmed through more eyewitness later. He still wasn’t sure where the men of Fort Worth had actually gone off to as well, and it was somewhat close to New Jericho, so surely there were some knights out there still not found. He just recently sent a messenger to establish communications at Fort Worth as that line had broken awhile ago, and that he was operating under the information people were still there, until I had told him what happened there..

But we obviously knew now there was no one there, with the dogs being so miscared for and the place utterly abandoned. The higher-ups he had spoken to called it a casualty, just like New Jericho, and decided it wasn't worth going back just the same, and they had to focus their attentions’ elsewhere.

He says there is one operative still at New Jericho though despite everything. One that has control over the area and can give us some more information about Sky and our mission to find him. It didn’t help me thinking of him still being out in those woods.

He said their working idea (besides communicating with the man there) is to find one of those things and interrogate it to see if they captured any of us, including Sky, or to at least know for sure he had been killed, which did give me hope that at least I would get an answer. He says too that if things get dangerous while trying to capture one of them that the Natives were as living as anything else and could be put down by a well placed shot, so, if push came to shove, we weren’t there with no protection..

He said it was worth a try, I believed it was too. That was our plan.

-

I began loading up on ammunition, thinking of what those things could have done to my son, slowly growing my anger along with my worry, slamming bullets into my revolver then my pack and pockets. Slugs and buckshot. I’d rather those things have him than the forest, at least then I could kill them and take him back. I can’t exactly fight something like the forest and find him, it was just too much uncharted land out there - slamming a crate on the table next to me is Colonel Winstanley, he calls it his first gift to me, the one he said he had brought earlier, the second one would be in finding my son. He pries it open with a flat bar.

Within it is an officer’s steel plate armor, like one I had worn back in Tombs. And to add, a chainmail hood and a shortsword. In his hand he offers me my old insignia, a red wyvern on a yellow shield with three stripes. The mark of the Second Lieutenant.

Chapter 29

Assault

I admonish myself for getting to their base so late, but I had to wash myself from the new-men’s stench of their rotten blood.. after I had slaughtered the rest of the scientists.. and the soldiers that went after the distraction.

Their stronghold is heavily guarded, by their snakes and by them. Along the way here, I had to stay smart in how I killed those that were on the way to the Glade to ensure I did not bloody myself, for they could possibly detect me later by the smell. Mothersoul, how they did smell worse than any other animal I had known. And I did not have any more time to clean myself as thoroughly as I had earlier.

I had heard of their abodes before, constructed out of our woods to be then placed how they pleased, they did not know the ancient ways of giving care to them but also asking for shelter in the art of our treeforming, they could not lay within the grasses in peace, within the harmony and protection of the forest; they were so shortsighted and hazardous. I as well had heard that somehow they protected their homes out of glass- which I did not understand but looking upon them now I saw very little tree and bark or wood here in their constructions, instead intensely sloped black smooth shaped gem that constructed their buildings and walls. If they had made the interior of wood, how sinful it was to cover it in their so deeply disturbing agate. Imprisoned in their palaces of obsidian. Ergh.

There inside of their home, new-men walked around from building to building of their compound home, harnessing their snakes and leading them around or idly walking, calmly and plainly, as if they had not just subjugated my people. If it were not them that made these structures, I guess I could see the beauty in the gems. But knowing full well they were the ones who made it, I saw nothing but a reflection of their deepened and damned and darkened sharp souls. The way they made it too was just marked of some ugliness. The buildings were husks of what the forest would mark beauty, instead, being built for utility sake and made from the hearts of some of the worst sins I’ve seen. Black cubes upon black cubes, spire upon spire of spears that spired into the sky, obsidian shields on the walls where the guards walked upon dusty stone, even more spikes at their walls that I would dare say were planted there from their hearts.

There was no beauty upon it. The only thing adorning anything were flags that worshipped nothing but themselves or their disgusting serpents, and weird glass bulbs that reflected intense light.

One of the larger buildings; that must have been where they stored their things, since only few people had been entering it since I arrived; had large doors that quadrupled their height, and it opened and I saw my people within, in a chained herd, in a way that was beneath how you would even care for livestock.

I can see our Elders speaking to them in their tongue and the new-men look surprised, to say the least. The brand of Darkstar burns upon my head in anger.

How could the warriors not be rising up ? For now it looks like peace between our leaders, and how that angers me, but here come those bloodsuckers in their usual attire.

They begin studying us, even the young cubs whose antlers or whose horns have not yet grown. I guess as much as we were stronger, we were still outmanned. Whether the elders saw that, or it was their insistent need to make peace, I could not tell.

I had to calm myself, it was never good to go into battle without a clear mind, especially when observing.

Their infernal weaponry and flying serpents were another added moniker of our possible defeat. Although our bows could outmatch or equal their rifles, we were without weaponry and chained. Some of them were armored too, and, yes, our bows could pierce them, but they still held off our claws and defended them further. One would have to rip off the armor or be precise in attacking them. The armor could be dented or bent inward from our strength but it took a second to really do, and they could hit us while we did it. There were surely ways to kill them, but the scales of battle were tipped in their favor at the moment with their range. However, there was some hope. If I snuck into the base and got to the building where they were kept and we were able to establish a quiet resistance we could easily pick off outliers and destroy their forces slowly.. We have keen hunters. Sly warriors. Killers that could demolish their force slowly and smartly. It was possible, I just had to get down there and start the message.

My hope was returning. It did not look like any of my people were killed yet, or they all would have surely been acting differently. I however was unable to see Ashtail among all of them. Although I loved my people so much, my ultimate duty as her forever-mate was truly in protecting her.

I begin to move along the tree branches around the clearing to the vantage point behind the walls behind the building where they were holding them and I see some of the warriors do begin to rise in a chained protest. My pride goes into anxiety.

I hope they die down their protest until I get there and relay my plan. This had to be done exactly right in order to work, anything else was suicide and stupidity and would get people killed. Their soldiers begin retaliating, pointing their guns at my people and terrorizing them, but some of the scientists walk in between them and my people asking their own soldiers to stop.

I have to hurry now. Confrontation is bound to happen soon.

..

At the back of their storage facility where my people are, there are these smaller doors where I’ve seen the new-men enter and exit sporadically to smoke their herbs and rest upon wooden boxes. The outer wall has those obsidian spikes up the side of them and about four guards I would have to take care of or sneak around before I could enter without alarm. I reckon the spikes could be a danger to me, if I fell. The flying serpents were no longer circling overhead and instead were within the camp, but I would have to make sure I did not confront them, a couple of us maybe could take one of them down, not that I had any experience in that, but they had scales upon their skin I was unsure our weapons or our claw would be able to pierce.

Another thing I had failed to understand earlier, but that would be a problem now, is that within their compound are these strikingly bright lights that were contained within a clear glass. Their luminescence was like the sun, but a pure white, they didn’t burn the eyes as much as the sun would, but it was as if they harnessed a diminished daylight and cast it within the compound. I didn’t see one bit of night within, and that was my issue. Surrounding the camp it was still night as well as by the sky- it would be very difficult to sneak up to the compound as the treeline was a full fifteen strides of a sprint to reach with nothing to hide me. Inside the compound was a little different, the buildings had some shadow I could hide within.

I hated planning this long, but a lot was on the line. And I didn’t have an escape method either, I suppose we could just go out the way I came in but it would be dangerous for the cubs. There was an exit on the right side however, a large set of doors. We could annihilate the forces on the way while avoiding the scaled-ones and sneakily exit into the forest. What we did after, I wasn’t sure.. But I liked that plan best now.

With the spirit of Huntmaster, who was faltering himself for me, in the tale of his sniping in series, I draw my bow and fire at one of the guards atop the wall. The one guard sees his friend thrust to the ground by the arrow as the other is already within the air soaring at his chest; he goes to speak and finds no words.

The other two guards' deaths go about the same.

I descend my perch and rush into the field then begin scaling up the wall.

The wall is easier to scale than I expected, the spikes were really just an imposition of danger, or not fully researched on what could actually keep us out, or they were just used to keep out wildlife, nothing like us, which did seem idiotic. In fact, it assisted in my climbing.

Atop the wall, I calculate the distance to the storage facility is about four separate movements of thirty or so strides between their other facilities and buildings to my destination. If I were smart about it, I could get there without arousing suspicion, moving in and out of the shadows. At the prison building, there were two men smoking herbs- I would have to kill them. I grow anxious being so close- on the precipice of the line between my people’s freedom or their greater punishments.

-

I take a deep breath.

..

“The Great-Panther is concerned with nothing but the hunt, the movement between the umbra, and the pride.”

I only stop my whispered prayers to grunt at landing my back on walls or in crawling under some of their structures, or ascending or descending upon shadows-

“The Great-Panther that pounces from star to star, that flies in the pure night on sable wings.”

The nonpresence on this side of camp begins to worry me. Why were none of them here ?

“The Great-Panther, that connects every constellation in the new of night, under the perfect skies of Radiance.”

I would not let them perish.

“The Great-Panther, that allows the cold chide of Winterhide’s bright and cutting nights’ - to gleam and refresh our fur.”

I needed to protect them.

“The Great-Panther, that descends down to Earth, but still looks to the stars, that preens in Hewnleaf under the star-warden’s eye.”

Under any circumstance.

“The Great-Panther, that leads us along the path of renewance, in the flight of Fallenfeather.”

Of any time that it may be.

I had about ten arrows left to spare, so I rushed the two at the back of the prison room, breaking one’s back and slitting his throat. The other coughs up his herb-smoke intensely trying to cough up words of alarm, but I choke his neck in my palm then strike my claws into his chest. He doesn’t make a sound as he dies,

“The Great-Panther, that hides behind the great-star of morning to rest, the Great-Panther, that protects us, that sharpens our claws on fallen bark, the Great-Panther, who protects us.”

I hunch down to the height of the door, and open it, slowly.

I look inside from that back door, where my people almost fill the entirety of the middle of this large building. Their hands and legs are chained together by a rough coarse metal, they sit on the ground or they stand, but none dare make any larger movements, sticking with their families and speaking amongst themselves lightly. I look to the front through the people standing to see some of the ones I saw rebelling before are on the ground knocked out, where their scientists are monitoring their conditions.

There are their guards and soldiers everywhere in here going around to each of my people asking them questions, some of the cubs follow them as translators as need be. The main force of their soldiers are in the front where they question and talk with the elders, and there were plenty more reinforcements outside the large front doors too.

I hide my Vaobow and arrows outside and duck over into my people and blend in.

I walk over and get the attention of one of the other forest-hearers who sits with his family, he tries to conceal from the new-men his greater surprise and excitement at my arrival in a hush,

“Starseeker!,”

We knock our antlers tightly together in greeting.

“Ablehand.”

We both back up then crouch down as the people around us shield us from view, we look deeply into each other's eyes surveying what’s there behind them, what we have each been through. He says with his eyes things have not been good,

“It is good to see you brother Starseeker, we had assumed the worst,”

“-Everything is fine with me, it looks like you have all been done worse, brother Ablehand.”

He relents. I was right.

“What has been the talk of the people here ?”

“..The elders have passed the message that we are to stay peaceful and listen to the new-men’s instructions. The people are torn, some think we shouldn’t listen to them, but truly they have taken down some of our best warriors that had gone against that word, so the people have submitted to the elders’ and the new-men’s command,”

Hearing this angers me, he notices the new-brand upon my forehead and the heat from my mind. He’s downtrodden and saddened by it, he puts his arm on my shoulder,

“What else has happened dear Starseeker, brother, where you have burned so greatly to have been marked within something new in the time we have last seen each other but a day ago ?”

I give him a silent moment to calm from the injustice as I support his hand with my shoulder. I scan into his eyes when we meet again,

“What of Ashtail ? Where is she ?”

He takes a second to say it, I know it isn’t good news and my heart sinks.

“She was taken just minutes ago,”

I have to stifle my mourning crackling outraged breath and I hold onto his shoulder now for support. I have to evade my eyes away from him.

“-to where, we are not sure.”

I took a second to think through the pain, there were too many buildings to go in and out of each, we had to find her another way before getting the people out in here.

I turn to him, calm my nerves and the heat of my body in the eyes of Clearstream,

“Could you protect me brother Ablehand ? I must look into the vine.”

Chapter 30

The Heart

It takes a minute of relaying the mission in whispers around us, but we are able to form a better visual blockade to protect me from their prying eyes, what I was about to do would need it; the soldiers were far enough away from us in their interrogations that I would have a few minutes to accomplish this, and the people had to act natural else they would know something is up.

In order to go into the heart, then move within the vine, one must be trained extensively in the ways of the forest-hearer. It takes the most talented and connected months to first accomplish- but for some it takes years, and for the majority, decades to achieve a complete mastery. I had to live within solitude, with Ashtail, for four years to be able to tap into the thrum of the mind-blood stream outside of the Glade. Even then, it was only ever where the heart would take you. You’d have to ask earnestly and honestly for something specific and it was only up to it if you were taken there or somewhere else, but you had to trust it was taking you to the right place at the right time, or it might retreat from you.

Inside the Glade of a great heart, it was much easier. A talented forest-hearer could allow and enable others to see and feel that connection if they were within the Glade, and it was much easier in general for them to go within when near one. With that in mind, and the elders and ancestors distancing themselves from me, I was worried my connection would be diminished and my prayers would not be answered how I needed them to be right now.

I get into my usual practice: laying upon the ground on my back with my one hand upon my body, usually with a blanket upon me or some other comforting presence, and covering my eyes with the crook of my arm or something like a piece of cloth when that becomes uncomfortable or too noticeable.

I begin praying, and opening my focus to the greater forest, to its influence, allowing myself to be in the depth of its natural movement, yet seek what I know I needed to find.

But I could not follow all of that totally at this moment, there were too many factors against me and I had to find where she was, not follow the forest in its teachings of patience and virtue and forgiveness and love against trespasses and greater ignorance of what I have just done wrong. I needed to find Ashtail, that was it.

Heavenfather.

I didn’t feel his guidance, in the way I needed it, so I wrestled my way into the vine.

It felt wrong, but I dug into the veins of the heart as their scientists did, trying to climb and claw through it like it was a tunnel, but its pure flow of light and life was resistant in the direction I had hoped to go. That I knew I needed to go. I could hear the crying of my people in the building we were in as I did so, it didn’t make me feel any better about myself, but I had to help Ashtail.

I probably wasn’t the one who caused it anyway, I shook my head. Looking through the camp, within my mind, I dug in the dirt as a rat in pain, a muddy vision and of a nauseating wavy movement, searching through all of the buildings I could, feeling for her presence.

“Errr.. Aghh! Come on !”

I tense in anger and yell along with the others who grow in their wails..

It was useless.

I go to silence and uncover and open my tired eyes, Ablehand is looking upon me with concern. I sigh in defeat and sit up, lay my antler upon his shoulder,

“You’re going to have to do this brother, the forest is raging against me at this moment.”

He looks at me as if to protest, but I give him all the strength I can in my antler’s touch,

“You will find greater success than I, Ablehand.. brother, please, at least try.”

He takes a short breath and nods and accepts in the mark of Firmchest and sits in the spot I had and begins the process in his way, of sitting cross-legged, hands upon his legs, palm down as straight and as sturdy as a tree.

The others around us assure me they are watching for the new-men to arrive near, and that they are still distracted by the commotion that came from the others, so I sit next to and support Ablehand further.

He looks calm to begin, as one does when passing through the ponds of clarity- but when he dives where the water grows in the pressure in the depths to where the sea serpents are known to attack, he flinches around down in it as if attacked, and despairs in his strength.

I sit still and firm, supporting with the shield of the aureole of Firmfang and the courage-of-the-many from just the outside of his soul’s direction and creation- if I were to peer too close or go within his impression at this moment, I would collapse his true direction and tarnish his will; his mouth opens in short aspirations, his visage grows in the tense horrors of closed eyes, he whispers his loved one’s name, as well as Heavenfathers, the ones that give him his inner strength-

I feel inside, the firm heart from the ground, his connection to it.. but this wasn’t of my will to see inside -

“Awaken.”

The cascading and boom from this drone voice and the firm heart of the ground echoes in and past my and my people’s heads. This frequency of energy from this weird and foreign alien heartbeat, that wasn’t a great-heart, it causes fear in my people of their bodies, minds, and soul, they wail into the compound and the prison building we are in now as they lose something of themselves. The frequency stays in my mind even after the wave passes through me but I am able to shake out the majority of it- I feel it replacing our connection of the embrace from the great-heart and rather now.. it. I can’t feel where its source is..

It has the raw power of the culmination of the souls that flow within the mindblood, but with that one voice above it, commanding it at its deepest level to wash over us, to wash into us.

The force of it underground reverberates further through the Ablehand’s connection, and mine as my connection was forced upon his inner view. Whoever’s voice this was, the feeling it caused was that of a growing sinister, but powerful, resonance. A strong wave that cascaded and then again upon our people, washing away our former direction and heart and awakening something else in its place.. The new-men don’t seem to react to it, but to our people in their new craze-

Ablehand must be seeing its source, his face is one of astonishment and horror and the mark around his mind vibrates as if he is in a controlled whirlwind of energy, to his benefit or not.. It was more likely not. I couldn’t look within where he was seeing now, even if I tried.

“What do you see, brother ? I must know. I must find her and stop this.”

His expression moves along with the energy, and his eyes move under his eyelids as if he sees many things. He exasperatedly breaths, as if touched by a demon, but his weakened faith persists in a newfound strength…

He licks his lips in resolve, still shaken, still stirred by what he has seen,

“She is chained. Making something for the new-men..”

His voice breaks in his breaths.

 “There are others with her, on some form of making of something I can not see..”

-

“Awaken.”

Yet another explosive cascading upon a cascading wave hits through the room, erasing more of what was once there, replacing more of us with its ways, the more prone are thrown by it, falling over from it like a storm wave. I couldn’t help but falter in a shuttered and gripped chest.

The new-men order compliance against my people with the venom in their rifles and tongues, telling us to stand down.

I look to see Ablehand still strong, but the whirlwind energy around his head grows more intense, one of a higher pitching frequency.

I see some of the other foresthearers making their way back to our congregation chains in hands. Asking with their eyes and bodies faltered and fighting what exactly was happening and also why it was.

His breath skitters again as he exhales but the rest of his form still holds firm, in my fear of his condition I try to look inside the high-pitched storm his form and soul seem to be in, but only get but a few measures within it, and he is of and surrounded by so many shapes and marks I can not fathom all at once, it was too much sharpened visual noise, but there is one shape that rises above it, or rather below, one that is not Ablehand, one of intense calm and of intense focus. His faltered form still speaks even if his mind has been commandeered, his lips are dodging whatever his mind is taking, away from this thing's control, his body is being faltered down within-

“Oh no.. They’re being made to capture something, imprison something, take something away.. something.. pure. Something that won’t escape, wouldn’t even know how to. To awaken something birthing, but to chain them to their machines so they work, toil.. Be enslaved.”

-

“She is hiding something from them that they will find soon, she hides it from me too, afraid they might see within from my vision, she is pushing away from a realm of death and imprisonment they call her and move her to take them to.. I’m not sure what it means, something they can not see, something I can only see the shadow of a fragment of.. But I see only a shade of her left Starseeker, whatever she’s doing is getting rid of more and more of her, as she tries her best to save them..”

His slightly dodged head and crying face and closed eyes and twitching body that skittered around move into the calm stern stable close eye’d face of the domineering-one. In the posture sturdy as a tree trunk, his agape close eyed fear had suddenly gone firm and emotionless..

“I have never witnessed anything so horrible or horrifying in my existence.”

A symbol appears through my entire mind that I have never witnessed before around Ablehand, the feeling of it encircles around him distinctly away from the feeling of the other frequency within his mind, but not the cutting sound of it, and I can feel the outline of my own face drawn in a bright white lines.

The symbol pulses; Ablehand’s left shoulder snaps and he passes out, crumpling to the floor, completely limp. Blood slowly comes out of his ears and nose.

The afterglow of the symbol and my white-line face were still there, glowing away from me now.

The commotion ends within the crowd very shortly after like the changing of the tides on a sunset. The new-men still yell to stay calm and to get back in our place.

Some of the other foresthearers rush to his side after the initial panic settles, and they begin treating him in prayer and practice, resting his head up from the ground and holding it gently, the brand, the symbol I saw in my mind- it is now a sear upon his body and his image, like the afterglow was on me.. Ablehand would be forever changed from this, possibly even me.

I am in a moderate shock now, the white glow was draining from my face, I wipe into my face- pressing into it to release some of the pressure within my eyes, wiping the tears building in my eyes that felt within my chest in watching all of that happen.

The symbol, I had never seen before. It looked and felt like something of a brand or mark or aureole of our people, but not one I recognized; the power within it was astonishing, if not terrifying, and it did not feel that truly enough like our people’s did, something was incredibly weird here.

I turn to the other foresthearers in a hushed whisper,

“Did anyone see a brand of our people that was shaped just before he passed out ?”

They looked at me in unknowing, they looked at me as if I were a monster or an abomination or that I was the one who had caused this, as I had a new mark upon me as well, maybe I was giving that other one off as well, but they had the same face he had just before he was taken past the depths into his fear. Still, I crouched down as they pulled their hands from him, and I rested my hand upon his leg, to comfort him or myself, I wasn’t sure. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I needed his comfort..

“I’m sorry Ablehand.. I’m.. I'm sorry.”

I pulled my hand from him and stood up.

The sear on him was a haunting image in my brain. But I was the glow of one of a complete monster.

I was alone in this now.

…

I stalk outside in the shadows underneath one of their decks..

I can’t ~ Ohhhhohohoho.. Man..

I have been lying here, watching them, for what seems like hours.

What I hoped was years. 

Uh- watching their movements.. watching how they talked to each other, how they greeted each other, the small touches. Their small little movements in their face or their body.. or really anything they happened to do, or happened to be..

I studied which one would be under another in hierarchy, or what one would do here.. or.. - or there… And in every place where and when they thought they were alone, I was there, watching.

Studying them. Fascinated.

I tried seeing which building and where it seemed like they were bringing us out of, but I couldn’t decipher it..

Truth be told, I didn’t even care anymore.

All I wanted was to look upon their sugar blossoms and sweet waters and honey and glow.

The pinks and blues and purples of their radiating love. When they thought they were alone, what they did when they thought no one was watching, little innocent things, like their scratching inside their noses, or scratching their asses, or thinking something, something I wanted to know.

The conversations they had with their minds.

I lay in.. ploppel blossom blue.. of the silence in my study of their ways, I had no idea why I even wanted to hurt them, or.. find anything.. that could have been bad about them. I wanted so badly to be like them, why would I ever think or want to kill such an innocent being, an innocent thing ?

The tear that dropped down my face would have burned me in anger before, if I wasn’t already purified in their perfection. I could only pretend I was like one of them. Starseeker was no longer there, no longer here, I didn’t want to be him anymore, I was one of them- the new-men, a new man. A knight. A valiant and gallant silver-toned sword-bearing knight.

I mimicked and tried my best to become their reflection from a distance, in the pond of infinite reflections and mimics.

My stifled whispering mania.. I was so deep in the ponds.. My waters.. I was embarrassed. They might catch me making eyes and being weird about who they were to me.

I loved them, I loved them so very fucking much. I couldn’t bear to be without them.

..

I laughed and I cried and broke down at their beauty, why did it take so long for them to come here, why did it take me so long to realize these things?

How could I even have lived a moment of beauty before they came along ? 

The buildings around made sense now, they were structures of strength. And of unwavering duty, nothing I could have, nothing I was able to do. Our weapons couldn’t pierce them, nothing could break something as strong and as firm as obsidian, as firm as silver, it was only lies before when we killed them, something I only dreamed.. That’s it, I was just lying to myself before. It’s true. The buildings, them.. they were both fascinating in the glowing lights they made from magic.. They were made from the knights. It was like a monument of a goddess that spoke in depth and gracefully touched the sky. Their bright suns within glass, I saw life itself within, and I wanted to grab one, to hold one, to know what love I could have in what they made to look like what would be their kin, their children. I actually respected them now.. But why? I was disgusted.. I wasn’t sure why.. Hold it within my hand ever so gently like it were my new loving child, but was of their body, not mine. Within my hand like it were a new loving child, within my hand, my beautiful knight child. My hands like theirs, my feet like theirs, my height like theirs, my body the same.

We weren’t that different..

My feelings, my mannerisms, my culture. Their feelings, their mannerisms, their culture.

We weren’t all that different.. Haaaa- or so I believed at this moment. So I hoped.

I was too scared or embarrassed to approach them- but I believed they would accept me, if only I could get up and walk over to them. I giggled, teared up, and I felt pure pleasure within my chest, but it hurt as I held on to my ribs.

I was floating down the side of a steep mountain that was their preoccupation, going so gently down, or so gently up, but in a way that caused no eruption or tumble, just smoothly gliding down its support. I laid on my back and my head looked up at the underside of this thing I hid under and saw stars in its shadowy blackness.

I was at total peace that I was no longer there, the new-men weren’t there as well.

…

I glided down that mountain as if I were an apparition within a light fog.

Looking down in the valleys.. there was something at the bottom.

I so desperately wanted to grab it, to have it. I reached my hand out for it, but it was just outside my grasp.. I grabbed again, but it was still there, just outside.. I lurched up and clasped it. 

And I felt like I was falling.

-

My head knocked intensely onto the deck above me.

I felt sick. Half way in and half way out of some spell. I shake my head quickly to try to shake it out before I fall back into it, but the delight offers its nauseating bewitching hand to me from the ground, one upon my leg. I crawl backward, I crawl backwards quickly as more bewitching hands grip up from the dirt, banging my head from the foundation above again and again as I crawl backward and the hands lose their grip but pursue after me reaching up from the ground in a grasping sprint.

I claw aggressively into my face, and into my chest, and my blood rivers down both.

It breaks me further from it as I crawl further away from it.

I begin roaring, trying to get further away from it - backing out of the underbuilding I was under, fleeing it in tumbles and jumps. I bang my body around up over a building I climb trying my best to get out of the placation, bang my head and body again on the building below me as I stumble in any manner of movement away from it I can.

I cough as if I were spewing it out as some disease, clawing into my arms like it was an infection I needed to rip out, but..

“Awaken.”

It whispered, a disgusting calming whisper I felt in my mind, behind me.

I just wanted to sleep..

I JUST WANTED TO REST.

I yell out from under the voice and I quickly claw the sign of that newmark that I felt when killing that new-man before into my forehead, that was I, that was the only thing keeping me from it, I marked into my head like I was killing this curse itself, like I killed and mangled and murdered him. I try to slaughter them as the intense waves and the hands were flanking me from every side, getting and killing as many as I could with my own pain. It reaches me and claws into me and washes over me as I jump out of..

But it knows it has messed up once it finally touched me..

I was not of peace, no.. I was of war.

What I needed more than anything at this moment.

The disjointed hand tries to escape from me, but I grab into it, I yell downwards into my own chest, and take something of it it could never regain again as I was ripping it in half and clawing into it.

…

A new-man has run over, and has found me - it was time.

My body’s rage, its anger burns in a roaring burning fire, the mark of the Starseeker ablazes.

-

Interlude

The puff of sand scorches into his eyes before it hits the back of his throat.

He coughs violently, tears stream down his face as the granules scratch his eyes and force him to fall more to the ground.

He presses himself up again from the ground, trying to stand up.

“Hrkkk.. Leave.. Hrkk.. Hrkkk… Leave me alone !”,

The older child grabs him by the hair on the back of his head and forcefully pulls his upper half up from off the ground as it fell.

“Or what, huh ?”

His younger adversary cries out from the tugging of his hair and he decides then to throw the child to the ground away from where he was laying, in a thud.

He sniffles, begins pouting quietly.

The older child wasn't trying to break anything or torture him, but he still was hurting him. He crawls his face closer to his.

“-You’re useless.”

The younger one slowly crawls up into a ball like an armadillo, deeply evading his eyes from his assailant, something he’s seen his father do when the men came and beat him to collect his older brother for extraneous debts; one of the worst times of his life.

“Tsk.”

The older one snickers at him holding himself tightly in his ball.

He only spans about three years from the younger child, but that makes a wide difference at their ages.

“What in the hell do you really think that’s going to do ?-”

He kicks him decently hard in the squish of his back that rests upon the ground instead of straight into his spine, something that marks him a slight tally of our mercy.

“Such an idiot man.. God.”

(Scoffingly.. ergh.)

..

I go to mark off the tally,

“Well.. just, wait. He could have aimed for his spine, right?”

“... He still kicked this defenseless child- I mean, come on.”

Sometimes I angrily wonder how people can be so stupid and ignorant.

He scoffs,

“Pbbt.. Defenseless.”

I look at him by my side and shoot a look at him wondering if I ever really knew him.

He looks at me with a sideways glance and has that look on his face that he ‘might have’ done something wrong, but shakes his head focusing instead on the younger child.

“He can fend for himself- watch,”

…

The older child squats again near his crying face. The younger one has that look of innocence, evading his eyes from his, his thoughts are that of being crawled under his bed as close to the wall as he can - laying in a complete tight embrace between him and his bed frame: the best sanctuary he’s ever found besides fireflies, wooden sticks, and his brother.

I hold off on my anger at the older child for the moment. I instead fear for the younger one. Would he retaliate? And if he did what would be the consequences? The older one was unpredictable and this was my favorite kid we’ve observed so far being here.

The older child turns his head so it faces parallel to the younger child’s head upon the ground.

His eyes evade his bully’s still, but catch them for a moment by accident. My heart wrenches in sadness. He stifles a breath in and huggles himself a little harder, expecting to get kicked again but still trying to hold himself in his comforting underbed in his sanctuary-

“You know, this world isn’t going to do you any favors; with your brother dead, and with your coward of a father, you’re the only one left to fend for your family.”

He opens his eyes further and searches for the young one’s gaze trying to connect with him. The younger one looks up at him from the ground for a moment again and nods his head, trying for common ground between them, trying his best to share that feeling he has under the bed. He hoped it would help him stop, for him to see that they could really be friends after all. The older child puts his hand on his shoulder as if to secure him. He hopes this means that would come true, that they would be friends instead. And that he wouldn’t want to hurt him anymore. But it torments me seeing the kid touch him. He sees that weakness, I know it, but for now he relates himself to him.

“I’m trying to do this for you dude. You need to learn how to fight for yourself, to get angry instead of sad at what the world has done to you. To fight back when others take what you love.”

He punches him in the side, trying to strengthen him with the practice of receiving strikes, he just takes it, not sure what to make of it.

“I’d rather you do that then sit defeated, being a little whiny bitch isn’t going to do anything for you-”

He pinches and twists the skin on his arm, hard- too hard for a kid his age.

“Ow! Hmmm.. ”

He frowns and swats at the older child's hand as he pulls it away.

“Hey ! There you go ! Sorry, I didn’t mean to do it that hard, but it will probably help you in the long run. Maybe that will get you all calloused up, put some armor on that body.”

He smiles and gives him an attaboy then waits for him to do something-

“Go to… go to hell. You.. you son of an inbred.”

The older one’s face goes to a frown and his anger steams, but he keeps his composure.

..

For some reason that offends him, wasn’t that exactly what he wanted the kid to do ?

To fight back ? Maybe he didn't think he'd have anything that'd actually hurt him. Maybe he didn’t want him to fight back in a way that actually hurt him-

“My dad says he’s surprised your dad hasn’t hanged himself yet-”

“Oh my God..”

“Jesus.”

The children and us two go morose.

“..And if that were to happen, then you’d really be the only one left to fend for your mother.”

-

He stands up and circles around him facing away from him. Slower than to attack him.

Stands in the silence..

“One day you'll thank me for what I’ve taught you,”

The younger child sniffles again believing this all to be over, hoping, a stirring anger.

He wishes his older brother were here to comfort him again; he’s lost that feeling.

I think for a moment to reach out and comfort him myself, or to guide his memories to his brother, even if I know it's against the code. I go as far to devise how, but decide not to risk our secrecy-

“And this shit isn’t going to help you one bit-”

The older child turns and kicks him in the same meat of his back that lays upon the ground. But this time it was very hard.

He begins silently flinching, crying, to himself again, trying to hide it into his knees..

But he sees his back moving with each stifle.

He turns to walk away but lets out one more of his parting wisdoms,

“Also, stop being a wussy. My dad says we should pray that your mom’s side of your family maybe had some balls to them… I’ll be seeing you sometime later.”

~

I look at him next to me and expect some kind of an answer. The look his face has is that he understands why this is happening about the same as I do.

He even seems taken slightly aback.

He raises his eyebrows (admittedly with a smidge of sorrow or confusion), letting out a gust of relief, and then clears his throat,

“Uh.. Kids will be kids.. I guess.”,

He sips some of his coffee, takes off his blindfold, then exits the Witnessing Room.

Chapter 31

The Massacre at New Jericho

I weave through the blur of the leaves, bushes and trees. Sprinting as fast as I can through them. Praying to God they don’t catch me- I didn’t want to think of what would happen if they did. When I could no longer run, I stopped.

..

In the slow heave of my breaths, my cold sweat, my beating body, my hands upon my knees, I realize that my pursuers must have retreated or been lost chasing me. I could still hear the wyverns in the air, possibly still searching for me.

Once that distraction of the Vaobow shot into the clearing, I just started running as fast as I could straight away from it. In hindsight, I realize how stupid it was just to run exactly opposite of where I shot the arrow, and especially since I wasn’t as fast as people here were, but thankfully the forest itself was gentle to me. Protected me as I ran away in such an idiotic way.

I was scared- so I didn't think so clearly about it, but I was gladly in its graces.

I knew the tree guardians and I were in an unspoken agreement for safe passage and for it to shelter me from harm, and I was grateful for that, but I didn’t want to test their patience if at all possible. The people here said the forest called me (what they could only deem to me in my own language) a pure soul, but still, I didn’t want to offend. This was their home after all, so it was best to be polite.

-

I began walking back, cold in the night from the sweat and the black paint that I didn’t have time before to wash off that was under my clothes. I couldn’t rush back at this second.

My chest was killing me and I had a nasty side stitch, plus I had to keep my eyes open, they may be still patrolling looking for him (or rather me now) out here. I could still hear wyvern beat around the area.

I guess I could always try to get my way out of it since I was a knight after all, but the paint didn’t help..

…

The forest was so exceptionally dark outside of the active sacred zones and outside of our outposts I could barely make anything out. I honestly had no idea how the hell I ran through here at the speed I did without tripping or falling - well actually I did know, I had the forest to thank for that, the river of its guidance, those guardians of bark all protecting me holding me in its strength.

I felt grateful it held me as if I were actually one of its natural born children, born of the clean potential and blood or whatnot like they told me their cubs were born with.

I washed myself in a nearby river as I thought about these things.

I felt the cool wind against my wet and sweaty still running-highed face and back.

God, the summer nights in the fatherland were never this cool as well as not being uncomfortably chilly, and if they were I sure don’t remember them as being like this.

I waded out of the river and put my shirt back on and started to pick my pace back up again to go back to the glade, I had to get back and try to further help Starseeker.

I began walking toward where I believed I had come from before, by the crescent moon’s light barely shining through the leaves.

..

My former self (as I had lived before Journey).. (and still who I found myself being at times) would have attributed my survival as something of luck or greater coincidences - but after what the natives have taught me here, I know it wasn’t even close to it, it was so much larger than that.

The trees here were their memory, a living memory, in nature, solidified. Like our brains, only a little different?- They knew more about how the trees connected to them than we did on how our brains connected to us and our bodies, I mean, at least how I understood it. Whenever I would have it explained to me by someone smarter than myself it was always a little bit over my head, but the way the people here explained it in the terms of their forests- it just made sense to me. And because of their mindblood their thoughts were far more.. mutable.. than ours. Dynamic. Flowing. So what they needed for the structure of what our brains gave us, was what was around them, guarded by bark, supplied by the great-heart, written by root and vine of generations; in fact, the bark were like the folds upon our brains. Maybe there was some sort of logical connection there.

But anyway, the trees not only helped them solidify their own thoughts on how their thoughts could be mutable or flowing, but it gave their dead a form- still living. It gave their culture a written history, all within nature as it was around them- still living. It gave their religion, their faith, their minds- their soul, that backing- still living! That bark. That backing. But in living, breathing, physical science and physical space- all connected. It was the structure I personally needed to further my own faith and my own soul, my own mind. I touch along the bark and put it into memory so when I go back home I can compare and see if the two trees felt the same.. Maybe our brains truly were the same way, but I would have never had that outside perspective until now. Yes, maybe the way we were constructed was as much science based as these trees were for my faith to be alit- but I never saw it that way until lately. And maybe even our trees worked the same way, if they just felt the same maybe I’d believe, maybe we were connected to the roots of nature in just the same way that they were.

Our brains even.

I stopped but for a moment to touch that tree, but I was running amongst the many leaves and grasses now.

Maybe when we touched each other, by shaking one’s hand, or hugging a brother or a sister, or kissing a spouse- or even the thought of one another, we could form a root or grow our veins between us and between that as they would, connecting us in strength, an interdependent weave. I couldn’t think anymore on the matter at this moment, I had to get myself and Starseeker and his people out of this mess first.

But honestly that wonder was the only thing keeping me going, the only way I could cope with what was going on, it was the only breath in my chest as I sprinted, and I didn’t know what trials I would be faced with soon, those were better to go at headfirst. But, I will say, from all of my thoughts on that, I found that luck was what a man would hope for to happen in his life: if I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get into heaven; if I’m lucky, maybe there is a heaven; if we’re lucky maybe we can all make peace, the natives and us; if I’m lucky maybe I’d survive this mess.

The hope in luck, was something that would occur because a man thinks that his hope of whatever it may be is favorable to him, or anyone else, and how he personally hoped it should occur. But faith, prayer, belief in something that was inside us that knew what was most favorable and most aligned to our souls, that was something that allowed a man to know he is guided (as well at times to guide another) to what is his most favorable, whether he knows what the outcome is or not, or how he would exactly go about it, or how he would even get to it, or even if he should.

It was better that those decisions weren’t up to just us. Even if that was hard to understand at times. Like the will of the forest was for Starseeker’s people, I believed in its ways.

I had to take a break for a second. I think I was almost there.

Journey had given me that faith. Starseeker’s people had shown me that the slightest things can be mistaken for something of which the knights could think was nothing at all.

Even in the nothing we could see around us, that was something. I was guided to see.

I orient myself. Take a deep breath. My inner loadstone feels the clearing, and my attention pulls to the clearing, I can feel its thrum deep in the jungle, and I begin my trek again, jogging once again towards the moon.

..

I smell the stench of the massacre Starseeker had done before I see it.

Fills the chest of some sickening perversion.

Bodies of my people, ripped in shreds, or in parts, or basically liquid.

Or contorting as if forbidden and frightful sculptures of bone.

From what it looks like, he was calculated in it though, only a couple look to have spilled blood upon the beating heart, yet there for sure would be other repercussions with how derelict his soul must have been in how certifiably desecrated the knights had been killed.

Even the men who had come looking for me were slaughtered here, except the wyvern-rider, he either must have retreated or gone elsewhere. Or killed elsewhere.

As much as I care for my own people, I have to move on from any more moral deliberation. This was more than Starseeker.

I run over to the birthing pods, and see they are all unharmed of most regard.. Hhoo.. Thank God. They had nothing to do with any of this and I’d hate to see them hurt over it.

The great-heart thrums in the ground, beating a deep underground pulse into my feet and body. I kneel at its center placing my palm upon the dirt.

I feel the pain that Starseeker had brought upon the knights here, the forest’s heart breaks, a knife at the end of anxiety, holding that trauma it witnessed, sympathized with, my heart does so alongside it.

Starseeker is misguided, but his people are in grave danger.

The dilemma was above my head, I had to get there and get there fast, whether I was winded or not.

I ground myself first. Is there anything more here of use to me ?

I look to see if any of the men have anything before I run to the direction they came from -

I find a Sisar 18 with a full clip of nine bullets and, of lucky note, an officer that it seems Starseeker had only snapped the neck of; leaving a clean cloth uniform.

…

The whole process of taking that uniform off was not enjoyable- but the inner fort shines in the dark obsidian spires of the intense bright bulbs within its daunting walls. It was surrounded by the dark of the forest, a bright black sandy oasis against the further void of the jungle.

The brightbulbs illuminate the surrounding and inner trees like they were a mini sun.

The intensity of all of them burns my eyes to look upon.

-

The obsidian shaping must have taken more than a year to do as the walls are over thirty feet tall and span at least a ten minute march aside one length of it. The slope is way too sheer for me to scale, so I approach the open convoy gates where some soldiers were packing up a caravan of outpost supplies. I flick out a sharp whistle. The men look at me hurriedly walking up to the gate and turn,

“Sir!”

They salute me thanks to my newly acquired uniform.

“At ease!”

I wave their customaries off then salute them and plant a big grin on my face and my hands held behind my back. They continue to pack and it gives me time to look upon them and study all their reactions, they and the guards are none the wiser, they don’t even question why I am alone. The guards look plain faced and still face forward; protocol. One packer looks at me in between his hauling,

“Say- what’s got you so happy sir ?’

“I was just about to tell you gentlemen.. Listen up troops,” they bend their ears and their attentions from the caravan again and face me. I put my hand firmly on the shoulder of one nearby,

“No need to pack up anymore gentlemen !”

They look surprised, but not worse enough to where they suspect anything of my disguise.

“… -We got the bastard!”

I pat the one closest on the back a couple of times as they begin celebrating and cheering, jubilantly and proud.

“Ha-ha-ha, And as a reward, you can all rest up for the night!”

They cheer then look to me to tell me the story,

“God, I hope one of the wyverns bit his fucking head off!

“Would serve him right for killing Johnson !”

“- God, I hope that thing suffered worse than Christ did..”

The men’s hearty laughter and jubilance turns slowly to a sadness on the mention of Johnson, I think of the scene I came into before, and feel sorry in that I didn’t wonder how they’d react to that,

“And he will be remembered, soldier.. You don’t have to worry about that. I’ll personally ensure we do his proper rites in the morning now that thing is dead. He’s moved onwards now..”

I smile again and put my hand on one of their shoulders to comfort him and see the men’s moods perk up again,

“Now, no more need for spectacle - Head in and get some shut-eye, we can mourn for him and celebrate the thing’s death greater later, that’s an order!”

I walk in with them as they wheel the convoy back in and the guards close the gate behind us. I hear them spreading the mixed emotion of the word around to the others.

..

I hid the officer’s uniform under one of the building’s foundations, maybe it would come in handy later, but for now it'd be better to blend in with the lower ranks.

I have never seen such an operation quite like this, Main Operations was mostly tents with some larger structures within, but every building here was encased in our obsidian, large, and of some off-putting sinister quality or utility. I couldn't really tell where I was going, or what the use of most of these buildings would be for, it just felt like a labyrinth of structures for no reason, not that they didn’t actually have a reason. I'd have to find a map or some sort of schematic of the grounds to be able to find -

“AGGHHHH-”

I hear the sounds of a man’s agony cracking through the ribs of reality.

There's an abrupt hush over the camp and jungle.

Starseeker.

“Alarm !-”

“Alarrrmm! Somebody raise the alarm !”

Men begin calling out to each other in a line of communication, then two alien and strange sounding sirens begin wailing through the compound, one sudden and abrupt like the man’s scream scaling down and upward, the other there in an anxious bereft.

Starseeker.

The sounds of gunshots fire off, but the sound of another ripping body yelling not in pain but fear and the grunt of the beast doing it is louder, his scream ending with the sound of something being exploded like pulp. His monstrous roar fills the compound and sends fear down to my deepest sense, and he’s supposed to be my ally. Something sounded different about him. I didn’t like it. I fear even if I do see him, he wouldn’t be the same, he’d do to me what he did to those men at the glade..

I’m almost petrified in my shaky movement, he was in the image of the horror stories whispered at night before I had truely met his people.

I see him as he runs out from the buildings on my left-side on all fours into the center street towards one of the buildings on the right, I notice blood streaking down his face as well as him being soaked in it and he is in the spirit of a savage and loathsome animal. He reaches one of the buildings that looks like a barracks then rips the door off its hinges behind him and enters inside. Men in search of him run onto the side of the street opposite where he first ran from and I rush over to them and point towards the large convoy entrance doors, away from where he ran,

“Quick, he- he went that way !”

To protect them or protect him, I was unsure,

The officer of the squad signaling comes up to me with the other men, looks to where I’m pointing toward the convoy doors then looks me up and down.

“Sir!”

One of his men takes his attention and points to the end of the trail of blood that leads to the building he ran to and the ripped off door. My heart sinks as I realized I acted too rashly, I look to my back to see if there’s any easy escape from this,

“Wait, uh, no he wen-”

The butt of his rifle strikes into my face as I turned back to him, but the main thing I notice as I fall is the anger in the officer’s face, and then his rifle slamming again into my face.

..

Chapter 32

Assembly Line

My eyes dart around inside the building, my chest and arms are heavy with action, and ripping with violence against the bewitching force that had pursued and had enveloped me. Beds where their warriors sleep.

I see in red paint, I seek inside, for what, I don’t know.

I look over and see one still sleeping, I yank him off the upper bed by his leg crashing the bed down too. I roar in his awaking face and he flees outside, the other soldiers I awoke jump out of their beds the same in fear. Ashtail. She must be in one of these buildings, but a growing anxiety and irritation fills my mind in the multitude of buildings that are here. I hear a squadron of men positioning outside and priming their weapons- I hear one yell out a command and I dive down as their bullets spray into the building. I crawl away from their main barrage, some of the men still in the building are doing the same keeping their distance from me. The firing squad subsides in a fit of reloads as I gain close to the exit.

“-Reload ! Somebody get a Wyvern squad here now !”

He yells over the wailing cry of their infernal and machinic crying machine. I step up onto the new-man in front of me and sprint outside the exit of the barracks at a hefty speed. It puts me in prime position in flanking into the sides of the men as they are reloading.

I recognize one from before, he was within the building where they held my people.

He is the one I left alive.

I punch into his face hard and knock him out. Carrying him behind me then over my shoulder like he was a hunt and I sprint to the best place of secrecy I can find.

His body thuds as I toss him to the ground and I drag him by the head and neck while I walk to a wall and take him by the chest and lean him on it to start. I slap him awake, he goes to scream for someone but I cup his mouth again squeezing his head in my hands to silence him.

I search for a second for the correct words in their tongue,

“Where.. are.. the others ?”

I slowly release my hand from his mouth, he looks at me in a face of intense stunned fear.

I repeat my question-

But it is useless, his whimpering and awe makes me cringe.

I knock him out again. I pace back and forth thinking of any solution - and I look at his still silent body. I was truly afraid it would come to this, there was only one way to go now, a place, an act, that I thought I’d never have to go, that I’d never have to do.. but I did.

I position him upon the ground gently, as I would in honoring something I have just killed, and another strange calm washes over me.

I am by the Glade of The Center. Wavering in rivers’ ripples.

Their strange horning siren-call begins sounding like drained out tribal calls in the forest, the yelps into and calls of triumph and comradery.

They sound too like the calls of the deep fish within our oceans, the crisp teal of our beaches.

The forestlight glows deep within my chest. I feel unworthy of it. I feel guilty.

But it feels like it's mocking me, put there by the forest at my lowest.

But I have to do this before, just in case. I close my eyes and reminisce of home, the home in which I missed. Ever since the new-men came it has been pain and suffering, with fleeting moments of clarity and beauty. They have continually proved they were not worth the trouble and they have continually proved ever since they arrived they were a plague on our home, I hated them for it... But I had to acquire one, just to find her.

I sniffle, a tear drops from my eyes to the new-man on the ground, I open my eyes to see that the light around shines the tear like it were a precious diamond, I stroke his cheek, wiping off the tear, my fingers almost larger than his entire head. I felt sorry for him.

I don't necessarily feel a longing sorrow for this new-man, in fact less than any other thing I have killed to feed the tribe or killed in the last few hours, he is no different than the odd thirty I have slaughtered or the numbering of all of them I have been adverse to.

Rather maybe, I feel sorrow for myself, for the people I am letting down in spirit for what I am about to do- knowing what I might leave behind and what I risk because of doing it. Knowing I will have a part of the new-man within me always after this.

I bargain with those thoughts while in the heart of my Ashtail.

Within her calm stream of water,

I bargain if the cost is exactly the measure of what is needed to save my people, to save her.

-

The wisemen and the elders always foretold the act of acquirement can bring no good to those that do it. That only madness, and the astonishment of what came after will follow, that it gave you what you wanted, but at the cost of everything.

They say that acquiring the memory of others through blood was only for the forest itself to process, that it was the only thing that could leaven it correctly and process it right, that we were but a limb or organ of such a body, and one limb or organ trying to process all of the body would not work. These new-men were the organ of destruction and impurity, and I was about to take that limb on. But no new-man here would tell me where Ashtail and the others were, and the forest was denying me my vision.

I knew that I needed to do it.

…

I heave the breath out from my chest and psyche myself out of the visions of my beautiful home, I prepare instead for all of the horrifying consequences I could conjure, heaving my breath back into my chest and out quickly.

I slam the side of my hand into my head.

I drag the memories of my people in chains up into my head. The new-men pointing their weapons and siccing their snakes on our children. The scientists probing the great-heart.. Them coming to our home, our sacred land, and thinking they had the right in taking us as prisoners. Using it instead as their sanctuary against us. The thoughts of how I had visions the day of them invading would come. The elders shoo’ing it away, discrediting it as fallacy. Them saying that we were secret among them, and that the forest would hide us and guide us no matter what.. how Ashtail believed in me and fought for my belief among them, but always pointed to the will of the forest when they denied us, that it knew better than what I could see.

The rage comes back. I wanted to tear this man apart, but couldn’t.

Damned are the elder’s backward ways and their misbeliefs off of one of their own forest-hearers! If I am to sacrifice myself because of their own faults to save my people, I am.

I huff and puff hot air as if I were to touch the bottom of the magma pit where they say there is only death and the red fills my eyes again but with molten blood.

I dig into the pyroclastic.

I'm set beside myself again.

I will be the vessel for our exodus.

I will kill anyone I had to for that to happen.

I would do anything for the freedom of my people.

I breathe one last large breath into my lungs.

My head turns up to the sky.

My eyes roll back into my head.

The saliva in my mouth sucks in from my breath.

And I strike my teeth into the new-men’s chest and pull at the seed of his lifeblood.

-

The first wave that hits me is of intense sanguine life.

Not one like home: of waters and mud and milk. But rather the fire of an exact knowledge; it burns in every thread within my fabric, setting my mind and my eyes ablaze.

It scorches every of the loose ends of unknowing to perfection.

I feel the new-man awaken in the process, he sucks for breath, and the flood of all of his memories erupts into my vision.

Starseeker.

I seek for Ashtail, any little bit of her.

The whisper of the deep forest light within me attempts to awaken me away from this, alighting itself in ways I have never seen, I search for hers. The forest light itself seems to have passed through that firmament I had built within me, or maybe it came up upon instinct, what happens to all those that acquire. I ignore its pull away, but it’s powerful. For the new-man, and for me, and whatever connection was between us.

His memories rip over into his childhood home, an attempt to grant him peace in what his body correctly supposes are his last minutes:

I’m sorry but we can’t have that right now.

My body goes back into the tearing bliss, the intense pleasure and the bewitchment I had been in previously, but I have been here before.

I grow into a further muscle-tensed rage against it. I wrench into the memory of his muscles with my teeth, siphoning and ripping him closer to the present in his dying mind and I cinch my claws into him.

His limbs and body contort in a rigid way from the power of my suction, and the grunt his voice chokes out is from somewhere other than his lungs, maybe not even his body. The taste grows sour in my throat and I heave and want to vomit, but I drain him further, hoping it pushes me to where I need to be - I try my hardest to just cycle more of the blood within my mouth but swallow all of it. 

The tapestry yanks closer to the present. Finally,

~

A beautiful night on the deck of the ship coming over here.

It was after a fun night of rabble-rousing and card games with the other officers and soldiers-

“Do you think she’ll ever take me back Hartford ?”

The sky is a brilliant window into the starry heavens, at some parts of the horizon where the waves seem still from distance, the stars mirror into the ocean providing a wonderment that if we were to sail into it- we would be with God and his angels themselves.

The silence and the beauty is only fabled against by the wavebreak, and my heart breaking, for my dear angel Quinn, and that she is not here to witness it alongside me. Nor may she ever again.

“-If.. if not Sir, you’ll always have us-”

Their tongues speech disgusted me.

He moves in closer on the banister and puts his hand on my shoulder to comfort me.

I lean further onto the bannister, feeling supported.

I think how nice it is to at least have a friend like him.

..

Touching, but not what I was looking for.

The barrier between him and I was blurring. I pushed away any of his rotten pain.

-

I let go of him and he relaxes down abruptly.

He lets out choked and drowning breaths and we both gag up plumps of his sour disgusting blood.. I look over to him, and he looks up at me and asks with his eyes.. for me just to kill him. But I have to.. I have to pull him closer towards me.. slowly.. so I can pressure his body again.. Harder this time.. and find what I needed to find.

I cinch in with claw first.. then tooth.. then I have to suction in, severely.

His body jumpstarts with intense force. His mind can not handle me wrenching it, so his body must take it. His arm snaps by the elbow. He undoubtedly grows closer to a death croak. I let go of him for a second, fearing he may die now, his body relaxes down onto the ground again and he breathes in a fresh breath through broken bone and flapping chest. The only support being the ground he lays upon.

Under the same intensity of the medicine men saving lives of the big-prey hunters I bite into my own arm siphoning a fair amount of mindblood into my mouth, bend down again, sink my teeth in, then blow down into his body.

His lifeforce explodes with even greater power, enough that his back sturdily arches up from the ground pushing my head up along with it, and I sink my teeth down suck in again.

The memories’ intensities have multiplied, and instinctually I begin to leaven my memory from his, in self preservation, but it is of no avail. I could not do it.

Ashtail’s beautiful eyes open slowly in a yearning sadness above the flashing moving images,

her eyes flashing themselves, within my mind.

She looks deep into my eyes, I am young again. Behind the grove, behind her eyes, in the river of fireflies.

I.. I can use this.. I.. I unfortunately had to use this. But I couldn’t look.. I didn’t want to ruin it.

His head and feet begin convulsing, yet his core stays firm in its form. He begins groaning in a disgusting release that sickens me,

He reaches up and rips the lower jaw off the new-man to silence him.

The new-man does not even react to it, he is past pain, the sounds only grow more grotesque to him. However, he loved the release of his own death, he was ready to pass on, even if he is just a body at this point.

…

That’s.. Odd.

He sees outside of himself for the first time within the view-of-the-many. Flinching at the sight. His own self, desecrating the new-man. He is haunted by it, was that really him ? Is that really him ?

Yet he closes himself off completely from the pain he knows is truly in his heart.

What is this ?

His eyes ink to a black oil and tears stream down his face but he’s unable to release his teeth from the new-man. He loses his breath for a second in exasperated chokes out the sides of his mouth.

I fight back from the demon, the presence- he was fighting all the wrong things-

I pull my teeth away from the new-man as my nose itches and twitches, and I sneeze. I instinctually retreated in a backward crawl a few steps from whatever that predator was within my mind, nothing like the bewitching force, the ‘awakening’ one, this was something else, something ancient. And it tried to feel like me. As I was.. a, a.. a bloodsucker, a nightmare, a monster, a mistake.

I thought it would be easier to find her, but these memories did not come sequentially, and there were weird guardians down here.. Rather, they were a collective of his being that had to be searched in the correct movement and direction within the right steps and emotions, and he couldn’t find her because he was no different from them. And he needed guidance.

The eyes-of-the-many watched as he took on the act of acquirement. They watched in sadness, they watched as he rationalized-

It must be because the new-men did not have mindblood like we did, but rather the brains the new-man in our tribe had spoken of.

The words of the elders resonated in his abdomen, but he could not hear. Did it really matter how it worked ? It’s forbidden for a reason. But I.. I couldn’t hear them for a little while now - what was this ? This darkness ? This empty feeling ? Why did I enjoy the sour blood at this second ? Why did I feel it in my heart ?

Cast in many shadows, darker than he’s ever seen, casks upon casks upon casks of smoke and shadows within smoke and shadows.

I fell to the ground upon my back in an exasperated breath, my ribs were in a cage squeezed; a large pendulum lay above my body, ticking back, and forth, making a groove upon the sternum of my soul.

I could not stop now, but they were most certainly correct.

The issue now that he had not foreseen, the latent memory of the ancestors came up within the root-of-all through the thin hole that was him draining the man’s memories through his body, and with it, he had widened it, and something more ancient came from that narrow path and precise opening that was now easier for them to enter, something that sat upon the throne of the world near the start. Or so many have believed. The Natives, God’s mistake, the knight’s-spun nightmares. Or maybe something else entirely.

I punch into the side of this new-man and allow my entire being to call for Ashtail as I cinched into his side, any memory of Ashtail this man could have had, I bite back in again sucking in his sternum and I punch harder this time then sear back into him, scratching his body.

Hoping that other voice, that other presence, that throned one, would leave.

-

I was in the dark.

The large horned one with a curved beak leaned forward from the darkness staring into my soul.

She squawked.

Do you not reconcile with demons ?

His voice was subtly supporting, alike to a whisper, underneath hers.

She was seated at his left side. And she leans slowly back into the darkness

-Does their heat not bother you !

His voice was subtly supported underneath too alike to a whisper.

His ghost came out of the shadows, his voice was muted by some sort of gag, but it slacked into my spine. He was in the form of some sort of monkey. He sat at the center-one’s right side.

The loom of the grave in the center antlered one’s land was a calling darkness.

What have I done ?

He feared me, but he didn’t know enough to fear me correctly. The throned one didn't speak, it was within my head, he whispered supporting the thought.

The one from before.. He was the one sat in the middle, he was the antlered-one. Larger than them, more silent, shrouded in the void of darkness, I did not understand him, he was right.

His feet were heavy on the ground, but he was not tensed.

I relate to him, but that.. It.. it wasn’t me at all, that's not who I am. That’s not what I do.

I would never ally myself to one of these creatures..

But it was everything I had feared. Everything that took away what I loved, like they did me..

No wonder they did what they did to you.

I felt the stories the new-man’s mother used to tell him before bed, the thing hiding within the bushes outside their windows, under their beds, whatever was lurking in the darkness or under what they felt safe within.

My claws, my teeth, me eating them. Stronger, faster, deadlier, unholier, murderer, traitor, monster, mistake, beast, predator.

I was everything they feared.

He spoke with my voice. But it was not me.

He pulled up for air, not wanting to fully become this thing, sit at the throne destined for him, but he couldn’t escape this now even if he tried, the ancestors try to call to him as earnestly as possible, but he was too far astray to even hear them, they could not pass the gates, pass the walls, go into this jurisdiction, no one had that power, but him.. And he was mine.

He had followed every path to make this more true for them.

He was that thing. It was him. What his choices led him to be.

He suckled on that knight like a nervous old dog would a dead duck.

He feared this was a mistake.

But I fear this wasn’t a mistake at all.

Don’t kid yourself kid, you’ve always been this.

Destroyer!

The great-panther, the great warrior, you glorified yourself.

Outcast!

You’re really just the monster..

The great-one picks up his chin from the hard ground of this void, he says in his glory,

..and a monster is what I need to be to save them.

Unfaithful!

Maybe he was right.

The bright light cuts into my eyes past his shadow,

Ashtail’s beautiful eyes flash open above the voice inside me, calling out so desperately,

“I love you Starseeker.”

Her voice thunders from above the darkened throne, the antlered-one looks up slowly and behind, past his back past the obsidian that cast us in, I can only see his silhouette.

She tries to call me away from this. She was my only anchor.

Failure !

She calls you to find her, to save her !

Not away from this !

She calls her to be taken away from this !

The shadow comes back over the palace.

I am weakened by her.

I cry into my hands, yet a deep part of me holding on is still angry at all of this.

The fact the forest has led you.. wait, no, me, wait.. on.. such a.. path.. that, I had.. to do this.

I seek beyond this horror I have found, holding on to her intense love because my life depended on it.

But it was so dark. I could not see.

Seek inside Starseeker, find what they have done to her, this is where she is, this is what they have done to your people.. Show them the mercy the forest has given to your wife.

The mercy the forest has given to you.

My soul, body, and mind oil over and turn in and out and within and without itself in movements I thought were unknown or impossible at the same time as they were.

I am a new-man again. I stand at the front of where they house my people as a brigade of my men lead a group of twelve out, including Ashtail. The speed of the memory is unrealistic as if time were sped up or slowed down at some reason I did not understand..

I wake into something new, not sure if I had been sleeping before..

I fade and skip backwards as Ashtail skips my mind across a pond like a flat stone..

As I float down into the darkness, a vision spreads in a cloud in my eyes.

~

I’m in a meeting with some people I have power over, I know their names but can not recall them.

I can only see some things, it’s like I am in a blurred idea or in a blurry place. Why did ?..

Searching for something exact, or grasping for it but I can’t quite know it..

There’s a paper of plans on the table.. something, involving the Natives ?

The symbol is close by to something that is marked as the ‘Witnessing Room’ in a city marking ‘New Jericho’, a drawing of my people are marked next to and below the symbol.

The Glade is marked upon the map too, by a different name. Operation Delta Romeo Foxtrot-

“So, you are saying the rest of them are within this clearing and all we have to do is go there and capture them ?”

I didn’t want to say any of what I just said, the words hurt to bring out of my mouth, but truly I couldn’t change the past, somewhere in me, I knew this wasn’t even me I was within - my eyes gaze up to a large white murky form in some sort of harshly lit meeting room.

“Yep! They’ll even go willingly- it’s their sacred ground and it would be sacrilegious to desecrate it with anyone who isn't of the tribe or of their people's blood!”

She seems too happy to share this information. Why did she feel like one of those Natives ? Egh, one of.. us I mean. How would they even know this ? Who would-

“..And even if they would want to attack us outside of it, we have the Witnesses ready to calm them. All things considered, there shouldn’t be any casualties on either side. So, everything's going swimmingly !”

I smile, and turn towards her opening my arms wide to hug her-

“That’s what I love to hear, baby !”

Embracing her, I laugh in a hearty joy as the other soldiers and I cheer.

That’s not my smile.

That’s not my laugh.

That’s not me, that’s not Starseeker.

Ashtail skips the flat stone of my mind as if the vision is the pond itself, straight into my brow.

His body goes limp as if he were shot in the head, but his body immediately springs back up but he crumples to the ground. His conditions are collected back to him.

The shock allows him a deep cough and the third fear for the first time in many years.

It feels like he just died.

The new-man’s acquired body finally goes fully limp in death. Finally at peace.

I spit out every modicum of blood I can from within my mouth and throat and throw up.

I comb at my tongue trying to get as much of it out as possible. Hacking it out from the depths of my throat - Get it out now. Get it out, you filthy dog, you don’t deserve a lick of me.

Some part of the new-man’s voice is within my mind now, newly sitting on the left throne.

He mocks my volition and obliges it to trip upon my steps as I search for water or anything to further get rid of this taste or to get rid of any more of him within me.

His spirit kicks at my ankles and feet as I am about to land my many steps.

What’s going on here ?

The new part within me that was a secret place in my mind seems to be sturdying my step; but the one in the middle, behind dark curtains beckons the new-man away into the penumbra with a course of fear that was just like the one I gave the new-man, and he retreats into it.

Newsoul, Huntsmaster, Darkstar, Firmfang, even Ablehand, I can feel the slightest touch of them gather outside this palace, this void of a prison now within me, and just outside the walls they gather, trying their hardest to fight the influence that’s taking me.

Calling my name.. the name that slowly fades to a silence.

They gather out there, waiting for the right moment, they gather in sadness, they gather in hope, in grief, none of which I have now. Then they abruptly are ripped from me into darkness. They needed to save me, as if I didn’t do this to save the people, could I still save them like this ?.. Could I even be saved from this ?

Ablehand’s fresh blood cried from the dirt, his soul slowly fading into the ancestors, the only voice that was still there as he was only freshly gone.

He warily begs me before he is finally within the root to cease my search and find peace before it was too late, but it already was too late.

He was gone. They were gone. I was gone.

Chapter 33

Unchaining

I trained my body and mind for this for years then, then for years in my teens, all the way now to the present. Just to be in her arms again. Ever since I was a kid, I sought the ethereal.

I am between the stages of sleeping and waking, the place I find the greater tune with the leader of my dreams and of my spirit.

..

When I was younger, it was a comfort from the harsher world that always tended to be.. Difficult..

But today, it seems my deeper sleep has led me to the waking dreams of memories of everything I could have done, or could be doing: the people I’d love to speak to just one more time, or maybe see just for one more day. My holy place-

…

It was how I saw reality.

Where I worked within it.

How and where I found peace.

Where I find the inner movements of the world.

Between my consciousness…

Peace was what I only ever sought.

Home.

…

All of these people, I couldn’t see with my physical eyes where I was now-

Well, maybe this was as physical as anything else was, but I was alone.

But here.. I didn’t feel it so much.

I felt innocent here.

All of these people, the ones I could no longer see.

Would they ever understand what I found in these realms?

The choices I've made, and why I chose them?

Understand them how I understood them?

Would they ever understand who I truly was?..

Would I ever understand?..

Would I even remember this when I really woke up?

Why did it feel like I was making the wrong choice ?

…

I feel I have been so many different people, been in so many different ways of living, living so many different lives and being - and right at this moment, it wears on me.

When I am awake, it always feels like there’s some answer, but not one like when I am sleeping, not like one where I am comfortably deep.

It always amazes me how many different lives you can live in this life, and how many different ways you can be with depending on whoever you’re with, how they affect who you truly are..

But who was I truly?

I was in a reef. Floating. Seashells and a current.

I could see underwater.

There was no pain here. There was no difference, no distinction.

I didn’t even really remember my name.

But I was comfortable.

I wonder which of those people I felt I’d known that I was most inclined to be with (besides her), or of the people I felt most as myself, and if that means you have found your family, your community-

your home.

As much as that made me more whole of a person (knowing and being so many people), the only person who may have known all of it, or all of my facets, all of the ways I went, all of where I have gone or walked, and been.. was her.

So it was hard to know. The conscious part of my mind was keeping me from it.

Would she tell me who I was? And since she was gone, could I even ask? 

Or would I know as she said it?

My Mom. She was always alongside me in all things in my spirit, in her untouchable perfect image that was in heaven that I followed, but it was as if I could never truly see her in a room or feel her as I would another, and if I did it was in random encounters.. or in random people, random times.. she only came around every so often if I asked for her presence.

I mourn for all that I have been before, all the people I have been with but were no longer necessarily with, holding on to who I am. I have to hold on to the parts of what I was before to ensure I am still who I am, but let the other parts fall away, to be there, activated maybe one day when it meant the most to whoever I was with. To be a friend, or a brother, or whatever they needed from what they saw of me..

I mourned her.

I don’t know how to be with all of these people I could so deeply see myself being with every day and every night.. especially when I could feel so different around any of them, and how I myself could make them different, it just seems like it was too much for one person to handle or to perceive.

I think of my family.. I think of Starseeker’s people.. and I think of how it feels to have that ripped away from you. How it felt to me - when I was younger - how it must have felt for him.

Oh boy how I’ve made mistakes.. Always wanting to hold her though she was gone, though everyone here was still here. I don’t even think I could be with them now if I tried. If they were around, I’ve been gone for too long, but I made sure in my heart that I would.

What a beautiful ocean this was.

It was winter, the beach was flat, and the wind was blue.

But the sun was orange, and I was cold.

There was dry driftwood, I wanted to lay but I didn’t. It was too cold.

…

I was imperfect, but at least I was at peace. And I knew I would always find them eventually.

As I lay lying in the most comfortable sands of my existence, in my waked state, no not my dream, in the wind of my rolling seaside bubbles, just being there- I am with those loved ones in private, the ones still alive, and it is like I am there with them, in some secret being; being.

I still feel like I have let them down, for I am not there sitting with them, but rather sitting with them in this mind of dreams. Observing, not effecting, or maybe if I were, it would be in some indirect way, where they knew not that I was there, and that I was supporting them with a gale against the wind rather than a watchful eye. In a way, I can see that’s how things have to be for some, like her. She couldn’t necessarily sit right next to me anymore, or if she did, it was within spirit - I understood why. Or like people like myself, who had gone to a faraway land, in spirit and in the world.

It was better off this way, that me holding on to them would have changed their lives for the worse, that they may have felt the comfort of home, but not the true construction of it that was within their hearts… My, what a painful yet freeing thing that is.

I was so young when she died.

Young in the sense I remember her warmth, but long enough ago that when I had grown to the age of twenty and a quarter, she had been gone for now more than half of my life..

The thought always came to me that as I aged that percentage of that difference would only grow..

Yet, she was still here with me, in a sense.. that warmth within me.

She was there with me on that beach, she showed me it.

I saw those many years in my future as ones I would still be with her, longing in some way to finally feel her embrace again. But I knew her warmth, she was my shield.

I knew that in this life it was so short and finite, but after it, I would be with her for eternity, and there were so many beaches like this one we could go, so it was just until God told me it was time to go- then where to go?.. Well, I guess that was up to me.

I don’t remember a lot, or any, of what she told me when she was dying because I was so young, but I do know some of her last words to me were to always remember what we talked about.

…

At times the fact I couldn’t remember what she said to me would raise guilt in me, sadness at other times, but I think that what she said meant less than the exact words, and was more about who she was and who she saw of me, what she saw me doing in the future. Her living meaning: what she had planned for me in every day she lay on that bed waiting to be taken away from her pain.

I wouldn’t know, maybe that brought her peace, watching my life play out before her eyes before she died. Knew every step I was to take, watched over me. Even right now.

‘Love, peace, I will always be there for you, I will always be proud of you.’ - that was certainly her message. Maybe in the way she moved or the way she spoke back then she had hid it like a bottle in my soul and was just waiting until this very moment for me to open it right then and there, in this moment, on my beach, in the sand, in the airy bubbles.

-

Another moment of glory she shared as a gift for me until I met her again.

I drift in the tides of thought and prayer, within my sight, and see then look upon the others I have loved, seeing what was deemed I was to see and seeing not what I was deemed not to see.

I truly would never want to see something of theirs that was truly sacred to them, and they did want to share, so I respected that, and I think she made sure I didn’t see it too. Maybe seeing and doing it exactly as she did, in her waking life. And, like her, I pray in so many ways like I was the one in the duty of giving grace, even if outside of their vision.

I give myself up to the one who was in the duty of giving grace outside of my vision, to knowing one’s deepest and most perfect way, path, or their journey, and trying my best to guide outside of their vision of me, and support it in their direction, be a part of it when I was allowed, saying why not.. This way? And I pray that they find it, pray that they go, like she did for me. Knowing I’d find happiness, knowing whenever I found that, it would make her smile. And I tried to do the same for as many people as I could feel, as I could see with my heart. But that pain in me, that sadness in me, seems to be that cost, that I can not be a part of their lives in that way, as she knew would be the case with her. Maybe as the case was for her now. Maybe that gave her grief too that she couldn’t either. Maybe even now I was leading her within Heaven to know more that was out there, that she could find, and yes, it makes me sad I can not see all that she sees now.

I miss her.

She’s taught me so much, and yet I only knew her in the beginnings of my life, when memory was just forming, for her memory as she was on Earth to then be tarnished away from me when she left.

But from what I did remember, I didn’t remember the days when she was dying as well.

Blocked from me in protection; -the image of her face still sometimes evaded from me, my brain simply forgetting what she looked like. But there was the purity she left me, in me, from the protection of the childhood she gave me before she did leave. The feeling she gave me, that did not leave, I don't think that would ever leave, because she loved me so much.

Because she loved me so much, it would never leave. Her comfort. Her hug. Her embrace.

The little light of mine in my chest: the one she gave me.

Yet I still grew up in pain. I still grew up in hurt. I just didn’t remember that as well as her.

Her little light of mine: the one she gave me.

She gave me it to see, despite any of that pain, despite anything I could lose, I could never lose that, she knew that. That light would brighten any room, that light..

I couldn’t be protected from everything, but it was better that I wasn’t, that was the fuel for my lantern, as a knight.

The lantern that lit my cooling cottage.

And it was hers after all.

I was her lamp.

She was the one that created that light in me.

Sometimes I could feel her presence when I most needed it or had most earned it, besides the light of course. I never sought her in that way where I would be upset if it did not come to me at the end of the night or wake me in the morning or would never feel as though I was pulling her away from her higher duty of guiding all those people she loved, but she did tend to arrive in my awareness at times.

At times of love, at times of peace, she was real and she was alive.

Every second she went she thought of our lives going, not just mine. She knew they were to occur, she knew all of her sheep would push above anything else and let that light sit atop the tallest mountain we could find, no matter the climb it took to get there, and she loved that I loved to climb.

-

I was young enough to know that was the case when she went, to have those small beliefs of a child. The beliefs that stuck around because there was nothing else.

In terms of her, in terms of where she was, I didn't have the hardened heart where there would sometimes be excuses or a measure of where we needed to believe and see. Experience to let it blind me from the true nature that is we as a child are, or what was in dreams, or what was between them.

The truths that I saw, like, that she may turn the corner on some winter day, or be there in a crowd of people and say, ‘I was here all along, I just.. needed a rest.. I.. just needed a break.’ But no, she was here all along, from then, to now, to the future- I knew and that was just the test on me to know such a thing was true, that she was there in that crowd, right around a corner, and if not, she just needed a rest..

She did my hair in the morning (more when I was younger), which I appreciated; just before waking up before I could see her.. but I knew it was her.

She showed herself by making sure I never, if barely, had a bad hair day.

I loved her, I love her, and I will always love her.

But I knew she was her own woman, not just my mom.

She was more than just the roles she took on for all of us, she was so much more than them too.

So her voice would be in my mind, be in my heart, when it most made sense, but be gone from me at other times. I was her child, her blood ran through my veins. So in that way, she wanted me to know that she’d always stick around, in some way, in some how. That was her way at least.

That was her leadership. That was who she was as a woman.

-

I came here to Journey to help people, to learn about them, and I thought of no better place but here to do it.

The ways of faith and dreams are sometimes.. subtle, and, at times, obfuscating. But the light was powerful, working, and beautiful. It knew everything, more than everything or what nothing could be, I knew that to be true.

Did I do all of this in that light ? Was I there to guide people the right way ? Did I shine the path the right way as she did ? As others have ? Or those who have guided her in that before ?

Sometimes I believed I knew nothing at all. But it knew. It knew the way..

I wanted to see my Dad again - I wanted to see him again. Show him she was always there with us, even through it all. Even through all of the things we had gone through, we were loved.

That I forgave him for how he took the death, and that I didn’t take it perfect either, and that I didn’t understand what had taken from him just as he didn’t of what I had taken from me, and that I loved him so very much and couldn’t wait to see him again when I came home.

..

The sirens in my between state were the harsh wind in the sands and the reverberation of the waves in my chest, but were becoming daggers within the head of a hangover.

I woke up forgetting where I was or what I was doing before, but the pain in my jaw and nose, and the lump in the back of my head reminds me: the pain of leaving that dream.

I wake up fully on the ground where the officer had knocked me out. The commotion in the camp is one of chaos and of searching: The men of New Jericho yell for reinforcements and the search parties of dogs bark and search the compound. I wipe away the blur in my eyes and press into the pain in my neck so I can focus in my mind greater.

I looked up to see where Starseeker had gone; the barracks with the ripped open door and there was a small crowd surrounding the entrance. Unsurprisingly, there was a blood river that flowed down the stone gutter in the middle of the dirt street. What red life was left of the people he slaughtered- but there is something that perplexes me about the crowd.

It looks to have a few of Starseeker’s people among the men, not cuffed, wearing metal cuirass armor and knight clothing and uniform that was fitted to them perfectly. They wielded knight weaponry too, Sisars that were their size, and swords, some of their antlers and horns were even shaved down. Something Starseeker’s people would never do.

I don’t recognize their faces. Something about them stirs a deep primordial uncanny fear in me, as if they were shapeshifters, or.. God, I couldn’t tell you.. Something other than their odd clothing and demeanor made them seem like they.. just, weren’t ‘real’.

I couldn’t quite figure out exactly why…

I didn’t have time to sleuth it out at this moment. I had more pressing things to do.

I came to two choices I could act upon here: I could either search for Starseeker or I could try to free the prisoners and help them escape. On one hand, Starseeker couldn’t be controlled, was unpredictable, and very well could kill me, and on the other hand..

I decided then to go try to free Starseeker’s people.

-

Besides the marks on my jaw, and the cloud of dirt I had dusted off of myself, I was pretty indistinguishable from the herd of soldiers and guards as long as I looked like I had to be somewhere and be there fast. The compound was large and vast but nearby I saw and had no trouble walking right into the one warehouse where Starseeker’s people feasibly could all fit, but getting them out was going to be the greater issue.

The large hangar doors were swept wide open and inside the guard force was only four people, but there were troops running outside and possible soldiers by the back. Two were armed with Sisar 18s and one armed with a Steven’s Trenchgun. If they weren’t a threat enough though, there was also stationed a Mediodrake Wyvern and its handler. My dad always told me stories from his military days that Mediodrake Wyverns were famously known to be very hard to handle in a precise manner. They relied entirely on their heavily-trained master’s will and presence to know what to do - the soldiers always knew the best and easiest way to take out a Mediodrake was to kill its pilot and let the drake go crazy in the indecision that followed - it was that unpredictable. Sometimes they’d end up crashing into the ground below killing themselves from the fall, other times taking out everyone nearby or fleeing. Enemy or friend, it didn’t matter. It couldn’t tell the difference at that point. It was all related to their harsh training and obedience drills since their birth to be airtight and incredibly maneuverable by only their men. Sometimes it was a terrible idea to kill them too, they could cause even more damage when their handler was killed. Truth be told, I don’t even know why they would do it based on the risk of harm for their allies, the big ones needed to be fed too much and the small ones were too small I guess.

The Mediodrake’s handler whips into its scale, tongue clicking a command at the wyvern, it hisses and snarls at the closest prisoners keeping them in line, the other guards mimicking the same crowd control. Starseeker’s people were looking scared and confused by the commotions. I kept out of all their sight for now.

This problem just became a greater complication due to that wyvern. I needed to somehow distract or get the guards away. Sneaking this many people out was impossible without them noticing, and I did not want to kill anyone or have anyone be killed. Knight, or them.

The chains that held Starseeker’s people were a tough metal to break, I would guess even greater hold than their strength could break, but they had a simple locking mechanism that just needed a master key, which the wyvern handler had.

As quickly as I slipped around to see everything, I slipped out.

…

I walk towards them now of a different regard and of a different regalia, holding myself high and mighty, but with a quickness of need, wearing the officer uniform I had previously hid under the deck.

“Atten-tion!”

The men look back between me and the prisoners while continuing their snarling toothed barking at them to stay down and quiet, paying me little heed over the blaring sirens in the compound.

The wyvern handler turns to me while still reigning at the beast, the other men don’t acknowledge us speaking over the sirens,

“What do you want ?!”

As he yells he darts his eyes from me, back to the drake, back to the people, doing his best trying to juggle that attention. Keeping that drake under control was like reigning a raging bull-

“Can’t you tell we are under attack here ?!”

I pretend to yell at the natives to stay where they are while inspecting the handler. He has a roguish air to him, disheveled in appearance, employed by our army but not necessarily a part of it, like most of the handlers. I decided that if my plan had worked once, it could work again.

Then again, the last time I tried any trickery it had gotten me a rifle struck on my chin, but that was technically from a commanding officer over a soldier of lower rank, I decided it’s worth the chance with the uniform, hopefully the handler knows what my rank means,

“Sorry for interrupting the fun! But we found the bastard !”

The handler’s eyes give a slight more attention and time now to me of the three between the wyvern, the people, and I,

“He’s been using the southeast quadrant as his hunting ground !” 

I get even more of his attention and point out of the warehouse,

“Bring the beast out and track him in the air!”

Complete operative babble, the handlers weren’t trained as the soldiers or pilots were in commandment or lingo so I didn’t care to use proper terms. I just hope he wasn’t over there- my yelling of the order catches him off guard,

“-We’ll keep them at bay here !-”

“Ok! Uh - right away, sir !”

He does not question me further on the matter and begins taking the wyvern away.

Oh crap, I almost forgot something,

“Hey, wait !-”

-

“I’ll be needing that ! ”

I point to the keyring at his side.

“Oh, right, of course !”

He tosses me the key then turns again leading the wyvern out of the warehouse into the streets.

I turn to the natives, and walk up to the soldiers, they look back to see him begin mounting the wyvern and look to him and back at the prisoners who are growing more uncontrollable and rambunctious,

“Hey ! Where’s he going !-”

“You dare raise your voice to an officer !”

He gets a determined and antagonistic wince in his eye. He eyes and motions his hand for the other two men to keep his spot and they up their threats on the people to account for the loss in formation. He walks up to me, spearing his finger into the flesh of my chest,

“We are here under orders of Captain Brandon - Who, as you may know-”

He grabs and pulls at the rank insignia on my chest,

“Is above your authority !”

He lets go of my insignia and it snaps back into my uniform. Admittedly, I’m put into a situation where I am unsure what to do, he catches this and interrogates me further with his eyes, pressing himself further against my weakness,

“Besides ! Aren’t you too young to be an officer ?!”

He turns over towards the handler, and starts the distance jogging over to him,

“Hey, you !- Wait there just a moment !”

He’s able to say it before I grab him by the neck of his metal cuirass and grapple him towards my face to grab his attention fully,

“Who do you think gave me the order ! You will obey your higher official’s command !”

I hear the prisoners begin causing a commotion that grows louder from something and go to look over to them and the man pushes off me and backhand punches me hard across the face and I fall over onto my knee. The prisoners act as if a large sea wave crashes over them from the force of his slap. I look up at him in disbelief but he backhands me harder and it sends me to the ground. As I begin picking myself up I notice Starseeker’s people are laughing, dancing; happy and jubilantly. The laughter drowns out in the sirens but I can tell they are laughing, but they aren’t really laughing at me, I mean some seem to be. They’re huddled together, some look at what’s happening to me but others look around at what’s going on in the camp, but some look at the lights around or the warehouse around. All of them in a childlike awe, or curiosity, they act as though they are within a dreamland. The man who backhanded me grabs me by my uniform with two hands and heaves me up sideways off of the ground with an angry snarl and headbutts me hard in the temple. I fall back onto the ground dazed and broken. In the blur of my vision the other two soldiers rush over to grab at me by the sides before my body can fully bring my faculties back. I think about wrestling the two of their grips but can’t move my body.. but I did wake up from the astonishment.

I noticed the third soldier talking to and stopping the wyvern handler from mounting the Mediodrake, and he looked upon (what once was a fearful and screaming crowd) the laughing and joyous and calmed prisoners and myself trying to piece together what was going on.

I mock trying to break free so I catch eyes with one of Starseeker’s people’s elders who I can tell is one because of his rings and hoops upon each point of his antlers, and notice it's an elder I know named Stablestone. He catches my eyes with a deeply spirited gaze. In my moving-and-wrestling-around distraction within our momentary messaging gaze I toss him the master key, which slides over at his feet.

“-What are you idiots doing !”

The handler brings the Mediodrake over and tongue clicks an elaborate command and it goes over and handles the edge of the people’s group,

“It seems we either have a defector or an imposter here !”

“-Captain Brandon said we were to not leave this station under any circumstance, and here he is trying to lead us away !”

The man in front who backhanded me before punches me in the gut, hard.

The two men at my side bring me to my knees again,

“Nice try, traitor ! ”

The one on the left looks at my beaten bloodied face and laughs, the one on the right laughs and turns me to see at the people dancing,

“Look ! Haha, even they’re laughing at ya !”

He turns my shoulder over to them more, and strikes me into my side again hard, crippling me further.

I see Stablestone picking up the key. The handler goes over and moves the wyvern to the front middle of the herd,

“You all think this is funny ? You Native scum !”

The two soldiers holding me look at me and laugh as if it were the funniest joke they’ve ever heard. They take me from underneath my arms and hold me up for the man who backhanded me then they take turns beating into me.

“-Get back swine !”

I can really barely see at this point, between the state of falling unconscious and barely hanging on but I hear the handler’s whip slash across one of Starseeker’s people's flesh, I am able to focus enough to see that it's Stablestone. He has a large bright red lash upon his stark black skin and fur, but he does not look in pain, he is unfazed from the whip’s pain. He holds his hands, cupped. Poised as if inside it is a weapon.

He kneels down slowly to the handler, who whips him again, hard across his face, and he has no reaction to it yet again, he opens his hands, and inside them cupped, was the key to the chains..

“No..”

The handler takes it slowly, dumbfounded as I’m picked up and punched again hard into the gut.

I am speechless between each strike that follows after, and let myself fall loose, defeated. I feel I have been betrayed, but deep down, I don’t know why, I don’t think it was truly his fault.

In my slightly opened eyes, the handler comes over in a fresh close fisted anger, burning in his face and he stops in front of me as I look to the ground. The men take me up and he knees me in the chest hard. Then steps back and lashes me with his whip across my face and my neck.

-

I hear him turn over to his soldier friends and say,

“I gave him this earlier when I thought he was an officer ! One of the natives just gave it to me ! He must’ve thrown it over to them !- Beat him until Captain Brandon comes back, and then maybe a little after I say ! We can execute him when we find that thing and kill it !”

The soldiers look at me again with fire and anger in their eyes and lash out their heat at me until they can’t hold me up anymore, then they kick into me when I’m on the ground.

Some of the prisoners look at me.. or around me.. or at anything else being.. Looking at it all with beauty and a twinkle in their eyes..

The others laugh and play as if they were in one of the Glades itself.

What insanity is this ?

I don’t think I can take much longer..

…

Chapter 34

The Witnessing Room

…

I sat there curled up in the void that the throned ones left me in, sinking deeper.

Sinking deeper, waking up only at just the other side of the threshold I thought my heart would stop-

It was torture.

I held myself curled up like a young cub, scared- but I was submerging farther into the expanse, because I wanted it to end, but I didn't know how to stop it, and I needed peace, and this wasn’t peace, so it probably was just a little bit further, surely some time it would stop.. so I went.. until I was there at the threshold of finally falling asleep…

But I would awake again in fear.

I would slowly lull again down from there, deeper and deeper, wanting to get out of it, hoping I’d just.. sleep. Then I could wake up from this nonsense..

I knew the line where I would die.. where my heart would start beating so slow it’d stop.. but there I went onto it.. hoping it was just sleep instead..

..

But I was suddenly awake. Scared.

Nodding back onto the line.

Relaxed, but not the type you’d enjoy, the one you’d think you needed, but really didn’t.

This was torture..

I didn’t know how to get out of this.

Every time I bounced up the threshold would only go deeper than before- surely rest was close, eventually I'd just be able to rest my head upon it.

I just had to.. close.. my eyes.. nodding back down to the firmament trying to sleep.. my heart.. slowing.. hoping it was just sleep..

But I was suddenly awake. Scared.

I was scared when I went even further than before, further down than the line I thought I would die-

Nodding back onto the next line.

Relaxed, but not the type you’d enjoy, the one you’d think you needed, but really didn’t.

All I really needed to do was cry- but I couldn’t.

I was alone here, yet I was held on in life.

No one's tears would save me here:

I was unsaveable- I hated it.

I wanted to leave, but I could not.

Someone was keeping me here- who? I did not know. Myself? I don’t really know.

I was scared when I went even further than before, further than the line I thought I would die.

Nodding back onto the line.

-

Suddenly awake. Scared.

Relaxed, but not the type you’d enjoy, the one you’d think you needed, but really didn’t.

Despite the ones on the throne, despite all of my tribe outside the walls that I knew were there hoping, despite Ashtail and wherever she was at, or if she were watching, there was another with me that watched me so delicately; ones I held in my chest in any comfort I could find, but this one,

I did not know.

Despite the people I knew, I guess that’s what I meant.. This was someone that I did not know, but.. it seems he knew me-

I felt like I knew him.

Whatever it was, it was the thing that decided if I died or not.. He was protecting me from whatever harm came.

I didn’t even know where I was.

Or if I was here. I couldn't see anything.

I felt alone, like my feeling of almost dying, over, and over again, it felt like I was connected to someone who just wanted to suffer for the sake of it, or that this feeling was so ‘unique’ and un-understandable by anyone else, but not in a good way, or if it was it was in a deceitful way.

But he was there, the other being, the comforter, the true gatekeeper to death and of life: It felt like he was the only one who truly understood.

It was sad I had to be here to find that, that the other suffering one did too, but the comforter supported me in its love, and knew I would find him once I left.. he held me and supported me so gently just outside of it, and I couldn’t help it.. I just needed to sleep..

-

Relaxed, but not the type you’d enjoy, the one you’d think you needed, but really didn’t.

Nodding back onto the line.

I went even further than before, further than the line I thought I would die-

Suddenly awake. Scared.

Nodding back.

Despite all those things conversing within my slow-going jumping heart and mind, despite the rivers of sickening vision’s movement that were showing, not of my volition, on the bottom of my mind, despite that gatekeeper to life or death that watched over me- I felt others there within it, going through the same exact thing I was going through. But I didn’t understand how. Or why? Could they see the river too? Or were they a part of it? Could they see the stream that flowed? Why was I here? Why did I need to see this?

It was like a community bouncing on the will to live- ready to break into death, or.. rather.. sleep.

I would have rather been alone, looking into the river made me so sick. I hated it.

I was so unsure of what was occurring, but I just needed to be held.

I went even further than before, further than the line I thought I would die.

But the gatekeeper was there to keep me safe. Not that I was any less scared of what would occur.

Nodding back onto the line.

But the void, the void held me, the void embraced around me..

Relaxed, but not the type you’d enjoy, the one you’d think you needed, but really didn’t.

Suddenly awake. Scared.

I did not want this comfort. This was not the type of comfort that felt right.

I wanted to be free from it. To fight back against it, but I was, I was only..

…

I was too deep to escape, so much farther than I feel I should have been able to have gone, but there was a reason I was down here, a door, a tunnel, a way out- or rather.. That being, that thing, that person, the gatekeeper, (who, or what.. I did not know..) it opens this way to me, the tunnel, the door, and I take its hand, I follow it, for I feel solid in following it.

I feel strength where I was only gasping and drowning before.

But.. I see there now, another. Another with his claws cinched into the forestvine, another vision that I had not seen before while upon that line.

I awake more from that torturous depth, while still at the same measure, at the pace I do not collapse from how deep I had gone.

I saw him there in the forestvine, the one that was speaking the bewitching calm waves onto my people from before, the bewitching demonic elation that he still casts out into our people.

Bewitching enslaving waves. Enslaving waves that made my people dance as they were being held hostage. Dance as they were slowly dying. Love that they were in chains.

Being awakened, to be scared, being put down to be rested wrongfully.

This was a different voice than that comfort and direction of the other being I did not know, this had a terrible intention, a terrible end, a terrible way about it.

It idly and stilly calmly listens to the grounds around, as a foresthearer would, but strums that line deep within our souls, the one that I had found, the one they bounce upon life and death on.

The intense awakening after the placation. On duty to keep our people down through their minds, through their souls. The hand that held me so gently and protected me gently urged me to go to find him to change this injustice, to ensure not one of my people would go there again. I pray, not another soul be upon it. Whatever it was, whoever this was, he steers what would be our people’s awareness away from ever being aware of his presence, only of the line. But this being that helped me, this being was above any of that, this being knew more than anything, I knew that. And we were away from being at that strummer’s awareness.

The false being scrapes at my people’s minds as if they were not ours, he moves them as if they were his to command, to strum, as if we were his instruments, playing the most evil of a tune, evil past what you would even think evil could be. Strumming us from suddenly awake and scared and being rested in that torturous way. But that would never truly be the case that were his. Never.

We would never truly give in to such a wicked thing. We were more than this world. We were more than what this wicked line-strummer was.

How shortsighted this false being was.

My anger battled at my righteousness. From my own actions. From theirs. I know not how to navigate through that, however I know he tells me to go despite it. That this is the right call.

I grit my teeth.

The time to hunt is again.

For I know whatever it is, it is also near my Ashtail. It is near my people.

It is near.

And I will cut his line, and cut him down as well and free my people in the stars that was the rest they truly needed.

“Awaken.”

The machinic innocuously monotone voice in his mind sends yet another dosing wave of the strand of a soul.

I shut my mind from its influence just before the wave would hit me and open it just after it passes by. I follow its ripple through the compound in my spirit and faze through the ground like an apparition, grabbing on to parts of the ground to propel myself to where I needed to go. And I see him below, as I saw myself before, outside, looking in at him.

He reminds me of the one seated at the center throne. Arrogant against this being that truly decided who was strummed into life and who was strummed out of it, just causing needless torture.

He sits behind some sort of table with a blindfold around his eyes.

He’s.. one of our people, but not. He wears new-men garb. He postures himself like a new-man but has the power of one of my people. I must have gotten too close, he feels my low-burning anger, my confusion, my heartbreak; the feeling of being betrayed. He feels me staring at him deep within his actions, and he now feels what he is doing is wrong, I am upon the tall corner of the room. The judge has arrived.

He sees me in the image of the one that held me, that guided me, that determined me to live.

And that is where he feels the true power of stepping the wrong path, the true fear.

Instinctually he jumped as if waking up from a dream, knocking the table into the wall with his knee and spilling his drink upon it. One small step. One small step wrong and he could be destroyed for what he has done..

He now truly sees that, and he now truly sees me, sees the being behind me.

A burning light behind a dense shadow. A half eclipse of an intense undying light.

He looks up at the corner of the wall at the angle I am watching him from, with his blindfold still on. He looks startled. Terrified. In complete awe and reverence with a burning guilt in his chest and a dropped jaw.

He grabs a necklace around his neck and begins some new-man prayer, but in his weakness as he does it I notice more of his surroundings.

The being behind me leaves, but he still prays. -

He overlooks a room, smaller than where they kept the majority of my people but larger than the normal buildings here would be.

He overlooks them through a large window.

He overlooks my people, my true people, chained onto the side of these large stone chutes with a table in front of them.

I see Ashtail there.

..How did you ?

I walk over to him kneeling looking up at me and walk behind him and wrench my claws around his spine and force him to stand up and move over to the window to see better into the room. His voice croaks and he can barely move around of his own volition, being paralyzed in the fear he had felt earlier.

Normally whenever I would listen to the forest to listen and provide answers to prayers to others it would be through the will of the forest. I would listen and provide my own take on my peace for them, and the answer would come from the forest itself. I was always just as pleased to see what surprise it would supply them in their times of need. But this was different. This was not the will of the forest, it was now the will of myself. Or.. maybe that being. I don’t know. In the past I could not, nor would ever try, to move or manipulate the people within my listening, but for some reason I could touch him and move him at will around his awareness now, instead of being led.. But maybe I was still. I was not sure.

I cinch my claws deeper.

The tables have those glass bulbs spread out upon them that their outpost has everywhere here but they are unlit. My people pick them up, one by one, and awake and trap forestlight within them. Threading them within it, within this being’s instrument of horror. I could feel them bouncing upon that line that I had before, that community down there I felt, they were my people, maybe even others, but most certainly also the light that was trapped within those bulbs.

They drop them then they go down the chutes in front of them and they roll down to the end of the chutes to a pit I can not see down. I wrench again deeper into his spine and keep him there and float over to see and see further that in the center of the room, between all of their individual chutes, there is a colossal glass bulb that is lit. I’ve never witnessed such a raw harnessed collection of forestlight before.

It raises a great fear and a hypnotizing awe in me. It feels like home, but I know it's the perversion of it, the appeal. But I knew the line was within it. I could not, nor would not fall into its trap like before. Deep within, it calls to be saved. It calls for freedom. I look down to where the chutes lead and there are mountains of those brightbulbs down there.

“Awaken!”

My floated spirit returns to my other spirit form holding him, and I feel my claws rip out of his back. He screams as they do and I am cut between the connection between him and I with a flash of his hand movements-

I don’t fight him against it. I looked into that light in the center of the room as he escaped my hold and I looked for the smallest part within it while my vision fades away into my eyelids.

I looked for the smallest part that still can be saved, the part of it that I was bouncing on that line about, and wondered how.. How do I save it ?

I woke up back at the camp on my back.. Their loud droning horns wail into the forest.

I hear people around, but none have found me.

Within all of my teachings and my prayer and ritualistic meditations, I thought I had seen the worst the forest could take. Annual fires, swamps of decay, growing diseases in the ancient Glades, the warring between our clans in the great hurt-of-our-hearts, but then I knew the new-men.

Within all of their disrespect of the forest, the cutting down of our memories, the cutting down of our culture and our heritage, and our dead, the taking of my people, them being walked in chains, guns being held at cubs, all of us being taken from our homes, them testing on our great hearts, I thought I had seen the worst this forest could take. But then they befuddled our minds, enslaved us for their inventions, drove me to acquire that man.

I thought then there was nothing more possible that could be worse, for certainty this time-

I had seen the worst this forest could take.

But then I was upon the line that he teased, the thing I witnessed that.. that thing, with a body as ours, mind as ours, the mindblood within them that ran throughout the vein and vine of the forest, but was in the way of a new-man.

That thing that was within my mind, that thing that.. that was not us. That strung the cord that kept us bouncing between elation and relaxation until we were at the bottom most string where he tried to kill us. That thing.. that watched our people trap more souls in their glass that trapped them in that realm.

That bulb.. that gave me fear, that inspired awe. All those people crying out from the center to be freed from that torment.

Yes, that.. that was the amalgamation of what the worst this forest could take.

It could take it no longer, I could take it no longer. I had to end this.

Interlude

Her and I sneak away from the celebration, her hands are softer than I remembered.

She tugs at my hand so abruptly as we run I almost trip over simple twigs.

We laugh and we giggle alongside the buzzing cicadas and croaking frogs in galavanting pursuit to a location she swore me to secrecy that I would never divulge.

I had never been there before, but I figured I'd always go wherever she led me.

It was the night of birthing and the ground felt like it was bouncing our steps in play along with us. We hurriedly swat through the light vines that were as thick as roots on the hill- she had said tonite was the only night she could show me, that she followed a deer who had shown her it when she was seven. And that she wanted me to see.

“How much further !”

She lets go of my hand. She’s still giggling and looks at me with her eyes batting the battle between coy and her outdoorsy,

“Quite awhile.”

She smiles, twitches her eyebrows up and down and winks in a departing invitational jest that was like a kiss to my heart.. Was she really blowing one to me ? Or was it her overt interest in this place and her being friendly because she thought I was cool and wanted to show me something cool ?

“-It's right up here,”

And she runs up ahead of me over a hill. I follow after her, running too.

I almost trip down the steep embankment of the top of the hilltop almost rushing over the edge - she’s already halfway down it. After my heart settles from almost falling and my balance is fully regained, I look down into the valley where there are these excellent streams of forestlight that slowly flow through the air. Rivers of golden flecks within water, meeting in a central pond that flow off into waterfalls into the deeper forest.

Woah.

The light within the rivers stay luminant, but the twinkling spots within it.. they’re like stars.

The main forestlight around them flitter about from the wind, little golden bobbing bubbles or floating particles of desert sand.

I realize then that these are an incredible amount of yellowgold fireflies.

She faces towards it but her head turns towards me in an explanatory way,

“It’s their mating or birthing rituals. Like ours.. I think.”

She looked so serious about it, so matter of fact,

“Wow.”

I try not to look dumb looking at it. Or show too much amazement.

“I think they like the vibrations of the ground nearby, and our drums. They flock here during it, but just far away enough from us that they feel safe, or.. maybe they like the privacy. I don’t know. That’s my leading theory..”

I’m always so surprised by the beauty that the forest enlightens me with-

Ashtail beckons me;

“Come on !”

She smiles. I feel now I am allowed to finally bask in the magic-

I rush down to where she stands by the bottom of the steep hill and we both walk towards it, like it were something we would drink from or even wade in. The closer we get the more the yellow light casts over her face and looks as though she wears a chiffon of beautiful see-through yellow upon her face. We walk through them and they move around us as if to allow us in. I admit, I feel warmth even if they are just bugs.

She slowly stops at the quaking and moving epicenter, of its rippling lyrics, and dancing chime, and I’m right there beside her.

We are surrounded by its beauty. Her eyes reflect life and light. Little flecks of the passing golden galaxy. I am taken in by her. Or maybe what I could see of what she was looking at.. I became afraid she might notice I was looking at the light more in her eyes than around her. Looking more at her, than the spectacle. Looking at her. She looks down from them into my eyes and my face. My face feels hugged, my entire self does. I push down the tears in my eyes, the feelings she gives me, and the new anxiety in my gut.

It was my first time my antlers had grown in, and they have only matured enough where only one was branched. Any other normal boy around my age had double the spread of mine or were in their second or third season of antlers. I don’t know if it's the intent in her eyes or mine, or just the complete magic that surrounds us, but I grow scared of what’s about to come. At my stage, she could kill me. And I would have had no defense against the central curved horn she has had since three years ago.

The elders say it's okay to wait for your first time until you feel safe. I was obviously scared to my bones, I didn’t know if I felt safe or not. But I did have feelings for her, and I liked her so much.. Maybe now was the time. Better now than any other time, right ? Maybe I had to take a leap like I did just days before at the Radiance.

The elders said that girls could kill you with their horns if they wanted to, or really hurt you with them, and to always beware them when kissing them, because you were the most vulnerable for her to pierce and be killed.. but that they did have one weakness, that sometimes they did want to kiss you, if not most times in the heart of knowing, and that they were more afraid of what could happen if they did not kill you then and there. And to go and try something like kiss her when one of my antlers was still unbranched ? When I wasn’t sure if she wanted to kiss me, or if she would not want to take the risk and just kill me there? That was risking suicide.

Maybe I was just afraid to kiss her, not that she’d kill me- but that I didn’t know what it was like. What if she didn’t like me how I liked her ? What if she told everyone I tried and they made fun of -

“Hey-”

She looks me deep in the eyes. Her soft voice calls me back.

She takes my hand into hers,

“It’s okay..”

She relaxedly laughs, and I do too.

I try to hide the deep shake within my bones or that my eyes were on the verge of tearing up.

“Take a deep breath.. I know it's beautiful. Literally breathtaking. It’s okay if you get emotional about it, I am too.”

She and I nervously laugh again together. I take a deep breath. I was fine, I was in the clear.

She pulls my head down gently and puts her horn onto my forehead, a friendly gesture she has done before-

“Relax. It’s okay.”

I begin to relax. She lets go of my head and moves and lays her head upon my shoulder. She turns it to the side and I tense and burn for a second as her horn and her hand hooks around the back of my neck. But she slowly pulls me slowly into a further embrace.

And then I remember her wisdom. I feel her embrace, on my neck, like on my head, like around me, on my shoulder. Surely she couldn’t hurt me right now, if not just for the beauty that surrounded us. She shifted her horn slightly, sensing I was tense about it,

“Heh, sorry..”

“No- it’s, uh, it's okay.”

I felt a little better about it not being on the back of my neck even if I got used to it.

I put my hands, my arms around her, and squeeze myself closer and more respectfully into her, giving in to how safe she was making me feel, despite the other feelings I was having. And with her lead we sway softly in the light that shines on my eyelids as I close my eyes, but it does not fade in my heart, not in my mind. My chest warms with her breath and her head. Her warmth. My heart is thumping out of my chest and my mind races, but deep down.. I am at ease. She nuzzles slightly more into me. My heart comfortably slows. I hug her head tighter into my body with my hand and her tighter into my other arm then she hugs me tighter into her chest. And to my surprise, I feel her going into a further comfort, a further safety, a further weakness - melting.

I think of what to do and the only solution I find is to find somewhere my hands could go that perfectly cup her form and hold her upright as she lets herself open herself up more and more.

My left hand cups the upper side of her right hip, my right hand supporting the back of her head into my left shoulder. She moves her hand on my neck off into an embrace. Holding on to me so tightly.

She begins slightly breaking down as I hold her. I open my eyes and think to slowly pull her away from me to wonder what I did wrong. She breaks down more, releasing something that was long kept there. But the fireflies give us space like we are a rock within their gentle stream, and my hands were that which was supporting her. I couldn’t bring her away from my support, I couldn’t bear to bring her away from these healing waters, it was hard not to hold her…

Slowly, gently, she pushes herself up from my chest, wipes her eyes, she wipes her beautiful nose and takes time to right herself from what just happened-

“I love you, Starseeker.”

She looks me deep in the eyes and cups my face in her hand. The bottom of her eyes fluttered as she said it, the words alight me in ways I’ve never been alit.

By four words alone, strength and purpose flows through my body.

Love. I feel like I belong here. I belong in her hands. She belongs in being held up by strength. By those four words alone she spoke, she has newly defined each of them in my heart: I, myself anew; Love, love; You, who I was to her, and who she was to me; And Starseeker, who I was, and always will be now.

No matter what feeling she could ever give me in the future, I would always choose to love her, because this was truly who she was. And by those four words alone, I knew it was the same for her, she thought and knew the same thing. Maybe that was the lesson the elders were trying to teach me. That it might hurt if anything bad happened, but it was worth it. That she might drive that horn through me, in reality or in spirit, but it would be worth the pain- there are no more lights on her eyes, they no longer reflect light and life, but instead, they are the window to it.

I love her.. No.. I…

“I love you too, Ashtail.”

I look into her eyes.

She smiles, healing right there any transgression that could be, or ever would be upon my heart.

I could not stop this even if I wanted to.

We lean in, our lips touch in the light of the forest, in the warmth of her body that was upon my chest, and by the silk of our skins.

By the pond of our lips and by the rivers of light, we explore the love we have of each other.

Chapter 35

Requirement

He runs through the compound, droplets of his tears scatter into the wind.

He weaves in between their buildings, at times- even startled new-men.

His speed is enough to overpower any of their reactions, but timing is a scary thing to him right now, so he just sprints past them.

He followed the print in his mind of the imposter with the directive of a blood hound following the scent of a fresh wound. Deep parts of him were angry, but most parts were now awakened and scared of what could happen to her.

His thoughts were collected in newly broken fragments of memory from the acquirement.

He pulled at the words that could not be found- that he could not piece together.

Reduced, its meaning came to one phrase,

“It always tends to be the most strong, the most vulnerable, that succumb to these awful things,”

His chest burned and hurt, it felt like he had been beaten by a row of others with thick sticks.

The most sensitive, the strongest of the tribe, the most beautiful, like Ashtail, they always succumbed to these things; to oppressors, to bullies, to their designs, out of the kindness of their own heart.

His anger came from somewhere deep within him, an intimate spot-

“Agh.. Come on !”

He cut through the dirt in a sprint.

-

He enters the building he would have never guessed they would be enslaved, he searches among their beds, yanks the right one across the room. He finds and breaks through the secret hatch upon the ground with one punch and slides down the tunnel with a fervent manner, each second counting in his mind like a slow drip of a leaf.

At the bottom, he finds the room he had seen in his vision, the one where that false-being was.

The realization hits him in a peculiar way- in the way.. that this is now real. Not something he made up in his mind or that was some nightmare.

No one was within the room, but the chair is there, the table, and the window. He rushes over and flips the table across the room to look down into the larger room he had seen before. His people were down there working in the room filled with the sliding chutes and the large bulb in the center, his people lining the room at different parts of it and working as drones of an ant queen would, and there was Ashtail.

To him, she did not look like herself. She is disheveled, her eyes are wide but tired, she looked as though she were sleepwalking the way she moved herself and worked.

He spends no time waiting, runs down the spiral stairs, and past everyone else, takes her shoulders into her hands, and sternly but gently turns her unconsciously protesting body to him as far as her chains allow.

She is dazed- confused. She doesn’t recognize who she is looking at. Can’t fix her eyes well on anything and anything she was past him or on unknown parts of him like she was seeking for something in his chest but did not know what. But was only able to look only to him, because he was the thing in front of her, and wide-eyed and scarred. He worries there’s a tinge of fear in her too, like he would hurt her. He says her name, takes her face into his hands and moves her face to look upon his eyes, bargaining to the forest for her recognition of him, but there is none.

He whispered cries out of her name, sobbing silently, begging in earnest; he moves his hands away and down and takes her hands up gently as she once used to for him, running his thumbs intimately over the fur of her hands. Looking again into her eyes, looking for some answer around the room or in her hands to help her.

She can tell that he breaks down in his eyes, but does not understand why he does.

‘Who was this strange man who was yelling at me ?’, and ‘Why did he hold my hands so softly ?’

He brings her in and hugs her as tight as he can, sobbing whispers into her neck, holding on to her even tighter. Squeezing her so tightly as if he were about to die and she was the one who was saving him from drowning.

Something deep within her warbles as if by a pebble.

She’s not really sure what she’s done wrong, why is he crying ?

She may not know why she does but she slowly pulls her arms and her hands to pull him in a little closer, her fingers caresssed, landing slowly on his back.

The touch makes his body twitch.

He extends his arms and puts her arms-length away from him and looks deep into her eyes searching for something, anything of her. But he sees only a husk.

She is interested in the shiny faded lights reflecting in his eyes that move down the chutes and the large shining light in the center of the room she has called friend, that part of her had called a trusted ally, she was always so enamored in making them glow, maybe this beast could be her friend too ? The ringing in her ears slowly fades,

“- do you know who I am ?”,

She can finally understand what he says,

“Do you know who I am, Ashtail ?”

“...”

She feels like she remembers that name, but from where she’s not sure.

He searches around in a tantrum for something to break her free from the chains linked into the limestone that the chute was built from, but finds nothing.

He approaches her gently again and says,

“It’s okay. It’s fine. Everything.. will be okay. Just stay there, please.”

For some reason, she trusts him. Her friend says he was a friend. And she was happy to have another friend. She only had to wait a little longer, that's what her friend of a friend told her.

He takes the chains close from around her wrists and follows the chain to the base of the stone, and grabs at the base of the eyelet forged into the hard stone. He roars as he pulls with his entire might.

She wasn’t necessarily scared by it, but something in her made her feel like he was doing something wrong, but he was her friend, so she trusted he was doing something right. The stone begins cracking and crumples off of the rest of the chute, the eyelet still attached to it. The glass bulbs begin crashing down upon the ground from where they were coming down from the chute above, little lights becoming broken glass..

She watches as he drags the section he broke off over to another spot on the ground and pulls with all of his might at the eyelet the chains are connected to. When he can’t do it, when the metal does not even bend, when he falls to the ground from pulling so hard after so many tries, he begins breaking the things around him in a tantrum.

The explosive emotion coming from him startles her, but she watches him until he finally stops.

Sitting on the ground, he puts his head into his knees.

He feels defeated, his rage simmers to nothing but the release of his tears, in all of the injustices put upon him in his lifetime, and then he falls to a dry (and a silent) defeat.

…

A hand gently extends onto his shoulder, it’s quiet, and small-

“It’s okay. Everything will be okay.”

He looks up at her with tears in his eyes.

She still does not recognize him, but Ashtail was certainly still there.

For a moment he thinks she might recognize him, and that was all the hope he needed.

She takes her hand off knowing she helped him - He stands up, walks over and positions his feet in between each side of the eyelet on top of the rock, wraps the chain multiple times around his one hand, then the other, then pulls again.

He pulls with all of his might, roaring from the chest and legs of his soul. The arms of the strength of his love for her. He feels his muscles tearing, his head exploding, his back breaking. But he knows there is more than the body, there is more than the mind, and with his spirit, with his soul, one of the chain segments begins bending, then snaps.

Leaving the section of the stone upon the ground and her now free.

He roars into the room again.

She still does not understand. He looks at her and smiles, her face still an empty blank innocence but she smiles back. But her face clears and her eyes close and she collapses upon the ground. Holding her head and wincing in pain. He looks to the entrance where he came in from and he sees three of the imposter people and a group of new-men aiming their rifles and weaponry at him.

“Stand down !”

The woman imposter says it in new-man tongue and is upon the floor that he was.

The imposter woman held her hands up towards him to calm him down, while also keeping her hand towards the new-men and the other false one behind her and up in the windows to stop them from firing.

He won’t allow himself to be taken, he won’t allow her to be bewitched any longer.

He looks down at the section of the stone chute he had broken off.

“Don’t try anything stupid ! I’m trying to help you !”

The woman imposter says it in his tongue with a new-man accent.

He believes not a word in it.

He swiftly crouches down, heaves up the large rock from the chute,

“AGH!”

And launches it at the colossal glass bulb with all of his might. Some of the new-men begin firing at him, but the woman imposter ruins their aim by running in front of him facing them,

“Hold your fire !”,

The rock crashes through the glass.. Out erupts an immediate flash of light then a long held explosion- he jumps on top of Ashtail as an incredible velocity of a stream of a pure golden forestlight and motes of light and shrapnel explode out into the underground they were in. A mote of light veers right into the imposter woman as she looks up at the explosion and it engulfs her in a brilliant light of quickly dissipated screams, vaporizing her into a golden dust that slowly drifts to the ground. Other motes and wisps ricochet around in the room shooting from the intense river of the escaping rushing forest light flood that shot out into the Witnessing Room glass, the motes darting into his people or the new-men indiscriminately to the same effect as the imposter woman had been vaporized in golden dust.

Starseeker yelps as a mote blazes just past his back, scorching it and leaving a golden wound.

For what was within only a few seconds, the rest of the forestlight from the bulb spouts out of the underground area and the wisps dissipate in speed and slowly make their way out the same way the golden river had gone, leaving the broken bulb and the surrounding underground darkened besides the pit casting out below the large bulb, the bulbs near Starseeker and Ashtail, and the last few bulbs tumbling down.

Only one of the new-men survives, the beast looks up at him, with a scorching back and golden wound, and he drops his gun and flees to the surface.

The beast takes Ashtail by his side, supporting her on his shoulder. Trying not to flinch or falter from his wound.

-

On the surface, they see there is a swirling storm of golden forestlight above the compound.

Wisps and motes speeding around at random, within the compound and within the storm, striking into the chaos of an actively fleeing and terrified fort or prancing within the tempest above. People are vaporized left and right of the two as they walk toward the large doored exit the new-men used, none of them pay attention to him or her, rather thinking of their own lives.

On the way to the exit that is but eighty paces, they pass by the hold where their people are. They look happy, dancing, or laughing but obviously in some trance, the forestlight clouds within it and some are struck by the wisps as the two walk by. Some look up in the cloud of striking motes and dust as if in the starry sky itself, most being struck and vaporized within it already.

He rationalizes maybe some have already gotten out, he knows there were definitely more than he sees there, but maybe not.. His priority was Ashtail at this second. Near the side of the entrance of their holding building, one of the handlers of their larger flying-snakes begins mounting to escape but is struck with a wisp and turned to golden mist.

Ashtail trips to her knees. He tries to pick her up, and realizes she’s been shot in the leg from earlier.

The wyvern looks around feverishly for his handler but does not find him. He turns around in the mist, scared by everything happening around him. A craze began forming in his eyes, he marks Starseeker, and goes to attack him as he drops Ashtail down and prepares for a fight with the beast-

But a gunshot goes off that hits the scale of the side of the wyvern’s face. A new-man, walking out of the mist, unrecognizable from his beaten, bloodied, and bruised face, he holds his rifle up to the wyvern and shoots again, hitting the scale upon the center of the wyvern’s face as the wyvern turned to look.

Starseeker uses the distraction to pick up Ashtail and puts her to his side. She begins hobbling with him as fast as she can to the exit, but he picks her up into his arms when he realizes it’s safer to do so.

The wyvern turns himself to the new-men who fires upon him again but the wyvern swipes his tail into the new-man launching him into the air into a wall, he slides down it and crumples upon the ground.

The wyvern looks to Starseeker holding Ashtail who has his head turned to look at him, but the wyvern turns his attention to the prisoners in the hold and hawks a giant flame spout into the building,

“It’s okay, we’re close, stay awake. Please. It’s okay..”

In his arms, she swears she remembers a man like him. He looks brilliant in the light of the beautiful golden cyclone above. Mixed beautifully with the orange of flying beasts flame raining down upon this peculiar place and the flying yellow starry darts. She feels safe in his arms. She wants to sleep in them, possibly for the rest of existence. She presses her face into the nuzzle of his chest and he holds her closer and tighter toward himself.

The Starseeker huffs it out of the open grand doors, out deeper into the dark forest, where the orange gold light cascades on the trees like an already fading burning memory. She doesn’t like all the bouncing from his running, it’s making her sick,

“I want to lay down please.”

He walks a little further into the woods and places her upon the ground gently, leaning her against a tree. He places his hands on her injured leg.

It doesn’t look that bad.. She won’t die from it. He lets out a sigh of relief and thanks the forest.

He looks into her eyes as he holds the wound with his hand and sees but a faint recognition slowly forming to her of him. Her eyes have some remembrance - he smiles and cups her face in one of his hands and puts one upon her chest, giving a small relieving laugh, maybe that sickness would go away soon. He was so glad that she was now safe, and in due time she would return in sound mind,

“Just wait here a second.”

He gets up, steps past her, and looks to the wyverns burning the compound around, the wisps were no longer striking anybody, because no one was left but the dead. They slowly floated up, all together to the center of the storm, where they vanished amidst the swirling sandlike dust, there looked to be millions of them. Despite the death, and despite the sadness, it was hauntingly and calmingly beautiful. They looked as if they were migrating..

They remind him of the fireflies that night of his first kiss - he laughs to himself and thinks to tell Ashtail how the fireflies that night were probably just migrating, not necessarily mating. How that thought might have been there just because they were alone together -

His heart sinks at the crack of an explosion that comes from behind him.

He runs back to where he put Ashtail and sees a terrified new-man holding a smoking long gun at a profusely bleeding Ashtail.

The new-man nervously looks up to him and attempts to clack back another shot but Starseeker swats the gun out of his hand and pulls the throat out of his neck and tears him in two from his back as he falls to his knees dying - he turns to Ashtail in a hurry.

“No…. No. No !”

She coughs out of her mouth and blood shoots out in the second heave and mixes with her shocked and pained tears.

He kneels down to her, the wound is large, and has many holes that center around a larger one, they are all upon the left side of her chest and inside have many fragments of their metals.

He tries his best, if not fruitlessly, to pull out the shrapnel from the smaller holes,

“Please.. please stay awake…. Please don’t go-..”

He chokes on his words and his emotions as he needlessly tries to save her.

She looks into his eyes, like she did something wrong. She’s not able to get a good breath out, so she chokes up another burst of blood to be able to.

She only just met this man but what seemed like a moment ago, yet he would do anything for her.. she decided then that she would do the same- she reaches up and takes his hand.

“It’s going to be okay.. Everything will be okay.”

He looks at her and she sees him in the image of himself as a cub, she remembers him now.

Starseeker.

She smiles, chuckles slightly, how could she ever forget someone like him ?

She looks into his eyes and puts her hand upon his cheek.

“I love you Starseeker.”

He holds onto her hand tightly for dear life and sobs deeply,

he can barely pout out a faltering goodbye with falter evading closing eyes,

“I.. love you Ashtail. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn't save you.”

He holds her hand so tightly on his face, and when he lets it go but a little, there is no resistance.

Her hand drops from his cheek and he brings it down gently within his own.

Looking into her still eyes, they were now only windows into darkness.

…

Chapter 36

Starseeker

-

 “-I thought killing the new-men would stop their transgressions, but through time of my hunting their packs, I found it will only-”

…

He pokes at the fire with a thick stick, the fire crackles, and embers plume up with thick smoke out of the encircled safety of the fireflies..

He told me that his wife had died to begin with, and yet I still forgot as he told his story. His face was hardened by it, but below it was soft, sad.

I couldn’t see that happy cub in his soul now, it seemed it died alongside her.

Montyr wouldn’t be happy to hear the news of Sky either, if he was even still alive..

What a tragic story of his tribe, he wears them still in him.

I see him searching his mind for the right word, or that he doesn’t quite understand how to say it or that he’s unsure if doesn’t want to say what he wants to say next or if he does. When he talks, it is not just him speaking, it is his whole tribe within him. Finding the right word must be difficult when you speak as the last but also head of what was left of your people-

“.. it would only - delay sins.”

I let the fire crackle just a moment longer. It felt safe,

“I don’t know what to say Starseeker, I’m sorry.”

I think for a second if there are even more of his people or not, but- I think about all those brightbulbs at Obsidian’s Landing. How he said the gold storm of their light together killed all those people.

How sinister now all those once beautiful knight’s stars seemed, especially if more of his people were out there making more,

“Surely there is something we can do to stop all of this, right ?.. Are there any others of your kind out there ?”

“.. No. Not one. No true-kind atleast.”

He gets up from the campfire and makes his way into the forest but stops just outside it and puts his hand upon a tree.

He looks like he does have an answer to stop all of this, but I wasn’t sure if it was a good one. He still looks like he's processing everything. His hulking form is.. just.. still.. downright terrifying. Even despite the more light of his morality he’s relayed to me. Bending in shapes that were abnormal and awkward postures, it was like looking at yourself in a mirror in a darker room, some scary shape that somewhat felt like you but wasn’t. Like he was one of God’s mistakes, and he didn’t relent on that theory either. It didn’t help that he seemed encased by his shadow, even when he was by the fire; darkness presided over him. It enveloped him. The only thing that seemed to allow him still to walk was in the strength of the regard of that shadow, and his longing from it, like he was just waiting to die. Longing and waiting for some answer to fall into his lap, and he would tend the garden of his disposal until it did.

It seemed that was his only purpose left in life. Consumed by whether or not he was good, or he was bad, or consumed by the failures of his past. But he doesn’t wear his tragedy like clothes, he doesn’t wear the pain of it at all. He spoke his stories in nothing more than unemotional fact, surrounded by that void. There was still some of him left, if he did not feed off of that darkness, or rather that it stopped feeding off of him. He is above it all, above all of that. And I am unsure if that’s the place he should be or not, I hated seeing it envelop him.

..

I didn’t doubt a single word he had said about any of it: The hatred. The betrayal. The love. The loss. Ashtail. His people. Their enslavement, the proliferation of their imprisonment. Being enslaved by whatever that horror’s bewitching tides were and the mesmerizing languishes or its erasure elation- the act of acquirement, his madness. All of it was exactly as he said it.

Maybe he was still affected by all of that and he didn’t know because he or the shadow hid it. But surely what he did know was the fact it all happened and he said it in that fact as well. There was no denial of that. I wasn’t sure how he truly felt about it all, only what I could see in him, and it was tough making it out through the void.

But he could rip me in half giving less power than I could in opening a letter. But he didn’t, he needed me for some reason. Or maybe he didn’t want to kill anyone else anymore, but I feared that there was a chance he might. Myself or another ? It did not matter in the case of him getting rid of the parasite on him. For someone who has been in that same predicament for longer than I should have, I get why he would still be unsure and be angry. But it grows tiring and it hurts being that angry or being that sad for so long, especially alone. To allow yourself to fill that emptiness with things you think fill it but don’t actually.

But it was good he was finally asking those right questions, enough where he didn’t kill me to start and even saved me. There was always the chance of seeing the cub in him again.

I’d been dealing with something similar since I was a kid. It was more than half the reason I was here in Journey now.. Maybe we both needed an escape from that pain - I did it by running away, he did it that way. Maybe that’s why we ended up here together to end with. To both find the answer we didn’t know we were looking for.

-

He had been slowly feeling the forest around, bark like the wrinkles of a beautiful old soul, grass like the hair of a newborn child, the ground in the forest he had always lived in, everything around, while I thought about what he was thinking or what he was feeling. But he begins to walk (and he does so slowly) with weight deeper into the forest, but like he was the night itself. Fine with the breeze, deeper into the forest. The shadowy weight failed to catch up to him as he strolled and followed the white root in the ground to where he had chased me upon our first contact, and I felt a glimmer of hope. At peace, even if a new-man with a gun was behind him, could destroy what was left of his people.. Maybe this was his unconscious goodbye. To that pain, or of what was left of his broken home, or that he trusted me that much. All were good answers, but he acted like there still is something left to do to help it from ever happening again, one last act of renewal.

I got up and jogged over to catch up next to him.

-

“So what are we going to do ?”

He walks steadily, not startled that I ran up behind him.

“I’ll show you when we arrive at the Glade.”

I stopped in my jog to think. He walks a couple steps but then stops too, looking back at me deep in thought.

Egh..

“Do you feel like.. whatever we are about to do will truly help you?”

“What do you mean Ethan ?”

“It.. it just seems like us knights have spread so far here, for so many different reasons, and this was the new land for us- the land of new beginnings or new adventure, something that was unknown that could be ours. And most if not all of us did not know what was truly happening here.. If we go and stop any more of my people, how do we know who is good or bad ?”

He looks at me wondering if I judge him like I had before, but he wants to listen,

“What if we are doing this for the wrong reasons ? Like us knights had before ? Wouldn’t it be better to let this all go away, and leave yourself ? To let go of all of this and find a new place to live ? Maybe even turn yourself in ? I could vie for your position, and help them understand what we are actually doing here, and there are definitely some good people here that could help you, and maybe we could actually live together in peace, and stop the harm that we are doing to the forest with our production of the brightbulbs.. I don’t know if I could be with you if you ran off into the wilderness so to speak, but maybe you’d find more peace than killing anybody else.”

… Silence.

“I don’t mean it to come off wrong, but what if even if your intentions are good, they are being misled ? I fear you are to kill someone else when that might not be the correct answer here for you, it seems you are only holding on to your own suffering by doing that,”

I don’t want to make him angry,

“When I came here, one of the most beautiful things I saw at first were those lights made of glass. Most of the populace here, or back home, don’t even know the sinister backbone of what those truly are. They find purpose in it. Beauty. Like I did. I guess I don’t necessarily see that anymore but, I don’t know.”

I don’t want to make him sad either,

“Knowing what I know now, I don’t know if I could ever see it the same way, but will that make beauty go away entirely ?.. What’s the right answer here ? Will we be taking away the ones who do not know’s love for those things ? What if it’s their entire life’s purpose ? Would that destroy them from the long here-and-after ? Through their guilt, or new aimlessness ? I’ve seen people see such beauty in those bulbs, it would destroy them. But maybe.. I don’t know,”

He thankfully still is listening,

“All I’m saying is, you didn’t kill me for a reason. I’m just trying to figure out why.”

His face and eyes move with a mixed emotion,

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t do what we are about to do.. Because I trust you know the right way - I’m just saying we have to do this with the right purposes or else it will all be for nothing. Maybe even put us in a place worse than before.”

I don’t want him to carry that shadow any longer. He doesn’t deserve it. No one does,

“I was put here at this exact moment to be here for you Starseeker, I know it. So I will support you however I can. I know that beauty within those lights that I felt is exactly as you felt with your people, as I felt in your glades - as I feel at home.”

I don’t know if he would trust me enough for this to come off right, but I risked it,

“To lose something like that, it’s the worst thing imaginable..”

I’ve found the cub within him,

..But I was so turned around in the perspectives. Unsure of the truth, what would make amends for what we have done to them, how could he make amends for what he's done to our people. What was the right answer, the right compromise ?

Things like that have happened to me.. And I blamed so many different things for so, so very long, until I decided enough was enough- I took control of my life. But I never knew how to show people that way besides in themselves, and ultimately it was their decision. But there was the way in him that I see he wants to, in him now. But I knew I needed to say this, for his sake, because I’ve fought long and hard to this moment just to show a friend hope. I find his eyes,

“I feel the light in those bulbs has gone out in you Starseeker, and it is your responsibility to find it. To show us it again. To show us, to show us why you were named Starseeker to begin with. And lead us to the lights in the night sky. Don’t do whatever we are about to do in hate, for your people’s sake. And know we can always return home, somehow. Show us how.”

The cub fights hard within him, trying to make sure. But he relents and turns away and walks to the glade,

“Thank you, Ethan.”

It was his back that said it to me, but I knew he knew I was right.

..

We walk to the glade on the path of the glowing roots. Our illuminated feet seem to slowly fade the weight of the shadow that had enveloped him, fading into the root as he stepped.

It had caught up to him when we stopped, and it was still there, but it surrendered more and more to the great heart.

I could feel it fade into the great vine, spread out in the care of his ancestors.

He reaches the great heart itself, kneels down and puts his hand upon the grasses gently. The heart beats slow, calm. A deep pulse you'd have to focus to hear, the only sound of the forest around that was not faded. The light within the trees’ veins blink lightly into the forest around, breathing, beating, feeling his hand and his hand feeling it.

“I’ve done terrible, awful things Ethan. More than I have even shared with you.”

He puts his palm upon the ground. Expanding his body to the forest around, the trees were his limbs, the grass his strands of his hair, the heart his heart, the sky his soul, his mind, it was taking on his image more than him taking on it. His hand and the forest had no divide, and his pain was mine.

“I’ve done terrible, awful things to try to help my people, to save them, but I was still not enough, I had failed. It was my turning from the will of the forest that this was to occur. I should have trusted it from the start. Everything that has made my life and my tribe's life worse, or made me hurt, was from my rebellion against it.”

He holds still onto that shadow, that weight. Why?- I was not sure.

“Even as my people died, they danced. Even as Ashtail died, she told me that everything was going to be okay. I thought that was the new-men’s curse upon their heart, but maybe.. maybe not. Maybe that was the blessing that the forest put upon them so that they may find peace and freedom in their final moments.”

…

“You feel it Ethan, don’t you; the root, the great-heart; our connection to it.”

I said yes, I did.

“It is the very last one of the forest,”

He turns his head over to me slowly, bending down to touch the grass.

“It is the only place near where I can feel Ashtail, feel the slightest light of my people.. The forest is not some thing, some being misleading me. It’s my people. It’s Ashtail. It’s more than me, more than my feelings, more than what I could ever witness to begin with.. I am the one who betrayed my people by holding on to this pain for so long. I am the one who has been trapping them within the glass of my arrogance. It’s time for me to return to them and accept whatever they may find of me.”

He stands up quickly and bends his head over to look at me.

“You are right Ethan, I am the only one who holds my people down now. And the vine is of no use for our people now, it is time for our people to know the stars. And no matter what happens, our people will always be free in the end; it is not up to me if I am to be with them or not, but I must be the one that chooses to let them go,”

He crouches back down and looks deeply within the heart again,

“You must go now. I must begin the preparations to absolve the heart. Both the new-men’s and my people’s.”

..

“..And my own.”

I feel a sense of confuddling with the wavering sight of the forest like heat.

“If you seek answers Ethan, follow the daylight moon until you arrive at the Glade of the Great Antlers. You will find me after.”

What time was it ? How long had we been discussing those stories ? It only felt like a night, but through the canopy of the forest I saw that it in fact was day, and there was the daylight moon.

“When you return, I will have returned to my people for my judgement, erasing all of the mistakes we as knights and natives have made.”

He turns his torso over to me and looks at me.

“If it were any different we could have lived together in harmony within the forest.. as the elders wanted, as Ashtail wanted. But it is too late for that now Ethan. Our people’s harmony shall be made in constellation, not of earthly things.”

“Maybe.. Maybe there is still a way for that without such harshities, from what it sounds like you're about to die..”

He looks into the light of the intense white light of the great heart, looking if there were any more answers in it.

I didn’t want to take this away from him, whatever all this meant, I was just coping with what I thought he was about to do, that I had just made this new friend, and was about to lose him.

“No matter the truth of that, this is the way. I know it. The forest calls me to do this. This is why you were brought to me Ethan. I know it to be true. Your and my people have been imprisoned by me for too long. It is time. Thank you for making me see that.”

I wasn’t sure if that’s what I meant, but I trusted him. I trusted the forest’s way.

“Now, please leave me Ethan.”

“Good luck Starseeker.”

I walk toward the daylight moon, in the marks of the beginning twilight, wondering what the hell the answer he said would be there may be.

Chapter 37

Redemption of the Son

New Jericho is rubble and glass. The trees around are scorched black charcoal.

The former buildings and walls are mounds of black glass.

Rolling hills of scattered onyx with the shine of some hidden gravestone silver.

The scattered remains of men’s birthrights and the marks of ash from years ago.

A terrible graveyard. Our squad of men and dogs walk through it slowly, not saying a word, being within the silence of its tragedy.

We stopped at the center of the compound where there was a street.

“Well- um. We have information that one of our scouts is on base and should be topside in a few.”

I walked slowly away from the men as they offloaded their packs, clearing my mind, anything that wasn’t nothing. I searched around the grounds as if I was a depressed dog looking for a meal he didn’t want to find. I was looking for anything that resembled Sky’s silver.

…

I was informed that there were those beast people within the forest, like the note I had found in that gun, I just didn’t know we really worked close to any; especially any that seemed to be or act as military or knight as any other soldier.

The giant black antlered deercat collar and neck-tied scout goes over what happened to New Jericho:

The locals attacked the base, killed the handlers of the Mediodrakes on campus, causing chaos and ransacking the place, destroyed the manufacturing line of Brightbulbs while we tried to wrangle the drakes and were being slaughtered by them, but the Mediodrakes ended up laying havoc over the area killing everyone, Native and Knight alike, burning the area down to molten glass.. 

The Mediodrakes still had not been found and had probably disappeared deeper into the uncharted uninhabited parts of the forest and there weren’t enough men around to go searching for them and stay here anyway, they could fend for themselves anyway and there were more important things to handle unfortunately.

He shows us the main building they had attacked, a large warehouse where some of the Mediodrakes had been kept, now a large hump of black obsidian.

I see two brightbulbs nearby and as he explains more about the attack, I walk over to them and take them into my pack. Might be useful in the dark. I bend down slowly, and pick them up, putting them in my bag and, nearby, I see Sky’s silver upon the ground.

-

I crouch over slowly, as slow as I can so as to not disturb my shaking feelings, to always show my son strength, and crouch down next to it.

…

I overhear the informant telling us if he had gotten here any later their ‘connection’ to the forest would have delinked, whatever that means, and he says that he has felt the presence of one more of the local Natives that have survived, possibly the one who had incited the attacks to begin with.

-

He asks if anyone coming here has seen any clues of where he might have been, tracks, dead bodies, weird sounds in the night..

I stay silent, facing away from them from a distance, slowly and silently putting Sky’s silver in my pack. I stand, readjusting the trenchgun on my back, getting prepared for my trek.. No one says anything about clues they’ve seen.

But they do begin making plans of where to hunt and search for him, how many men, how many anything, and how.

All I can think of is that doe.

And that this is my mission to end.

Not theirs.

Chapter 38

The Great Heart.

Ashtail watches me from within the forest, near where the new-man has walked off to the other Glade.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for not killing him, Starseeker. This is the right thing to do.

Her voice echoes in my head.

He was unsure where his ancestors ended and where these demons, the new-man and him discussed, began. He knew what he had to do, but he was still scared. But he believed the new-man was right, he saw beauty in those lights, like home he had said, like the glades, were they truly trapped in them ?

At the time, it seemed so. I know they were trapped back then. But I am now the only one left trapping them.

But what did he know?

Enough.

He thought maybe the key wasn’t to destroy the palace of darkness he always found himself in or the new-men he believed had put him there, but to purify it with the soul of the forest.. What was it that Ablehand said before he had died ?

That Ashtail was freeing something. Maybe that was what she was doing, purifying that obsidian, allowing the souls to find freedom if not ..

Still, they were there, when they did not want to be.

He could never see the biggest picture.. But he was a force of it, so that was enough.

I was cut off from my ancestors, besides Ashtail. The being on the throne made sure of it, but he was part of the will of the forest too. I wasn’t sure if this palace was of the new-men’s designs or not now, but I did know they had to adhere to the forest's will, it was above them. Ashtail was here in his domain though, and could not speak what he did not allow her to speak about, therefore what the forest would not allow her as well.

I couldn’t ask her about any of this, I knew she couldn’t answer it. I would have to figure it out myself.

Are you sure you want to go along with this ?

I wasn't sure.

He stands over the great-heart, fearful. He wasn’t sure if they’d be together after this.

I have to. It’s what the forest wants of me. I know it. Even if I don't know what may come after it. I can’t let myself keep us all down, held here. I couldn’t keep us in the spot that false one had us before.

You still have a choice.

-

The stars above were plentiful. Every one of them had a purpose there. Shined in their own way. The constellations were merit for such of their ways. How I longed to be with my people..

I am.. so sorry Ashtail.

..

I don’t know how you all could forgive me for what I’ve done.

There was a way for peace. I just had not seen it. Please, everyone, forgive me for what I did not understand nor still understand.

He speaks to more than just his people.

There is always a way, Starseeker.

..

It’s okay.

Everyone misses you here.

We just want you home.

We all love you and we all forgive you.

Show us, show us how, Starseeker.

Ashtail..

No. Starseeker.

The spirit strengthens him.

Brands him in love.

Sears wavering heat of a clenched fist and a drop of his tear.

The Mark of Starseeker.

Chapter 39

The Long Gun

It takes awhile, but I find the doe. It’s been picked clean by vultures, or maybe that monster, but I know this is the place. Surely, that thing was around here. Whether or not he was the one who killed Sky, I didn’t care. If they could kill an entire outpost of men, they needed to die.

The shade of the trees here makes it darker, so I take out one of those brightbulbs I had found at the compound. I look near the corpse for any signs of where it could be and I find a set of large tracks going out from the body. I had not seen it before that night - If that mistake cost Sky his life, that he was out there in the forest that night, that he was the one who shot that gunshot, because maybe he got out when everyone else died and was surviving near Fort Worth, around here and maybe might still be out there.. but then the reality stabs me like a knife. He was already gone. What’s left of him was in my pack.

The footprints surely match one of these beast’s feet.

I hoof it as quiet as can be, following them, trenchgun unstrapped from my shoulder into the hand that did not hold my light.

…

I see it. Standing in the grass of a clearing with this weird pulsing white light within the trees and ground illuminating its despicable form.

Completely still.

On both of its hind legs.

Clenching its fists.

Just looking at the ground with closed eyes.

I maneuver my pack on my knees, cover the brightbulb into my pack, slowly stand up, and slowly take the trenchgun into my other hand, slowly, slowly.. deliberately.

I walk deliberately.. silently, placing my feet so as to not raise a sound, closer to it, pulling my gun up aiming straight to its head. I didn’t want to hate this thing, I didn’t want to kill it in anger, but nothing could stop me from being angry and hating this thing that caused my son to die. All those other sons to die too. Fathers. Brothers. Cousins. Friends.. I just needed to kill it fast, then leave. I could deal with the emotions another time.. For a second as I walked up closer, it almost did feel like it was praying.