River’s End ch 51: A Battlefield Forevermore

I wanted to be invisible, to be as small as the petals of my wishes.

That wasn’t an option, but it was a useful feeling. I twisted the emotion and sighed it out into the room as a need to leave this place.

Closest to me since I was on her face, the giapro mother was the first to act. Pivoting toward the shattered wall, she lumbered back over the debris. Mud bricks cracked beneath her weight as we burst beyond the dust. Harsh sunlight greeted us, and I squinted into the splintered wall in our wake. More giapro dashed through the hole, following their matriarch.

I scrambled onto the top of her head and hunkered between her crown of feathers, though my shoulder, arm, and side protested the effort.

Clay huts crumbled at the touch of a giapro’s tail. Booths flipped, and fires escaped their rings. The brave ran toward us, the wise fled, and the helpless screamed. Chaos still played her game. Smoke and dust stung my eyes.

Leave, now.

The giapro ran. If it was because she received my wish or some other reason, I had no way of knowing, but relief filled me. The wind stroked my cheeks, carrying away my tears. The ground shook with every step, and more structures collapsed, but at least we would be gone soon. The small pack followed their mother, heedless of whatever lay in their way. I cringed as one crashed through what was probably a home.

I didn’t care about these people, I told myself. Why should I? Just a few moments ago, they tried to eat me, and I didn’t doubt they would try again once this bigger problem had passed.

‘You care,’ Alaysq said, ‘because they are useful.’

‘Here I thought you would tell me that I care about living people because deep down I’m a good person.’

‘Deep down, you are curious. I can feel it humming like a plucked string. You want to see what all this eteriq has done, and you do not want it to be easily erased because that reminds you how transient your own legacy is.’

‘Sure it’s not just indigestion?’ I stared at the churning cloud of our wake, watching the distance grow between the last giapro’s tail and the edge of the village.

‘Let yourself accept that you are a hero. Come back now.’

‘No.’

One, this animal ran very fast, this planet’s gravity was strong, and I wasn’t willing to bet I would survive an attempt to disembark right now.

Two, no matter what she claimed or believed, I was not Alaysq’s pet. I had wanted to escape her and the River’s End, and now I had. This situation wasn’t ideal, but if this world had one village, surely it had another, and perhaps there I could find the help I needed. I could message home.

‘Do not be an idiot. You are riding off into a barren desert on the backs of vicious carnivores.’

‘I’m riding on the head of one, actually,’ I countered, ‘and there must be something out here or they wouldn’t be going.’

‘Return, Rose.’ A lightless cloud grew in my mind. It smothered inner me, covering her in an inky web. The vast space inside me filled, and Alaysq erupted beyond it, ilk-like fingers slithering through my veins. With no command from me, my right hand released its grip on the feathers.

Inner me thrashed.

My left hand started to unfurl.

I managed to free my face from her web and sunk my teeth into the mess on my left arm.

‘I. Am. Not. Yours!’ I growled, tearing off chunks of black web with every word. ‘You. Don’t. Belong. Here.’

Both hands free, I yanked at the tethers, pulling them out of my sky. They fell like severed ropes, and when they were all down, writhing like worms on the surface of my lake, I stomped on them, shoving them below the water.

As the last one dropped into darkness, I stood there shaking. Both within myself and in reality, I collapsed.

At least the feathers atop this creature’s head were softer than those flowing out of her cheeks. They played with the light, winking between blue and purple. Spots lined their tips like myriads of golden eyes.

Fluffy down nestled between and beneath longer, thicker strands, pale and much of it loose, threatening to choke me as I panted. It felt as if my insides had been gouged out. I was a husk, a statue fallen in an ancient ruin stuck staring at the heavens.

A sun occupied the middle of the scene above, strong but small and cold. A crimson halo surrounded it. As it stretched to cover the world, the sky faded to pink, purple, then blue. Stars and moons peeked through the gradient.

Moons. Like the sky of my home. It should have been comforting. At least I knew the night would not be dark. But it was still an alien sight. I knew none of these satellites, and it reminded me just how little I knew of this world. How long would the night last? How long before night even fell?

As if I didn’t have enough to process. Another person, someone I barely knew and definitely didn’t trust, had controlled my limbs. Worse yet, I might have made him do it. I had drawn on his energy; that was typical for a vedia. But I had taken too much. Because I didn’t know how to stop. Because I was scared and couldn’t defend myself, I had nearly killed him.

What would have happened had Ishiyae’s body died? Would the part of his mind trapped within me have been stuck there forever? Would I have been able to assimilate his grace and agility? Would he be more cooperative without a body to return to, or would we constantly war within me, my mind a battlefield forevermore?

Finally, I was able to turn my head. Scarlet dunes extended in all directions, giving way to deep blue mountains far off on the right. Some of the sand hills hosted scraggily trees. Their leathery trunks rippled in the wind like hollow sacks, and I suspected they were carnivorous flora. The most robust seemed the least friendly, coated in neon spikes.

Was everything on this world designed to kill? Why would Alaysq bring me here?

With some hybrid of a growl and scream, I flopped back on the giapro’s head. “What was your plan? Try checking if their prophecy ends with the chosen one getting eaten before you try to pass me off as that.”

‘Pompous of you to think you’re their chosen one.’

I sat up quickly, but of course Ishiyae wasn’t there, just his voice in my head.

‘I don’t think I’m their chosen one. If you’re going to spy on me, at least be accurate.’

‘I’m not spying on you. You’re a noisy distraction, and I wish you’d get out of my head already.’

This was the second time he had expressed that this mental space we shared was his, but to me, it felt like he had invaded my mind. Maybe this worked like a transmission, like how I could see someone across the universe, but they had not physically traveled anywhere. He saw me in his mind, and I saw him in mine.

It felt like more than a simple projection, however. What if this bond had erased the line between my mind and his and they were one space now?

These thoughts made my brain hurt, and apparently it was contagious.

Ishiyae’s voice boomed in my head. ‘Whatever you’re doing, stop.’

‘To stop thinking is to be dead, idiot.’

‘Oh look, the rock calls the soil hard.’

The insult stung. He was right. I was an idiot. I didn’t know half the things I should. I was a sarquant. I was supposed to at least be able to act like I knew everything.

I was tired and done, not just physically. My brain throbbed. Staring up at the crimson sky, I folded my arms over my forehead and tried not to think about anything. I didn’t want to fight anymore. If Ishiyae was stuck in my head—against both our wishes—then I didn’t want to war with him all the time.

How could I make peace? I didn’t like Ishiyae. He had done horrible things to Hent and the other Grenswa-nas. He was a villain.

Yet, he had saved me.

Once, I had asked Dollii, “How do you always smile like you’re eating candy even when someone’s being mean to you?”

“I look for at least one inkling of light struggling in the darkness,” she had told me, “one thing that proves they aren’t all bad.”

Ishiyae wasn’t all bad, and I didn’t want to believe he was. He was Fredo’s family, and something horrible had happened to them both. From another point of view, he was amazing. He had survived the same disaster Fredo had despite the injury that had scarred his face. How well could his discolored left eye see?

He had grown among Shlykrii-nas, deprived of the comfort of Seallaii-na company other than the evil Alaysq. The Shlykrii-nas saw him as a mighty warrior, something I had witnessed closer than first hand. He had fought through me.

I doubted even Fredo could have beaten him in a fight. I couldn’t afford him as an enemy.

Determined to say something nice to him, I closed my eyes. ‘Thank you.’

Ishiyae recoiled, squeezing himself into a corner of our shared mind space. I stepped closer to him, hands wringing each other.

‘I admire how you move. It’s like gravity—confident, inescapable, the focal piece of any scene.’

He remained still, spine to me, shoulders hunched, but there was a slight change in the angle of his head. Beneath his plethora of tiny red braids, his elongated ear pointed toward me.

I continued, ‘Bravery etches your every line when it matters most. I felt your fear, but you didn’t let it bind you, and as someone who’s been no stranger to terrifying experiences of late, I think that’s amazing.’

He grunted. ‘You hid like a booger in the giapro’s nose.’

I tried not to frown. ‘If I could learn to move like you, maybe I could save myself sometimes instead of always having to rely on others.’

‘That’s quite the ambition.’ He swiveled toward me, ears adjusting to remain angled in my direction. I marveled at how Shlykrii-na they looked and wondered how they got that way.

As I had discussed with Hent, a Seallaii-na would grow toward his own ideal of beauty, and if that happened to be Shlykrii-na ears and fangs, I hadn’t doubted the possibility, just the probability. To manifest such a drastic physical change, Ishiyae must have wanted to fit in with the Shlykrii-nas from a very young age.

Was it only a desire to fit in, or did he truly wish he was Shlykrii-na?

I bit my lip. ‘Do you resent what you are?’

I felt him unwrap the question and examine all its sides. I wasn’t even sure what all I meant by it. Did he not want to be Seallaii-na? I highly doubted he wanted to be a vedia. Did he wish he hadn’t grown up in such trying circumstances?

My ride’s head inclined, and I slid forward. My feet splashed into a tepid pond before I managed to grab enough feathers to stop my fall.

Scooping up a mouthful of water, the mother giapro threw her head back to swallow it. I flipped, palms burning as the plumes pulled through my hands. When gravity reversed again, my grip was useless, and I dove.

Before resurfacing, I swam to the center of the deep oasis in case any of the giapro thought about plucking me out for a meal. They couldn’t reach me here, not unless they dove in themselves.

Ishiyae laughed, and I stiffened. It was too similar to Fredo’s laugh, but I wouldn’t tell him that. I wouldn’t tell him anything about Fredo, not until he earned it.

But should I tell Fredo about Ishiyae?

I worried that Fredo would want to meet him, and it wasn’t my right to deny him that, even if that meeting would have to take place in my head.

I’ve always told Fredo everything, and he’s never let me down. I shouldn’t keep this from him.

Floating on my back in the middle of the pond, I stretched toward the corner of my mindscape where he belonged. The area was dark and static like an abandoned house. I tiptoed through it, pressing into the fog.

Something called to me, a distant echo. A scene flashed—a purple-haired girl with her hands pressed against a clear wall. I blinked, trying to understand, to get it back, to see more, but whatever it was seemed to have moved, beckoning me to follow.

In my mind’s dark space, I took another step.

A strong hand gripped my wrist. ‘Don’t.’

‘Do you know what it is, Ishiyae?’

‘I’ve encountered them on that planet and’—he adjusted his grip on my arm—‘on a certain ship.’

‘A ship besides the River’s End?’ I pushed as notions he didn’t want me to see leaked into the open. A sizable, beaten vehicle held captive in the bowels of the ark ship. Hours spent fixing it with the goal of freedom, the intent to run away.

The memories were old, the hands in them tiny.

Knowledge is a weapon. The more I know about Ishiyae and the River’s End, the more equipped I am to deal with them.

Ignorance is also a weapon.

Determining not to let him know what I had seen, I turned from Ishiyae and strode further into the darkness. Like a post in the ground, he stayed put. His arm acted like a chain, stopping me.

‘Pay attention to your surroundings in the real world. You’re drowning.’

No, I wasn’t. I was underwater, but I had plenty of air left. The call came from somewhere below me, and judging from the current, this wasn’t a normal pond. Like a fountain, it drained and was refilled continuously. I allowed that pull to drag me deeper, closer to the call. Without words or sound, it promised answers. It said there was more to see beneath this oasis.

Ishiyae kept protesting, but I ignored him.

The deeper I ventured, the more the water squeezed me. My ears popped. My lungs felt like prunes. Just as I burned through my last drop of air, a hole in the floor sucked me in.

My ears rang and my stomach churned as gravity rebelled. In a cylindrical, stone passage, the water separated into spheres. I spun among them, weightless for only a moment.

The spheres knew where to go, each lining up to rain upon the start of a plant-lined creek. I plopped down onto a mortared path, doing my best to land on my feet, but my momentum was too much. I rocked back onto my behind.

I saw two versions of the same room. In one, sunlight formed dusty rays, angled in through windows overgrown with vines.

In the other, bulbs illuminated everything, the vines had not yet grown beyond their pots, and a girl not much older than me stared out a glass wall.

“I want to go outside,” she said, bouncing on her heels.

“Outside is not safe yet, Lily,” warned the one through whom I watched. “We have to give the terraforming plants time to do their jobs.”

“But that is precisely what I want to see, Wis,” Lily whined, face now pressed against the window. “I want to watch them transform the air and soil molecule by molecule, and I wish I did not have to have a microscope or a machine to tell me it is happening.”

Warmth filled my chest so full I couldn’t breathe. Whoever Wis was, she found this notion silly, but she loved Lily with all her heart.

Wis laughed. “Patience, little sister. Why don’t you pass the time refining the codes of those creatures you are working on?”

Lily turned, and as the light glistened in her magenta eyes, I gasped. Purple hair was typical of a vedia, but pink eyes, too? Was this the eteriq who designed this world? She was so young. She didn’t seem jaded at all, just curious and full of wide-eyed wonder.

Seeing her here, I couldn’t imagine she had created the Rablah-nas with any malice. The violent nature of this world seemed incongruous with this smiling girl.

As the memory faded, she grabbed a tablet and explained that a giapro would have teeth longer than I was tall. Did she not mean for them to be violent killers? But she had to have known they would be.

I sat down on the stone path and stared at where Lily had stood…how long ago? What was all of that?

‘It doesn’t have an official name because it’s not supposed to exist.’ Tears choked Ishiyae’s voice.

‘Any possessor of true wisdom doesn’t deny the existence of something just because it doesn’t fit with their beliefs,’ I argued.

‘It’s not supposed to exist because keilan are killed, and keilan are what make these. When something happens that means a lot to them, they leave behind a part of themselves that lures in those capable of forming bonds.’

My eyes widened, and I closed my hanging jaw. ‘Lures, as in, they’re a trap?’

‘I’ve encountered one that was. Alaysq had to break me out of it.’

Paranoid now, I raked my gaze over the ancient bushes and wild vines. They were similar to fruit-bearing flora that grew around my citadel, but life in a foreign environment had wrinkled their leaves and desaturated the deep blue they should have been. If berries had dangled from their branches, would I have been brave enough to try them?

My stomach was a hollow pit.

Crossing my arms over my torso as if that could mute its rumbles, I stood and cautiously picked my way over the giant roots that had all but demolished the stone path. The creeks formed a web, each strand too wide to leap across in this gravity, so I wove from one narrow bridge to the next, recognizing the staggered River Guardian layout.

‘Alaysq told me keilan are creatures of destruction, but I don’t believe it.’ Especially if Fredo was a keilan, but I wouldn’t give that reasoning to Ishiyae. ‘Wis loved her sister. You felt that, too, didn’t you?’

‘Lily was an eteriq. I think Wisteria was the only one who truly understood her.’ The thought was strained, like someone trying to speak past a lump in their throat.

I headed for a staircase at the far end of this atrium, hoping it was an exit. My body was sore and tired, but I bit my lip and pressed on. If as a toddler, Ishiyae could keep going even with half of his face covered in blood, if Fredo could keep running even when every inch of his skin burned, then what was wrong with me that I had to stop now?

I focused on my curiosity. ‘You seem attached to them. What are they to you?’

‘Wisteria and Lily were my sisters. I never met them outside these memory echoes, but...’

‘They’re your family,’ I supplied. ‘I don’t know my older sister well either, but I would do anything to have her notice me.’

I winced at the thought, recalling how that notion had been used against me. My love for Grenswa and my desire to be acknowledged by my sister had turned me into the perfect, ignorant tool.

‘I’d settle for having my family back, even if they hated me.’

As he again folded himself into his corner, a miniscule part in the furthest recesses of my mind said to tell him that Fredo lived, but the rest stomped it down. He hadn’t earned it yet, and besides, knowledge was leverage.

Another, larger part of me wished for a shortcut. Wouldn’t it be easier if Ishiyae moved for me?

This thought, too, was rejected. I wouldn’t do that to him, and I didn’t need it. I needed to be that agile myself. Ishiyae had given me the experience, a sliver of muscle memory, and that was more than enough charity. I needed to make that grace my own, and that would require practice. No shortcut.

Watching the placement of my steps, I tried rolling my stride as Ishiyae did, hips, knees, ankles, and toes bending in tandem. At first, the transition of my weight from one foot to another was a jerky hop, not a glide. I was not a river as I had fancied myself in the battle on Grenswa. I was a flame flickering in the wind. My shins and thighs scraped the roots’ rough wood, and I wondered why shorts were the fashion here when pants would have offered so much more protection.

At least the shoes were flexible, accepting of the movement I asked of them now.

Limbs shaking, I arrived at the stairs, and if I had thought myself tired before, I hadn’t yet attempted to go up on this world.

By the time I reached the top step, I could barely stand, but the slow pace had done me good. When every movement cost me this much strength, I took the time to make every one count, and the flow became rote, the seed of a habit.

Doing this once would not break a lifetime of being a klutz, but it was a start. When I was aware of how I fit into the space and all the things around me, my loose sleeves and thigh-length braid caught on fewer branches. My soft shoes made less noise on the cracked stone. Every part of me throbbed, drowning out the voices of my bitten shoulder, sprained forearm, and impaled side. Everything was a monotonous hum of pain; nothing stood out.

I was thoroughly exhausted as my hands pressed against the door beyond the stairs. It opened with a whine, and I stumbled through, greeted by a frigid wind. It swirled around an octagonal chamber, playing with heat waves rising off crimson sand.

The updraft was so strong, it nearly lifted my thick braid. The loose strands by my brow tore against the flower pieces holding them in place. Slender trees swayed to the same tuneless song, stretching through a crumbled ceiling. Their palm-like fronds sounded like a crowd of snapping fingers.

Yellow orbs clung to the crowns of these trees, and my eyes set on the ones the wind had knocked free. My knees pressed into the red sand as I pounced on a rolling fruit. It was as big as my head and almost as hard.

Its warmth and glow made me question if I should eat it, but that lasted for only as long as my hug took to crack its shell. Once its milky-sweet, cocos fragrance filled my nostrils, all other thoughts fled my mind. I would consume the drupe’s spongy flesh, glowing or not.

As its juice squelched all over me, I groaned in appreciation of its sweet spice. Lady Lokma would have denied knowing me for the mannerless way I devoured the food.

One fruit was more than enough to satisfy my hunger. Its heat spread through my limbs, and every part of me felt oddly weightless except my eyelids. Was it night yet?

I pushed my back against a trunk and declined into the soft sand, curling my knees to my chest. Home was so far away. The giapro, or at least some large beings that sounded like them, still splashed in the pond atop the dune. I couldn’t see them, but some small worry cried in the back of my brain, asking what would happen if one fell down here with me.

Despite the heat, I shivered. My breaths had jagged edges, and my heart was a stampede trapped in a cage, running, panicking, but unable to go anywhere, just like me.

Like a tumbleweed, I rolled onto my side, heavy eyes pointing to the heavens. Home lay somewhere out there, beyond the sight that stole my breath.

Tongues of liquid garnet licked the sky, eclipsing all hints of the tiny sun. I watched their lazy waltz in some mixed state of awe and terror. What was that? Would it try to kill me, too? How could I possibly fight a burning sky?

I wanted to go home. I didn’t think myself capable of missing it this much. I felt empty—as if my shell had exploded and my innermost essence was strewn across the expanse between stars, thin, gossamer, and growing less connected every moment. Yet at the same time, I felt smothered, like I slowly sunk in a pool of slime and nothing I could do would set me free.

Did Fredo feel the same, trapped on Grenswa? Did they treat him as an ally or a monster? Did he and the Grenswa-nas have a plan to rescue us? In which case, I was in the wrong place. If they made it to the River’s End and I wasn’t there…

A scene took shape. Fredo and a band of Grenswa-na warriors forced their way onto the ark ship in some dark corridor. Shlykrii-na soldiers waited for them, led by a masked Ishiyae.

Fredo wouldn’t win that battle, but if Ishiyae saw him, recognized him, what would he do?

That thought paused in my mind, just as gut-twisting as the homesickness. I doubted even Ishiyae knew the answer. He lived on a ship whose stated mission was to destroy what he was. Or what he should have been. Did Ishiyae even consider himself River Guardian?

In his own mind, was he even Seallaii-na?

Again, I pictured his elongated ears and misshapen teeth. Did Ishiyae think of himself as Shlykrii-na? Had he no loyalty left for Seallaii?

The moment Hent told him what I was replayed in my mind. Would Ishiyae have killed me had Alaysq not stopped him? How far would he go to feel like he was one of them?

My gaze slid to my juice-covered hands wrapped around my knees. Had I stayed longer on Grenswa, would I have grown scales of my own?

Something within me burned for that mistreated world. I wanted to protect it. I wanted justice for it, vengeance on any who possessed even a sliver of responsibility for that attack. That included Seallaii and my own sister.

I swallowed, and my saliva felt like gravel. If Ishiyae would fight for his lost Shlykrii-nas, I knew the feeling. I would fight for Grenswa, even if that pit me against my own people.

But if I was to be of any use, I needed to leave here, and to do that required a plan. To plan, I needed information. What supplies did I have to work with? What did I need to build a way back to those who needed me? Could I get those things here? Where was I likely to find them?

As I thought my way through these problems, my muscles loosened. I remained curled on my side, but my lax circle allowed me to sink into the embrace of the warm sand. My eyes half closed, and my breaths softened.

I no longer felt alone, and it took me more time than it should have to realize my thoughts were not my only company. And no, those trapped inside my mind and currently ignoring me didn’t count. The trees passed messages to one another via fine dust. I could see it only in my peripherals, a constantly moving blanket of faint sparkles.

It felt like home.

Charisma.

It wasn’t something I could have defined before leaving on this trip, but now that I had experienced being around others who didn’t exude our pheromones, it was noticeable. It was like sound had surrounded me all my life, and only after learning silence did I know what noise was. And it was loud.

It was a comfort.

But again, Hent’s words bled into my thoughts.

I’m being controlled, manipulated, used. This love’s a fake emotion your charisma’s makin’ me feel.

The charisma from these trees made me feel better. They made me feel safe, but it wasn’t true. I wasn’t safe lying among skinny trees in a desert on a world where it seemed everything was out to kill me. I only felt safe, but that safety was not a reality. The feeling had no basis, and neither did the infant happiness building off it.

It was an illusion, a manipulation.

You feel what you feel, I had told Hent. It isn’t anybody’s choice.

He had called it mind control, and here, knowing danger surrounded me but feeling safe for no good reason, I understood that. It wasn’t right. But was there anything I could do about it?

Continued in chapter 52: A Blade Formed of Ash and Ice

Thank you for reading!