Everwinter: The Forerunner Archives (10 page)

"The Bleaklands are everywhere," Altair replies through tight lips. "They cover the entire world, Juno, but only in patches. There is not one definitive area
that one might call
the
Bleaklands. We’ve made it out of one patch, but there will be others."

"I see," I say, nodding. "You learn something new about the world
every day."

"You can say that again," Traylor agrees wholeheartedly.

"The iron lung will get us through the worst of it," Altair continues, "but we should get moving again. Those men do not have iron lungs, but it will not take them long to get around the Bleakpatch once they have recovered."

I sag visibly. "So they're not dead
, I take it?"

Altair shakes his head. "Only one me
t his end. They passed out once the air got too thin but, as I said, they will recover."

"Too bad," I grumble.

"Come on," Altair says, slipping the iron lung back into his pack. "Another day, maybe two, and we’ll be in the southern cities." With that, he disappears into the large crack in the wall, just wide enough to accommodate him. Traylor looks at me, shrugs, then follows suit. 

"I hate working with men," I say to myself, following Traylor into the crack. The shaft seems to stretch from the top of the cliff all the way to the bottom. Below me, Traylo
r and Altair are already down quite a ways, climbing the shaft as if it were a simple ladder. I mimic their movements and find the going fairly easy.

I look
up a final time. "How the hells did you guys get me down here anyway?" I call after them.

Altair just looks up at me and smiles.

12.

"What do you think it is?" I whisper, leaning again to peer around the rock.

"I am unsure," Altair replies, shifting his position slightly. "We may be able to slip past them, but I fear what will happen if we are detected."
 

I sigh audibly. Nothing's ever easy anymore.

We're finally coming to the end of the canyon.

After following the stream at the bottom for over a day, the rocky, sentinel pine cover
ed faces of the canyon slowly gave way to scrub and stunted bushes. The air is getting warmer, the canyon walls now built of layered strata rather than solid blocks. The change happened quickly.

The deserts of the south are not far off now.

"What if we just
blended
in with them, you know?" Traylor speaks up for the first time.

I eyeball my little brother incredulously. "That'd probably be suicide, buddy," I reply in earnest. "These people could be Children of Mutanity." I pause and stare at the gathered mass at the mouth of the canyon. It can't be coincidence that t
hey're camped out here. The canyon is the most direct route south from Krakelyn. Travelers
have
to come this way unless they want to pass over the Spine of the World, which takes weeks longer. "They don't seem like Children though, do they?" I add.

The little and only experience I've had with the Children of Mutanity hadn't been a positive one. Brainwashed, bloodt
hirsty savages, people who can't handle the fact that their gods had turned their backs on them. They've been living a lie their whole lives. Well, we all have. The difference is, I never believed in their gods in the first place. I can't imagine the Children holding a silent vigil in support of their cause, as the people camped out before us seem to be doing. The Children use fear to rein in their masses, and fear is seldom silent.

With a gasp, I suddenly realize what this gathering is. There's a lone spire standing near the mouth of the canyon and the people, a few hundred of them, are gathered
right around it. I very much want to go down there and join them.

I elbow Traylor. "What do you think?" I ask, keeping my eyes on the crowd.

Traylor shrugs. "I dunno," he answers truthfully. "Maybe it’s–"

"Traylor!" I interrupt, nearly yelling. "There's a spider on your foot!" Traylor squeals instantly, bolting from our hiding spot behind an irregular boulder. Traylor
hates
spiders.

Too bad there isn't actually one there.

Altair curses at me, going after Traylor. 

Smiling, I use the opportunity to slip away, casually, headed straight for the gathering up ahead.

13.

I've got my hood pulled up all the way, obscuring most of my face, and I'm not the only one disguised in such a way. Plenty of others at the vigil are covered up. Though from what I can see of them–hands, chins–their skin is blemished and pockmarked. 

Mutated
.

I suddenly feel naked, but I'm already at the cent
er of the throng and no one has given me a second glance. I gently push my way to the freestanding rock spire around which everyone is grouped, finally discovering the truth of this silent vigil.

It's
a vigil for the dead, for a world that no longer exists.

Around the fifty foot base of the spire, laid out with care, are flowers, wreaths, incense, and burning candles. Above these offerings, either carved into the rock or scrawled with chalk,
is the names of hundreds of people–dead people–along with messages from their loved ones. 

"Why would the gods do this to us?" I hear a voice ask in despair. "Thou shalt not suffer a mu
tant to live... Ha!" A woman has just finished scrawling a name onto the spire, crying. "If the gods
wanted
us to kill ourselves as these people did," the woman gestures to the spire, "then why make us do it ourselves? They
know
the stubborn nature of humanity." She points theatrically to the heavens. "I won't do your dirty work for you! You hear me?" She yells it, but the crowd only murmurs, falling back into their self-deprecating stupor.

With a gasp, I realize that this
is a monument to those who had killed themselves in accordance with our religion, the True Body Plan, after the mutations occurred. 

Thou shalt not suffer a mutant to live.
 

These people killed themselves because of me
, I think, squeezing my eyes shut to hold back the tears. 

What would these people do right now if they knew the truth?

"It was all a lie," I say, surprising myself.

The pissed off woman whirls on me, her icy eyes seeming to bore a hole through my disguise
. "That's kind of what I was getting at with my little speech there," she snaps at me sarcastically.

I shake my head, realizing all eyes in the immediate vicinity are on me. "Uh, yeah, I know," I stammer. "I just... I meant that sometimes
it’s easier to believe a lie than to accept the truth. Religion is a form of control. Somebody in the distant past, probably one of the Forerunners, had a hate on for mutations and created a doctrine to reinforce that belief. Unfortunately, a lot of other people started believing it too."

The woman's face
appears to melt before my eyes–and not because it's covered in tumors. The scowl she’d formerly been wearing morphs into a mask of pure astonishment. Sometimes I forget that I'm not like ordinary people. I'm the High Deacon's daughter! And as such, I’m privy to just a little bit more of the inner workings of our religion than most. 

I forget that
sometimes.

"That," the woman manages to stammer from a slackly hanging jaw, "is
very
perceptive," she says. "One of the smartest things I think I've heard anyone mutter since the Final Judgment."

"Um, thanks," I say sheepishly.

The woman steps boldly toward me, hand outstretched. Her dark hair is falling out in patches. "I'm Bruna," she says as I take her hand timidly.

"June," I reply without thinking, modifying my real name slightly.

"Good to know you, June," Bruna returns in kind. She steps even closer, peering now directly into my dark hood. "You have the tune of a northerner in your accent," she says. "Are you from Krakelyn?"

I shift uneasily. "Near there," I reply, offering nothing further. Why is Bruna scrutinizing me so
much?

"There is no longer a need to hide your face, June. Here especially. Having said something so profound earlier, I am surprised
that you continue to do so. From your words, it is clear that you do not follow the old ways. Do you believe mutations to be an abomination?"

"No," I answer immediately, blunt and firm.

"Then, please, do not hide your face! It is so rare to find someone with such a high level of thinking. Think of the good you could do! If you were to preach your message about the faults of the True Body Plan, all the while keeping your face fully exposed, others might be inspired to abandon the old ways as well!"

Bruna stops talking, but I do not respond. I don't know how.

"Please, June," she says, "do not continue to perpetuate the lie. That is what got us in this mess to begin with!"

For the first time since meeting Bruna, I now notice the other people around me as we
ll. They are mostly silent, but as they were all enveloped in their own personal griefs earlier, now they are enveloped in me. Staring at me. Looking back at all those expectant faces, something inside me lets go. 

These people need me...

I reach up to the hem of my hood, letting the rough spun material glide gently over my fingers–

KRAKOOOOM!!

A whip crack of sound, all too familiar to me now, cuts through the silence like a diamond bore. Every eye at the vigil is drawn
to the source of the shot, where a now steady rumble similar to that of an oil-fired engine echoes toward us. Indeed, half a minute later, two yellow spinning lights, sitting atop two bizarre wheeled contraptions, appear through the leafless trees that line the road leading out of the canyon, headed straight for us. The vehicles are unlike any I'm accustomed to, but who knows what kind of Forerunner tech they've exhumed in the south? Father always says southerners are too lax when it comes to avoiding the old ways. The vehicles are identical, each with four wheels–two large ones at the back, two smaller ones at the front–green, tall, and fronted by a massive metal scoop which the pilots appear to be manipulating from the open cab behind it.

The fast traveling conveyances leave the road at the edge of the gathering, slowing not a bit, forcing the
revelers to leap out of the way, cursing and screaming. I'm on the other side of the pillar, but my outrage at this disturbance is equal to theirs. The machines force their way to the pillar, pulling directly up to the natural object and placing their scoops against it, one next to the other. The cab of each vehicle contains two people, and I stand on tip toe in the now surging throng to see one of them raise a hand, yelling something. The engines of the machines whine loudly and spew forth great billowing black clouds as their scoops are rammed full bore into the pillar. 

My first thought is that there is no way these
relatively small machines can topple such a massive natural feature. But within moments, it becomes clear that that is not the case. The rock near the base of the spire splits, then cracks, then topples over, sending more people trampling out of the way. It might have been my imagination, but I think I actually see someone try and push back against the other side of the pillar, trying to hold it up.

And then the person is gone.

With their cruel task over and done with, the four pilots of the two machines power down their engines, disembarking from their respective cabs. They're people, like any others I'd met in my life, three men and one woman, all covered in boils and tumors.

And they all carry shooting irons.
 

The largest man, carrying himself like a leader, leaps atop the remains of the toppled spire and raises his hands
to the sky like a preacher addressing a congregation.

"You people cling to the past!" the man announces without preamble. He gestures to the remains of the scrawled names on the rock. "You mourn for those that took their own lives when the gods turned their backs on us
, but you should be rejoicing! The weak have weeded themselves out! Thou shalt not suffer a mutant to live? Ha!" 

I get a cold sense of
déjà vu at this proclamation; Bruna and I lock eyes momentarily. This man is saying pretty much everything we’d talked about moments earlier.

"If the gods
truly
wished for a mutation free world, why would they create one that is full of them? Why not just start over? Why not destroy us? Such a thing makes little sense. No, what has become clear to us now, the Children of Mutanity, is not that we are being punished by the gods, but rewarded!"
I should have known that these psychos are Children
, I curse to myself. "The True Body Plan
is
mutations," the speaking man continues. "Brothers and sisters, it is our mission to ensure that the old world, the pure world, is left for dead, forgotten and buried. Thou shalt
only
suffer a mutant to live!"