Relias: Uprising (15 page)

 The entrance of the cave came up just before the edge of the cliff. Luke had made it so the hole was only big enough for him to get through and, even then, he covered the entrance with a boulder every night to ensure he wouldn’t be waking up in the middle of the night with something gnawing at his femur. And the entrance was done in such a way that by simply crawling out of the hole he was in perfect position to peak through the ferns growing on the edge of the cliff and have an invisible sniper perch with a complete view of the entire canyon . But that fact was irrelevant; when the Legionnaire showed up Luke would be working with his hands.

 So Luke sat back and waited. It was seldom that he went beyond those six to seven miles that his vision stretched and even when he did he always returned within thirty minutes. On these excursions away from camp Luke did one of several things: hunted for new food, scouted surrounding territory, and kept an eye out for possible Legionnaire encampments that might make his wait a lot shorter. By looking for white stabilized spots in his vision Luke hoped that he’d be able to more easily pin down where they might be. But there wasn’t a stabilizer as far as he could tell, so Luke continued to build up his reserves and patiently wait.

 This living in the wild was something that Luke had done many times before. However none of these times were quite the same scenario as the one he currently faced. Luke had discarded almost every major survival technique in order to get this kind of a position on the road. His nearest water source was five miles away and the herds of animals that he hunted were even further.  But on foot he was able to cover those distances in only a few minutes which, obviously, was well worth the sacrifice.

 It was loneliness, though, that became Luke’s only enemy. Lying in bed at night, no matter what things he tried to think about, Luke always found his mind wandering back to Tess and the Ditrinity. There was no way he could possibly know what was going on with the city. The city could be a pile of ash and rubble and Luke would be completely oblivious to the fact. The Legionnaire could’ve already taken the city back from the Darks and Luke would’ve spent all this time searching for them in vain. Hell, the war could be over and Luke would be out here in the wild painted up in mud like an insane savage for absolutely no reason. But the feelings he felt there in his cave were feelings that he was sure he’d purged for good a long time ago. So with these feelings of isolation being so vivid a sensation, Luke often clung to the one source of physical comfort he had which came in the form of a small, silvery pendant in the form of a Razorback.

 The cave was quiet; the muffled sounds of the forest were hushed, what little sound made it into the cave reverberated off the rough rocky walls and faded into the dark. Beneath the weight of several animal skins Luke would look at the dark ceiling, around the room, and the sensation of being back in prison was a vivid one while it was a strikingly similar situation. Luke was unable to interact with anybody; everybody he knew was either forced from his association or cheering for his death. It was isolation at its very finest.

 It didn’t take long before those idle nighttime moments came within Luke’s control. Examining his own physical characteristics Luke realized that it didn’t take an astrophysicist to gather the fact that he was an extremely tense individual. So, every night before he’d go to sleep Luke would practice various types of relaxation and eventually settled on simple meditation. At first it was hard controlling his mind and emotions to such a degree but Luke knew that he had never really tried to do so. When his thoughts led him to things that intensified his loneliness Luke, subconsciously, wished to feel that way. He despised the feelings he felt when he thought about Tess and the Ditrinity yet he found himself subconsciously thinking about those things and preventing himself from thinking about anything else though his conscious mind warred feebly against it. It took only a night for Luke to change that and only a week for him to gain a moderately well control over his thoughts. Soon he found relaxation in simply listening to the hushed sounds of the forest: the wind rustling the leaves and branches in the trees, the distant howling shrieks of some wild thing or the dull patter of rain as it dropped lazily from the sky. (Luke, of course, had to make certain waterproofing adjustments to his cave after stepping from bed into a foot of water after one nocturnal rainstorm.) Before long even the things that would have driven Luke mad became no more than a passing thought. But it would take an encounter with the Darks or the First Legionnaire to determine how far he had actually come. But the thoughts that came at night came
only
at night. During the day Luke had no time to think with the only thoughts that came to mind being those related to the impending passage of the First Legionnaire.

 Luke had done quite a bit of hunting. He had built up a very adequate supply of dried meat and animal skins, the skins then cut into sections and fashioned into water pouches. When he wasn’t busy stocking his food supply Luke practiced his fighting and further honed abilities he already had. Inside his cave he would sit in the center of the floor and meditate, extending his view as far into the future as he could. The further into the future he tried to peer to more hazy it became. (It started to become hazy after only a few hours and took exponentially more energy the further ahead he looked.) Many people who didn’t understand looking through time were under the impression that looking ahead only a few hours was a simple task. By all facts it wasn’t. When looking ahead in time it isn’t just one particular area that you are looking at. When reading time you’re dealing with every single event that occurs on an entire plane of space-time down to the last hatching beetle. With that many things to consider it proved impossible for most Durants to even look a few seconds into the future which, of course, was common practice for Luke. He had accustomed himself to looking no more than two seconds into the future on a regular basis, most often when he’s in a combat situation. Many people had wondered how it he seemed to know exactly what would happen before it did. More often than not he did. And the best part was, whether it was stabilized or not, Furo read the same either way. Luke could still look ahead in the presence of a stabilizer.

 There was one ability that Luke had never been able to grasp. Luke had mastered abilities that were far more difficult than telekinesis yet he still found it impossible to move even the smallest of objects. It started out as a small annoyance, but the more Luke failed at being able to exercise some form of telekinesis the more he found himself unable to focus on anything else. He began to put off hunting and collecting drinking water in favor of sitting cross legged on the floor of his cave and trying to move a small rock with his mind.

 He never got it. No matter how hard he tried or how hard he concentrated he found himself unable to use any form of telekinesis. When it came to using his other abilities Luke was able to just hold his hand out, think hard enough about doing it and make it happen. But that wasn’t the case with telekinesis, and it was keeping Luke from a lot of things, even sleep. And it was a new thing for Luke to experience. He’d lived his entire life and accepted his not being able to use telekinesis as a simple fact of life and it never bothered him until now.

 As time went by Luke’s daily routines became repetitive and monotonous. He’d wake up, work out for several hours, hunt and exercise his Elemental: creating small Grav-fields only strong enough to lightly counteract the moon’s gravity, blowing up rocks and stumps with Chargers, lifting enormous objects by channeling Furo through his muscles and everything else he was capable of. After cycling through all forms of Elemental he knew, barriers, fire, ice, plasma, and so on, Luke would then move on to increasing the speed at which he could use each ability in repetition. He’d fire off Chargers at a large number of predetermined targets. He’d rain plasma bolts from the sky in vast quantities until there were dozens of glowing white pinnacles striking down all around him with cracks and thunders that rolled across the valleys. Then, after practicing speed Luke would begin to work on the speed at which he could transition between abilities, sometimes creating several different forms of Elemental at once and getting them to work in conjunction with one another; for example creating a Grav-field that would pull him into the sky, creating a barrier that would protect him from imaginary enemy fire, incinerating the targets that he’d set up and hitting the ground on his feet with his sword at the ready. The more he practiced the more Elemental combinations he conceived, and the more combinations he conceived the more he would practice. And after several hours, he’d throw down a thirty to sixty thousand calorie Power Pack and continue. But there was still that nagging doubt in the back of his mind; he still couldn’t use telekinesis.

 One night Luke was in the same spot he’d been for nearly a day trying to move the same rock that had been resting in the same place since he began attempting telekinesis. He was so concentrated on it that he about missed the fact that an large group of objects were slowly walking into view.  Luke quickly put out the candle, grabbed his sword and moved to the entrance of the cave; they were Styklers.

  Silently crawling through the dirt Luke moved through the opening of the cave, getting his sword in front of him and getting into a defensive position. Without the rocky cave walls surrounding Luke was able to get a clearer image of the approaching animals.

 Styklers were bipedal lizards standing around eight feet tall and twelve feet long, their backs covered in long, rigid spikes which, when trimmed, made it possible to mount saddles and supplies. Long, razor sharp spines came out from the tops of their heads which curved down the back of their necks like a lethal mane, running down their arms, tails, and the front parts of their legs. Walking upon large muscular legs their strides were long, smooth and calculated. Their heads bobbed gently as they walked and their eyes had a greenish glow in the darkened night.

 There were twenty of them making their way through the trees peering back and forth; Styklers lived in packs which never dwindled below five per pack while there were records of Styklers travelling in herds though that was extremely uncommon. Styklers were ferocious animals, extremely dangerous and short-tempered. Paradoxically they were also very social creatures, very attached, and very smart. They were fiercely loyal to those who lived within their packs, not to mention violently territorial. It was that reason that kept Luke in his cave. They posed no physical danger to Luke; he would have no problem dispatching them if it came to it. But they had no idea the kind of threat that Luke would present and would attack him en masse if they knew he was there. They were amazing animals, lethal, cunning and they had no reason to die. But it wasn’t their territory that had brought them here.

 Luke had stockpiled all of his animal meats in a broad thicket on a downward sloping area in a group of trees and the Styklers had picked up the scent. Their noses were in the air, sniffing every which way and slowly converging on the spot where the meat had been hidden.

 Luke cursed himself. That was every last bit of meat that he had saved and was the culmination of his food gathering efforts. He’d have to start over from scratch and now he’d have to deal with a large pack of Styklers which would no doubt make this their new territory due to the fact that they had found free food here, pre-cut and prepared for them. So Luke lay there, telling himself that there was a possibility that they would miss the meat entirely and move on. But it was only a few minutes before they had circled the meat cache entirely and slowly bore down upon it. Then, it looked like one of the Styklers- the large alpha male- had zoned in on the exact spot where the meat was hidden. Its head snapped in the direction and it froze. It made several high clicks in its mouth and the other Styklers turned towards the exact spot where he was looking. Luke cursed again and watched the Styklers immediately dash towards the spot with their razor sharp teeth bore.

 They ripped the thicket to shreds. Leaves, sticks and dirt were tossed in the air as they devoured the meat that was stored there. The alpha-male waited until the other Styklers had had a chance at the food. Then, seeing that there was just enough for him he moved in. The other Styklers moved back without defiance and let him eat.

 Though he was angry at himself for making such a stupid mistake, Luke admired the creatures. He had always had a liking for creatures such as Styklers and Razorbacks; many people preferred more benign creatures such as Quos, which were large, fat lizards used most often as livestock. Styklers had a certain grace to them, the way they walked, ran, communicated, even ate. Their brown, rough skin even had a luster to it that intrigued Luke. There was a certain majestic quality about animals whose speed and relative strength were unmatched, though also possessed the ability for self-control; being able to harness that aggression and use it to construct, to improve. They were wild animals yet they possessed a humanity that most humans lacked.

 The first order of business the next day was, naturally, to dig out a small alcove in the cave where Luke would then store his meat in lieu of a surface storage. After clearing the rubble from inside the cave Luke went about collecting the supplies to fill the newly created space.

 He travelled about ten miles to a large sunny green meadow. (At that point Luke wasn’t too concerned about missing the Legionnaire. He’d check back on the spot periodically.) Crouching in the brush Luke peered out across the rolling, flowery meadow and saw a herd of grazing Quos.

 They were massive lizards, fat, meaty, and round. Looking at a Quo one would think that there was nothing wrong with the world. They were peaceful creatures, not at all like Styklers. Slowly they’d trudge through the field, quietly chewing away at the grass and flowers that they took in, flapping their proportionately small wings to swat the bugs away that buzzed all around them. Then, in various spots around some of the larger females there were disturbances in the tall grass. Every so often a fat, chubby infant Quo which looked on the verge of bursting would bound above the grass chasing the winged bugs that their parents found to be so annoying. They’d flap their wings, stay aloft for a second or two before their strength gave way and they fell back to the ground where they’d continue their chase. A couple of other baby Quos tumbled in the grass, playfully wrestling with one another and making high grunting noises which Luke assumed was the Quo equivalent of laughter.