Authors: Colleen Montague
Ca
lla’s gaze dropped to the ground. “Well, I—”
“What are you acting so ashamed about? I only said we have to move quickly; I said nothing about sacrificing conversation for it.”
Calla felt her cheeks burn as the blood rushed up to them.
“Why are you so embarrassed? It is not like you are telling me one of your most personal secrets or something. It is perfectly all right with me if you wish to talk—I
think it would help you relax some, make things easier for the both of us. Now please, before your curiosity make you implode or worse; I can tell you are anxious from it.”
Feeling a little more confident—though still afraid he would decline to answer if she asked the wrong question—she asked him about Mai, who she was beyond the Nymph and guide Ca
lla had known. Hiran told her more than she ever expected.
He had known Mai for around ten years, ever since he had gone to the city of Elenan as a child. He had been alone, and was shunned because he was a stranger to everyone and their ways. He had just decided to live in the woods, away from prying and scornful eyes, when he sat on the root of her tree—in truth, she had been in tree form after hearing him approach, and so he
actually sat on her foot. He had been so intimidated by her reaction—never mind the fact that a tree was spontaneously turning into a girl right in front of him—that he had taken off running without so much as a glance back.
Ca
lla couldn’t help but chuckle at the story.
Immediately afterwards
Hiran launched straight into stories of the two of them wasting time together: Mai made it a regular game to find out where he was hiding; after she got to know him some she played all kinds of tricks on him; and she would always manage to talk him into some adventure with her. Though he preferred his solitude he had to admit that the time he spent with her was quite enjoyable, yet he failed to understand why a Nymph would choose to be his companion when everyone else backed away as far as possible.
Hearing
Hiran’s stream of stories, Calla could only wish she had gotten to know that side of Mai.
The rest of the time the two spent in that dead space they talked about many different things to help keep their minds at ease
, everything but their present location and what was coming after them. But something in Calla’s mind told her not to ask Hiran too much about himself, like she knew it would somehow upset him. She was surprised that he didn’t ask about her life either, rousing her suspicions only a little. Despite this she chose not to press the issue, feeling that perhaps it was for his own reasons.
The clouds overhead never once yielded to let the sun through, nor did they part when night fell. Cal
la and Hiran stopped to rest only at night, when Hiran would stay up for hours keeping watch while Calla slept. After several nights like this the exhaustion started to show on his face and only grew worse with each passing day; Calla was so concerned he was hurting himself this way she took to walking next to him, ready to reach out and grab him if he suddenly fell over. He gave her an odd look at first but said nothing and just kept going, though it looked like he was forcing himself.
Ca
lla gave up counting the days as they walked, from a combination of losing count and the sense that they didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Everywhere she looked from one day to the next it was the same dead ground with the same cold air under the same clouded sky. She no longer felt the chill as she walked.
Her thoughts turned once more to home. The wasteland made her long for the rich green grass that was often left to grow tall, the trees and flowers that gave it life, even the voices that only she could hear. Here, there was
absolutely nothing.
She walked on feeling depressed, wishing she was back under the
warm midsummer sun playing wedding planner for Kira, planning a late spring wedding. Her mind was still wandering when a breath of warm air blew across her face. At first she failed to give it any real attention, thinking it was just born out of her wishes and memory, but as it continued to blow she eventually took notice of it. She blinked in surprise—it was actually warm, melting the icy feeling in her face. Still she thought it couldn’t be real, that was just her imagination fooling her senses. When she stopped she could still feel it, and finally realized it wasn’t a figment of her imagination after all.
“Can you feel it?”
Hiran asked, looking at her with tired eyes.
“Yes—it’s warm!” she replied happily.
She rubbed her hands along her upper arms to bring some feeling back to them.
“Then I am about to make you even happier.” He pointed ahead of them. Towards the horizon the cloud cover came to an abrupt stop, as though it had hit
an invisible wall. The gray earth also came to such a stop at around the same spot, though as it got closer to the horizon it changed from the flat, dead, dusty grassland to land dotted with dying trees and shrubs with the occasional skeletal remains of some creature half-buried in the dirt. Between dark sky and earth—based on what Calla could see—was a narrow ribbon of pale blue, standing out in sharp contrast.
Ca
lla’s heart felt lighter for the first time in weeks. “Please tell me that’s what I think it is,” she pleaded.
“It is.” Despite how weary he looked,
Hiran also seemed to perk up at the sight of what lay ahead. “The current boundary of these lands, and the edge of the Lady’s territory. Once we reach that side of the line we will be able to rest better than we have before now.” As he spoke he tried to stifle a yawn, but not very well. He rubbed at one eye with the heel of his hand.
“Are we almost there?”
Hiran straightened up again. “Indeed. I would guess that at our current pace we will get there by the end of the afternoon—”
He was cut off by a loud roar from somewhere behind them. Both turned around sharply, staring around wildly for the source of the noise. She couldn’t see anything, but Cal
la felt she knew what was coming.
She looked at
Hiran. “Let me guess,” she said, “our favorite lizard-men are right around the corner?”
“Far too close for comfort.”
Hiran was wide awake now, his eyes wide with fear. “A patrol this close to the Lady’s defenses…” His voice trailed off.
A tiny
, dark dot appeared on the horizon as they watched, then was quickly joined by others. A little closer to where the two of them stood, something large rose out of the ground. It was enough to start the adrenaline pumping through Calla’s body. “I may not be an expert on this, but I don’t think we have all afternoon anymore.”
“If that is not the truth, then I do not know what is. Run!” He grabbed her arm and pulled her after him as he ran towards the patch of bright light they had been staring at
a moment before. Calla didn’t need his encouragement, running as hard as she could to keep up with him.
The time they spent running seemed to last forever. They focused on reaching that spot on the horizon, never looking back. They didn’t need to do so to
know the pursuit was right behind them—each creature roared something to another, loud enough to be heard far away. But as she ran Calla realized the calls were getting even louder—the Brilken were gaining on them, to the point that she could just hear the sound of their oversized feet slamming into the earth over her labored breathing. They couldn’t reach that horizon soon enough.
The Brilken were practically on top of them when they reached the end of the
Dead Lands, which just stopped in a line of green, living grass. Calla and Hiran didn’t pause to take in details or to celebrate—they leaped over the remaining few feet of dust and landed in the living field and still didn’t stop running. The Brilken didn’t even acknowledge the change in the landscape, just charged right after them.
The muscles in Ca
lla’s legs were screaming from exhaustion and she began to tire. She just finished thinking she wouldn’t last much longer when she caught her foot on a protruding rock and fell to the ground. Hiran had sprinted farther ahead before he realized she wasn’t with him. He spun around on one foot and started running back to her, but he wasn’t going to make it in time. As Calla started to get up three of the Brilken were only a few feet away, reaching out towards her with their clawed hands. She shrieked in terror and threw her arms over her head to protect herself.
The first of the Brilken were so close they were snapping their jaws at the air over her head. Ca
lla braced for the end when the air around her began to move fast, and a noise of something rushing past her at a high speed filled her ears. An instant later she heard a loud crunch, followed immediately afterwards by a quick series of faint impacts before it grew quiet again. She lay huddled against the ground, curled up so tightly out of fear she didn’t notice the silence right away. Something hit her and she jumped in her place, her eyes snapping open as she looked up.
Just mere inches away from her own head was a Brilken’s snout, the jaws partially opened, dark blood dripping from them onto her arm. Terrified Ca
lla started crawling backwards, never taking her eyes off of it. It didn’t move, its orange eyes glazing over as it stared at where she had been. Drops of its blood hit the grass and started to smoke.
Fear gave way to confusion as Ca
lla stared at it.
Why did it stop?
she thought. No sooner was the thought completed that she saw why.
Spires
of rock had been forced through its torso and neck—from the ground.
Ca
lla rose unsteadily to her feet and looked around. The entire group of monsters had been impaled in a similar fashion—some of them multiple times—their bodies hanging limp, some of their limbs still twitching. Blood flowed out of the wounds and onto the ground by their feet, shriveling up the grass on contact.
The whole sight was taking a painfully long time to sink in for Cal
la. “What…happened?” she asked in a whisper.
Hiran
came up behind her, still breathing heavily from their race. “I think…your magic happened,” he said. “If my guess is right, your survival instinct seems to have awakened some of your innate talents. I think even Mai would have been impressed by such a display.”
There was a loud snapping noise—one of the Brilken was still alive, its arms and one leg speared by rocks.
Hiran didn’t hesitate, marching over to it while ignoring its deadly threats. As Calla watched, he swung his fist into the side of its head with such force he knocked it clean off; it bounced along the ground for some distance. “That was far too close,” he said as he turned back to her.
Cal
la sank back down to the ground, her whole body shaking. “Too close—far, far too close.”
The sun dropped down to the horizon, but Hiran didn’t want to rest yet. He felt they were still too close to the border and decided they should move at least a little further on before officially stopping for the night. He looked tired, but managed to make his attempted enthusiasm to continue at least sound convincing. Calla was still quite shaken from the close call with the Brilken and was in no hurry to move on; she would have preferred to rest first, and then continue. Hiran didn’t force her to walk. Instead he carried her in his arms, allowing her the chance to calm down while still enabling them to put distance behind them. Only a faint streak of daylight remained on the horizon when he finally decided to stop. Calla had managed to calm down some by then, and eagerly hopped out of his arms to save him from the risk of falling over with the effort of setting her feet back on the ground.
As she curled up on the soft cushions of grass, Cal
la couldn’t sleep right away, which was rather surprising after what happened to her just a few hours before. She rolled over onto her side to face Hiran, disappointed when she saw him still awake. He was sitting upright fairly close to her, his back to her, and gazed out across the starlit field.
At the rate he was going, he would end up killing himself from severe sleep deprivation
long before seeing her safely to her destination.
She sat up, supporting herself on one arm. “Shouldn’t you at least
consider
getting some sleep?” she asked.
He turned his head slightly in her direction.
“Others may come,” he replied, “more of Dranl’s creatures, or maybe something worse than them. Someone has to be able to defend us if that happens.”
Cal
la crawled over on all fours until to sit next to him. “You can’t keep pushing yourself like this. Sooner or later you will break.”
Even in the dim light of the stars the shadows that had grown under his eyes stood out. He shook his head like a child, but he was so tired the action almost made him fall over. “I will not rest until I see you safely to Elenan—if Mai were here she would
do the same thing.”
“I question that.” Ca
lla slapped him lightly on the back of his head. “I think she would be more disappointed—hell, probably irate—by you pushing yourself so far that your sanity starts to become questionable. Now please do yourself a favor and get some sleep.”