Not alone

Loners are an extraordinary kind among the humans. Soldiers either live with the strength of their unit or die in service, they can’t make it by themselves. It takes a lot of strength and will to make through the demon lands alone and even the mightiest fall once they are overtaken by a horde. The scout was used to stay in the field without support during the recognition and only lived this far by avoiding combat and running away. Knowing that he had people to back him up gave him peace of mind, but this time he couldn’t rely on that thought.

Of all the places he could be left stranded, the barren was the most fortunate. The majority of the terrain was composed of dry soil and rock, with a couple of boulders in sight. Every now and them one would stumble upon a megalith tall enough to act as a watchtower, a natural refuge against the wicked for those who were capable of climbing. They wouldn’t protect one from sun or rain but given the circumstances it was the least of the boy’s concern.

He walked in the opposite direction to the marshlands, carving the rocks on the way to mark his path. There hasn’t been a single wicked on his way since he escaped the darkness. The boy stopped at the second obelisk and sat by the shade for a couple of minutes, regaining the energy he needed to reach the top. He slowly ascended the rock and laid flat on top of it, gazing upon the sky. For the first moment since that morning, he could rest and let his mind reflect upon the incident. He was soon consumed by sorrow as he resisted the brutal reality his friends chose.

The boy was still fresh within the unit but not to the point he wouldn’t notice signs. Nikolai was a man of prestigious lineage, Harriet shared a little of it as well, both took immense pride on their heritage to join the demons. At most, one could see sense if they were too exhausted from living on the edge, Harriet appeared to be from their last conversation, but neither the ranks had ever shown sign of weakness. Mikael said they the toll of losing their comrades was too high for them to bear and yet they’ll be forced use their skills to slay the soldiers that were to come. Could it be that they didn’t care about anyone outside the unit, not even their fellows from the settlement? The three were bold and strong, they seldom faced true peril in the battlefield. Even the weakest of their men were competent enough to carry their duty. The boy held all of them in high regards. With a cautious approach, the unit would certainly venture beyond the marshlands, and who knows how far they could have gotten. Were their bonds real or just a fleeting illusion forged in the harsh lands? And more importantly, were they even with humanity to start with or was this an elaborate ploy to associate with the wicked?

“What were they fighting for…?”

His thoughts were abruptly interrupted by his stomach. He turned his carrier upside down to empty it right away, causing a couple of bones to fall from the main compartment, followed by a dozen of scarabs as large as his fist. It was sufficient for him to go through the day and maybe even some leftovers for the morning. Unfortunately, he lacked the means to make fire - they were going to be eaten raw.

The boy took a beetle and detached each of their legs, one by one in a delicate gesture not to spill its juices. He repeated the process with the following bugs, collecting all of its legs in a bunch. Such monotonous work soothed his mind but only lasted about half his meal.

“I should save some for tomorrow…”, the boy spoke to himself, lifelessly staring at the half-eaten carcass

He proceeded to organize his carrier afterwards. The scarab legs were tied with some hair strands he plucked out of his head, right above the remaining bodies in the main compartment, and the bones were loaded at the harvest chamber. At that point in the day, the boy had relaxed beyond his wary state and, without a warning, he deflated onto the floor. The young man felt like his own life force abandoned him to meet his former comrades. In no time, his mind returned to the darkness, ruminating all of the events over and over, again and again, until it inevitably tired himself to sleep.

The boy had been exhausted to a point he would go over the night unconscious if undisturbed. A glacial drop of temperature occurred while he was asleep, waking him up as it headed towards its peak. He curled over and wrapped his mantle around his body as soon as he could but it still failed to protect him against the chills that crept over his skin, already on their way to find his bones. It reminded him of the encampments where he and his friends gathered around the fire by the end of the night, for a last warm up before sleep. The barren had never been that frigid, not even in the absence of fire. He got too absorbed in its own concerns to remember the rules of the demon lands, after all, they always grouped around the campfire to welcome them.

“Pay your due…”, a mysterious voice echoed in his head.

It was announcing its arrival. The colors started to dull and the atmosphere decreased to the freezing point. A slithering trail of glittering teal mist crawled to the top of the rock before the boy could notice, stabilizing into a vaguely human-like form. The collector in front of him was two or three times longer than a human but its limbs were thin and lengthy. It had an extensive tail at the end of its spine and a face composed exclusively of eye sockets and pointy ears, as broad as the creature’s head. The specter’s contours wavered as if they were made of fire. Their kin appeared in all sorts of shapes and grew in size and complexity the further one sneaked into the enemy territory, becoming pickier and greedier as well. This one presented itself on all fours, hunched broadly over the scout’s head within the perfect distance to pick any offered article by the boy and far enough to be outside his reach.

”Away!”, shouted the boy.

“Pay your due…”, the voice spoke in his mind.

The young man’s psyche was still disorganized, he instinctively grabbed the nearest pebble in hand and threw it at the specter’s shoulder. Its body was pierced by the rock as the object phased through it, just to be regenerated almost instantly.

“Your due…”, the voice reverberated louder as it approached the boy. Spikes grew in the creature’s spine, arms and legs, its fingers were reshaped into long claws and a mouth opening came to exist.

“All right! All right! I’ll pay it”, the boy extending his arm for the harvest compartment, removing all of the bones in his possession and putting them on the ground for display, “Take it!”

The collector steered its head towards the offering and tilted it left and right almost in a pendular motion. It pinched a piece of bone with the tip of its claws and twisted its head towards the sky, inserting the item in its eye socket in sequence. The matter vanished after entering the specter’s body, leaving no trace behind. It continued to consume the remaining parts until the last one was assimilated. The shade conducted its gaze back at the scout and continued.

“Not enough…”

“That’s all I have to offer you”, he defied.

“Pay your due…”, the voice pierced through the young man’s head.

“Bugs, do you want them?”, asked the boy as he dropped all of its carrier content in front of the collector.

It remained on guard, paying no interest to the critters before it, “Not enough…”

“Fine”, the scout argued, erratically removing his left shin guard and throwing it directly at the creature’s head, “Take this.”

The armor penetrated the ethereal body before being completely enveloped. Without a single word, the creature swirled back into a ghastly body and disappeared. The boy shivered inside his mantle for the rest of the night, captive by the sensation of an eternal frost surrounding him. “It’s not real, it can’t be. It’s not real, it can’t be…” He recited the mantra over the following hours, stopping only when his mind drained his last bit of energy. The young man spent the night terrorized by a varied array of nightmares reinventing the scenes from the previous day, lasting until the warmth of the first light woke him up. His first reaction was to check his surroundings, expecting to see the campsite and his friends walking as they got ready for the upcoming expedition. It was just him, with a dozen rocks and trees in the horizon, forgotten in the vast barren.

It was hard for him to recollect himself. “What would… What would Nikolai do…?”, he wondered. He tried to formulate a way back to the settlement. First, he had to obtain offerings to make it through the night. The chasm was filled with treasures at its bottom and it wouldn’t take much effort to fetch bone and metal for the next couple of days. Food was more complicated, he needed it for yesterday. Unfortunately all of his work was for naught. The boy didn’t store his goods after the specter left, by the morning half of his supplies were gone, taken by the winds. He didn’t had time to check for nests while they were heading to the marshlands. To make matters worse, he started to feel pain again.

“Better take it easy today...”

The boy got up and analyzed the perimeter. A few trees scattered around the northwest, accompanied by a multitude of medium stones. The ground was mostly uniform until the edge of the chasm, leading to the place were everything happened. A dozen of scattered wicked roamed by the south. Only a tree persisted at the rockiest soil between him and the next safe boulder. The east was mostly deserted, with one or two wicked within an hour distance, a little after the remains of a dead grove, and a megalith around their west. This last path was not only a significant detour but also a goal that distanced him from the chasm, and yet it was the most likely place to locate something edible.

After leaving the pillar, he directed himself to the crevice and checked its interior. It was fairly similar to what he recalled, generous unguarded stash, with the latest addition of a trail of blood from the previous day. The dry climate of that morning made the descent easier despite his body conditions. He fetched a few standalone pieces before stumbling into a full skeleton arm escaping from the soil. The boy squatted to grab its fingers, ready to pull the bones apart when he was suddenly interrupted.

“Always be cautious in these treacherous lands.”, said an old man’s voice.

Every fiber of his being stopped for the following seconds. He stood up in a flash and turned around in search of the speaker. There was no one there.

The young man followed the advice and continued his search for other materials. His curiosity led him to follow the crimson track. From the amount and size of the stains, it appeared to be the record of a gravely wounded soldier escape. After a minute or two of hiking, he spotted a pair of wicked laid at the floor, completely immobile. His heart skipped a beat with the sighting but it wasn’t hard to conclude that they had been neutralized. The remnants of his fallen enemies kept increasing, to a point they coated all of the floor.

“So here is where it happened…”, said the boy as he recognized a large human hand under a stack of bones, with worn out knuckles. He carefully reached for the hand as one would greet an old friend just to be met with a cold and stiff touch. The young man carefully pulled the severed limb out of the pile, trying not to damage it, dismissing the warning from before. It was a lower half of an arm covered in cuts. He placed his left hand on a wound and let his fingers travel over the injuries, feeling every single one of them, trying to read the stories carved in its flesh. A gentle pat on the back of the deceased hand bid their farewell. It now rested atop of his enemies bones, trying to grasp the skies above.

This diversion led him to a fresh wicked graveyard, also known as a scavengeable armory. A huge variety of usable equipment was by his feet, completely at his disposal. For his misfortune, the wicked were larger than him overall, and the few pieces that fit had been significantly damaged by blunt force. Weapons didn’t fare better as most of the wood had been wrecked. A single piece caught the boy’s attention, a colossal shield made of ivory with a metal interior, fairly light for its size but completely unpractical for anyone that wasn’t as tall as its owner. He grabbed the aegis and began to fiddle with it as his mind drifted away. A couple of stains brought him back to present and without thinking twice, he began to clean it using the end of his mantle. The only occurrence where he had the chance to appreciate the shield was at his recruitment, as the unit’s tradition was to force the rookie into doing full maintenance for the whole army. Memories kept flowing through him and before he could realize, the aegis was completely polished. The boy tied the shield on his back and left the place. “He might want it back…”

His trip was supposed to be short and quick, just the bare minimum to fill his carrier, but by the time he returned to the surface it was already noon. It didn’t help that the extra weight made the ascent trice more demanding than the sink. He stumbled upon a single beetle at the edge of the chasm, no legs, just a body. This was a sign he should call it a day, hunger would come to find him later but that was a concern for tomorrow.

On the following morning, the boy woke up in cold sweat. Nightmares plagued him once more, visions of his comrades turning into the very enemy he despised, and a collective of specters slashing his body for bone and flesh. The last collector took about the same amount as the one from the previous night, at this rate he’d run out of offerings within three to four days.

“They’ll come back to get me… They always do…”, the boy internalized.

Most of the wicked have not changed their disposition from the day before, except for the pair near the trees, now stationed between the boy and his next destination. His plan wouldn’t work. The only alternative was to head back northwest and try his luck with the few solitary trees. It was a good quarter of an hour walk for the first stop and a bit more for the second. For his comfort, the shield he took the previous day was perfect to shelter him from the sun.

Each tree only could support a maximum of two nests, one bellow its roots and another inside its trunk. He started out by checking the bottom of the plant, where the larger species used to live, then proceeded to inspect the stalk, expecting to spot a large gap or two, and finished by snatching some of the branches to use as firewood. The first tree had a group of half a dozen caterpillars, still in their infancy, and nothing else. It wasn’t enough for half a meal. His next stop was more fortunate, it had a medium sized den with about forty adult scarabs. The boy laid on the floor and took no hurry to expand the tunnel, until it had widen to almost double its size, to start the harvest.

About the time he collected the third specimen, he heard distant footsteps in a hurry.

“Are they here?’’, questioned the boy in high spirit, as he withdrew his arm.

A ghoul had noticed him from afar, an axe bearer with so little flesh as the wicked from the desert and covered in metal in the same fashion as its spotter. It was running towards the boy, still within a few minutes distance, ready to fight. The human stored all of his stash, still active and vibrant, at the top of his carrier and fled in panic. His chaser followed him to the pillar, only stopping by the base once its target escaped to the highs. The ghoul looked upwards and rattled, taking a more relaxed stance after a while. It guarded the place for the next couple of hours, leaving before the sunset. The scout embraced his carrier while trying to stay absolutely still, barely controlling the primal impulse that made him tremble. From that night on he had fire to ward him from the harsh nights.

The next two weeks were like his last two days. A trip to pillage the chasm at the days he ran out of offerings and beetle hunting on the others. Time was healing him back to his usual character, also making him more confident on his hit-an-run endeavors. Day after day, the same ghoul patrolled the tree that served as his pantry until it was inevitably disturbed by the boy’s looting, both of them finding themselves at the same chase sequence they had at their first meeting until they arrived at the pillar. The ghoul seemed determined to end the boy’s life and if it had the ability to climb it certainly would. Its action were limited to waiting for a mischievous escapade. In the end it wouldn’t even matter as time was in its favor, eventually the boy would starve to death so keeping him in place was more than enough. Both got stuck at each other, trying to do the best they could at the time.

At some point what was once a matter of life and death turned into solace. Within a few days the routine started to look like a child’s play, as if the two were merely playing a long session of tag before the human started his monologue atop, with some eventual rattling interrupting him, lasting until the last daylight. The young man had a felling that every now and then, the ghoul appeared to be different, same usual behavior but something felt off.

Harvesting for bugs became harder by each passing day, the survivors were clumping at the end of the burrow, slowing down his task ever so slightly. As such, each time the boy escaped the distance between him and the his pursuer narrowed. It all ended in an usual afternoon, right when the boy pulled his arm out of the soil.

“Evening Bonnie, doing good today?”, the human hailed his enemy as he dashed away.

He got careless, the ghoul was within his effective range. It swung its axe aiming for the boy’s leg, grazing the back of his shin guard. He looked backwards and saw how close his foe were. The boy immediately twisted to face his aggressor, focusing on avoiding its hits while trying to gain distance. His assailant drove him to the crevice and, as he tried to steer back out, the human stumbled and fell on his back, on top of his carrier and shield. The young man saw his executioner winding its next attack and tried to roll sideways. His shield broke the movement halfway, forcing him to steer to the opposite side as his last resort. He promptly got back on his feet while the ghoul wrestled its axe out of a rock. It wasn’t enough for him to break out of combat range nor to leave the cliff, and soon a second strike came. The boy dodged the ghoul’s attack by the skin of his teeth and the aggressor fell into the chasm. He kneed over the edge to see the aftermath, finding his acquaintance shattered in the ground, active only from its skull to the tip of its left arm.

“I didn’t mean to do that Bonnie…” , the boy lamented.

He dove into the chasm heading straight to the ghoul that appeared to try meet his eyes. The boy squatted next to it and continued, “I know we’re not friends but I have to thank you for sticking around. Things haven’t been easy for me lately. I appreciate having someone to talk to while I…”, he stopped with the rebound of his awareness. The boy lowered his head and paused for a deep breath before returning to the creature, “They won’t come for me, right…? I’ll have to go back, on my own…”. He got up and walked towards the ghoul’s weapon, holding it with both his hands as he inspected the piece, “You won’t mind if I keep a memento, right?’’ The boy reached the corpse and pat its head before leaving to the surface. He heard a final rattle coming from the abyss, perhaps the ghoul bid him farewell.

Once he made back to the nest, he resumed the scavenge and, after blindly touching the walls for some good minutes, a beetle was found. His heart ached just as his arm was to exit the den. The boy held the beetle next to his face for a direct eye-to-eye.

A gentle smile was carved out of his face, “You’re a survivor, no? Life isn’t easy when you’re on your own, but you’ve got to keep going”, he continued as melancholy filled his soul, “You didn’t deserve that. I’m sorry”.

By the next morning the boy had reunited with his former self, physically and mentally. He left a little after dawn, mainly concerned about his safety and hoping to land at the dead grove before midday. He moved from rock to rock in a zigzag pattern while checking his surroundings every half a minute, always ever cautious with the noise. To his unfortunate surprise, his estimation was a little off. A pair of wicked was always stationed around that radius but in that particular morning, they were just a short sprint away beyond his destination, too close for him to employ the same tactic as before. His other option was escaping to the nearest pillar but at that distance they would just surround him for the day and repeat the same stalemate the next morning.

“I have to do it, somehow…”

“Use your head, you don’t have the muscle to force your way. Even a tiny lad like me can beat them if I use my advantages”, a soft voice spoke.

The boy gulped in response. Voices came to him before, mostly at his first week of solitude, but they were gradually swept away after he started talking to Bonnie. They always brought him good wisdom, which he often yielded to.

“Think, think”, the boy muttered under his breath.

He retreated to the widest rock away from his enemies, out of their vision range, and started digging a shallow circular trench using the flat of his pickaxe along some minor holes on both sides. He trusted some of his longest bones into the ditch and covered them with dirt until they were stable, building a tiny fence around the rock. Two additional holes were dug at the rock, one about the height of the top of his head, crammed with a tibia, and the other about three palms below, comporting a femur. The scattered holes remained empty.

“Here goes nothing.”

Restless heartbeats, sweaty hands, chills running down the spine, a forehead drenched within a single breath, fear overwhelmed him. Every single time the boy tried to fight, he couldn’t react, only to be saved by someone else at the last minute. The first ghoul that ever lost to him happened to get itself smashed by accident on the previous day.

“Never hesitate”, the boy remembered.

The boy left to the dead grove, without his mantle and carrier, trying to make himself present as he boasted to the wicked. They took notice of him almost immediately, initiating the chase at top speed. As soon as they perceived the rock, the ghouls parted to a flank, fencer to the left and axeman to the right. The young man kept going, changing to a more careful stride once he reached the boulder, hiding from the two as he waited for them to arrive.

He was greeted by a horizontal cleave from the left chaser, scraping the rim of his chestplate as he backed away. At his back, his other opponent saw a human sized shade and attacked it with a vertical slash. It was a decoy trap. The wicked soon fell due to a hole in the ground and continued to drop on the bones disposed horizontally, breaking them on impact and the fence below them, terminating completely entangled in the mantle by the instant it hit the floor. The fencer advanced with a lunge but fell midways as it stepped on a hole. This was the opening the boy needed to land a direct hit at the skull. A single chop to the ghoul’s head, by Bonnie’s axe. It was his first true victory. It was a brief sparkle of bliss interrupted by his other foe that had hardly freed itself. He charged at the axeman for another lethal strike and cracked its forehead, but not quick enough to avoid the incoming attack that came for his left shoulder. It was only the residual momentum, too weak to cut his flesh but strong enough to put him in misery.

“Bloody bastard…”, he cursed as he sat between the fallen, then laughed, as hard and loud as he could.

The boy hang on while the pain tuned down and headed to his promised treasure. Half of the trees had living nests, sufficient to keep him for a whole week without rationing. Beetles, cockroaches, worms, centipedes, caterpillars and ground slaters, all sorts of suitors for his lunch.

“Centipedes are the best, boy! They give you a nice tingle on your tongue. But that’s stuff for the grown ups.”, echoed a rowdy voice.

“Aah… I get it now…”, the scout bitterly manifested.