THE FORSAKEN LAND OF GENèSE | LOST KINGDOM

  600

  Shit!” Solvanel stumbled backwards, tightening his wrappings.

  He’d taken a deeper look into the ravenous creatures—curiosity more than necessity. With the needle holding them off, they were once again consuming one another in the frenzy of battle. The hour would bring them to the end.

  Or so he thought.

  What he deciphered read the opposite.

  Essaifamés

  à la fin de sa vie ____________________________________. _______________________, elle rena?t _________________ ses propres enfants.

  _______________________ dévore ses frères et s?urs.

  __________ reviendra ____________ une seule forme.

  “What’s wrong?”

  How infuriating! He’d barely got a peek!

  So much left unread, yet his inner flame’s intensity had fallen a couple of increments, feeling like ice within his chest. It was not like this when he deciphered Sir Saint. Was his… composition that simple? Or was everything left behind in this forsaken place far too complex?

  Solvanel cursed. “Nothing you can make a difference in. It would only worry your-”

  The group of escapees’ heads turned to the other gentleman, who revealed a startling conclusion about the enemy. “It’s getting stronger.”

  A scarred, one-armed man cursed alongside him. “Are you sure about this, Sire?”

  He nodded grimly. “It’s hard to keep track of the fight, but that instrument was putting up a better fight yesterday and the day before that. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been much of a distraction.”

  “Oh, gosh! What do we do?” Another middle-aged woman asked.

  “We must leave this place at once!”

  She pitied the bloody young shepherd a look of utter confusion before grasping the other by the sleeve, as if to leave no room for misinterpretation. “Oh gosh! What do we do?”

  Saint scanned the area. “We must leave this place at once.”

  Solvanel grimaced.

  “There’s an archway just around the corner that’ll lead us out of the city. Let’s make it through before those things overpower the needle. You guys up for a little run?”

  The scarred man laughed while shaking his head, hands on his hips. “A little run? Ah, you always make it sound so easy.”

  “Only if you’ll be running with us!” The middle-aged woman from before.

  Wow, Saint! I might be into men now!

  Truth be told, that last one was false, but Solvanel imagined that’s how the old man would mock if he were here. If he was not mistaken, the older youth just echoed his sentiments word for word with a vastly different outcome.

  “Please wait,” he interrupted. “Fear is not the voice of reason. While I understand your concerns, we must not be hasty in our decisions. Might we reconsider this escape route further instead of blindly rushing forth?”

  “Hold on,” Scarred man stated. “Did he just suggest that our Saint is scared? Pfft! Saint isn’t scared. Saint isn’t scared of anything!”

  “Calm down, Brick. Solvanel was gone for a while. He’s just a little confused.”

  “You’re right,” he said dejectedly, slapping himself with his one arm. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

  Come to think of it, didn’t this man have both arms before he went down into the treasury?

  “I see,” whispered Solvanel under his breath. “So, you lost your other hand jerking him off.”

  “Alright. Let’s pick up the pace.” Saint signaled sharply, two fingers snapping downward. The escapees herded at his call. “This is life and death we’re dealing with, so If anybody falls, don’t be too proud to call for help.”

  “That means you too, big guy,” he said to Albane, who was shifting idly from side to side. “Stay at the back and protect our little shepherd for me, okay?”

  “Kay!” Albane lifted Solvanel onto his shoulders without an offer. Seeing as he was still very blind, and in unfamiliar territory, he accepted with bitterness, but no protest.

  Loose rubble shifted underfoot as they moved, every step echoing too loudly in the hollowed streets. Travelling in a line like this, Solvanel was reminded of their days in the procession. Though this time, there were no steel men surrounding them on all sides.

  It was a terribly unorganized thing.

  A simple capture at the hands of a superior foe. In typical slave trade circles, they are branded with numbers for the sake of order. There would be a master responsible for keeping track of their number.

  The mercenaries wouldn’t have noticed an increase or decrease in the number of sheep.

  Saint Myles—this flame was firm and resolute, incongruous against the lightless backdrop of his vision. Would he have remembered the pattern of this man’s flame if he’d seen it in the sands?

  Or was it the result of the same self-centeredness that refused to acknowledge his brother’s change?

  Saint kept glancing back, counting heads, measuring distances—already fighting a battle that hadn’t begun yet. Meanwhile, Solvanel was trying to ignore the fact that he’d just taken orders from those he was meant to lead.

  The archway loomed closer, a broken mouth waiting to swallow them whole, blending perfectly into the background of the barren sands. That is, apart from the keystone.

  Having seen it in scores in the treasury after consuming the fruit, Solvanel recognized the shining centerpiece of the archway at once. The golden keystone illuminated his cursed view, a remnant beacon of a once-flourishing bastion, carrying out its original purpose of welcoming travelers to its home.

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  And here, gold bade them farewell, as many a traveler dead and gone.

  Solvanel did not accept the brilliant gesture.

  Another was calling him back.

  Neither with sound nor shape, but a sudden sinking in his chest cavity—the familiar weight of hope abandoned. Like watching his grandfather stop and blow out the candle after telling him to go to bed.

  The city shifted in response, its ruins paling, its shadows retreating, all of it bending around a single, unseen axis. Unseen, but not unknown.

  Silver.

  Beckoning with the unspoken certainty of something that had never doubted he would come.

  Solvanel signalled Albane to slow as the sensation deepened.

  Somewhere in the broken streets, amidst layers of ash and forgotten stone, it was still standing. And more importantly, still waiting.

  Another stele.

  Leaving was no longer a choice.

  When he looked down again, Solvanel frowned.

  He patted Albane on the head, and for an instant thought he had dipped his hand into a puddle.

  “Hehe…” The oaf chuckled.

  The shepherd was stunned into silence by an unbelievable sight.

  [At the end of the day, life is heat crammed into a suit of flesh. The body. The mind. The spirit. Any one of them is just as important as the other. What you see isn’t just the source of life, but an indication of how healthy life is. The fire inside my chest doesn’t belong to me. It’s just hiding inside of me to get away from all the outside cold. But if my body, my mind, or my flesh, starts becoming a source of that cold, what do you think will happen? I’ll catch a fever. Because if it thinks your heat is failing, it’ll burn right through you trying to warm itself up.]

  Such is the origin of fevers.

  The village doctor—Zeus—had once said something on the topic.

  Then Jonah struck him with a yellow snowball.

  There had been some truth to the claim.

  Those who were sick or often burned brighter than when they were well, but Zeus had only wanted to keep the children away from his clinic during the busiest season of the year. It had worked.

  The other half, however, was false.

  In Solvanel’s experience, a frenzied flame sooner consumes itself than burns through. It was not a true flame, after all. Only a visualisation of life that his mind was able to comprehend.

  This, however, was nothing short of incomprehensible.

  The giant’s breath was raging.

  It had swollen to three times its original size, still growing—creeping toward a magnitude the young shepherd could not imagine even the oaf’s oversized body could contain. Wisps of gray seeped through the flesh, sliding downward toward the stomach, as though the breath itself were leaking—drawn irresistibly toward the wound, leaving a pale trail from whence it came.

  The colorless vapor pooled at the base of his chest cavity, gathering into a shallow soup, faintly orange.

  His initial thought was the golden corruption that had claimed those two in the treasury.

  But Albane had not been with them.

  Nor did the giant seem capable of greed.

  And yet Albane had shown no sign of the effort.

  “Are you well?” Solvanel asked.

  “No,” he responded, huffing lightly. “Not Will. Albane.”

  He was fine.

  That, more than the injury itself, unsettled him—the memory of the red and orange forest they had left behind.

  A fire that answered to no-one—

  Killers’ reject who hoisted an enemy upon his shoulders—

  A wolf who killed two of his sheep.

  Solvanel tightened his wrappings.

  All the better that he was ignorant of his own downfall; the oaf would find no compassion here.

  “Good! Faster, then, brother. I need to speak with Saint.”

  “Okay!”

  He made up the distance with unsettling ease.

  Solvanel might have asked him to slow if not for the fact that they were already there.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Change in plans.” Solvanel dismounted the giant, emphasizing the difficulty to keep the mercenary eager to help. "Their flames are weakening.”

  “Meaning?” Saint asked, breath thin.

  “Hunger, thirst, their injuries,” Solvanel speculated. “A combination of the three.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Under normal circumstances, yes, but it is happening far too quickly. Please, I need you to get them out of the city while I stay behind to look for something very important to me.”

  “As much as I’d like to catch some shut-eye, we had more than enough rest while you and the other two were frolicking up mountains of gold. We waste any more time and there’s no guarantee we’ll catch up to your—" He paused, lips twisting. “—comet.”

  “I was not frolicking, Sir Saint,” Solvanel said flatly. “I was undergoing an ordeal. With a succubus.”

  “Two days, sixteen hours, seven minutes, and forty-three seconds?” Saint shot back. “You’ve got good stamina.”

  “Brother. How nasty of you,” Albane scolded, scandalized.

  “I was gone for three hours at most.”

  “You think I learned to navigate this part of the city, got these people food, and patched them up in the span of three hours?”

  The crowd shifted uncomfortably, their flames dimmer than before, but no longer wracked by the panicked undulations of a wounded breath.

  These flames gravitated toward that of Sir Saint, fueled and steadied by the presence of this one sheep.

  Understanding settled in his chest. It was heavy.

  “My apologies, Sir Saint. I see now that you were handling my duties in my absence. But with my return, I will ask that you no longer overstep your keep. You may not be able to see it, but these people are in grave danger.” The words left his mouth more slowly than he intended, their weight changed by what Saint had mistakenly done. “As your shepherd, I order you to—”

  Saint moved first.

  Anger drove his fist forward in a brutal arc—only to be halted mid-swing, fingers clamping down on his wrist with crushing certainty.

  There was no struggle.

  No effort worth mentioning.

  The strike was simply... stopped.

  “You don’t order me to do anything,” Saint snarled, wrenching his arm free. “Don’t forget that following the comet was your idea. What am I supposed to do when we get there without you?”

  “If,” Solvanel corrected calmly. “And you will not.” He released Saint’s gaze, turning it instead toward the others, who were growing restless at the sight of confrontation. “Do not be afraid. I am only asking him to lead you for the moment.”

  Silence stretched.

  Saint scoffed. “I told you. There’s no time for rest.”

  “Yeah!” echoed Scar-man. “And watch how you’re talking to our Saint! Do I look like I need rest to you.”

  Solvanel responded without sparing much attention. “Yes.”

  His body swayed.

  “You do.”

  Then another.

  One of the escapees staggered, knees buckling as his flame guttered low. A woman reached out too late, fingers brushing air as he collapsed at her feet. Her body thudded dully in the sand.

  The murmurs died at once.

  Saint’s jaw tightened as he turned, anger faltering—redirected. “…Shit.”

  Another fell.

  And suddenly the argument no longer mattered.

  “Shit!” Saint caught the closest one, head snapping from side to side. “Stay close together,” he barked. “If you’re strong enough to carry someone else, then lift.”

  He glanced back at Solvanel, jaw set. “You! Use those cursed eyes of yours and find the one who’s responsible.“

  “No need,” answered the shepherd, looking straight down. “We have already been surrounded.”