4 | Yaron
Paradise Hole
This Omega isn’t well. Not only is she struggling along, in clear agony, but somehow still upright — but she’s addressed me by my given name now. And she’s done it twice. She called me a good boy. I feel my trousers tighten, hardly able to believe that I heard what I did. I must have hallucinated it. I’ve met Omegas many times before in my life and none have dared speak to me as she did. Even the Fallen Earth Omega, for as feral as she was, seemed to know her place. The Fallen Beast Omega avoided speaking to me altogether, disgusted by Alphas in general.
I watch the Omega in my care now, lagging as she attempts to keep up with the Alphas and Betas in crimson. She has dark brown skin covered in scrapes and scratches, unwashed since I pulled her from the rubble. She wears a plain shift. I’m not certain where Radmilla procured it, because it looks like a potato sack with holes for a head and arms. She looks impossibly tiny inside of it, even though for a female, she is tall. Above it, her face shines with brutality, especially now that she has no hair to cover it. Without hair, she looks smaller. Okayo must have shaved away the burned sections when he administered to her. He cut it all the way down to her scalp. And now, the mark left behind from when I hit her shines in violent clarity. She’s a murderer, at the very least complicit in murder…but it still didn’t feel good to hit her, to strike her face…
Her face…the resemblance…
The Fated Omegas and their Fallen counterparts appear as doppelgangers with some small, subtle differences. The Fated and Fallen Earth Omegas share the same hair and skin color. The Fated and Fallen Beast Omegas share the exact same face. This Omega looks eerily like Odette, the Fated Fire Omega, but without hair, it’s not entirely effortless to connect them. She can’t be. It would be too coincidental and I do not believe in coincidence. Besides, this Omega is nothing like the other two I met in the woods. The sturdy and robust Earth Omega or the Beast Omega fully in control of her gifts. This…this Fire Omega is…not weak, no, certainly not that…but she feels nearly waifish…threadbare, just as thin as the smoke that she creates.
And my every sense is keenly attuned to her.
I am not the only one, either. The Alphas among my Crimson Riders have strayed from formation. The Omega trips, again, this time over a thick mangrove root. Malik lunges out of his way to catch her arm.
“Thank you,” she whispers to the Alpha. The Alpha bites his lower lip, nods and does not release her even as she regains her footing. My hand forms claws.
“Malik,” I grit. The Omega and Malik both turn to me, their hands locked like lovers. “If she can kill on her own, she can walk on her own.” I bare my teeth and allow my beast to reveal his fangs. They extend past my lower lip.
“Yes, Lord Yaron.” Malik nods and steps back into formation. I stand at the front of one cluster, which fans out behind me in a V while Sipho leads the other. Malik and Dorsten flank the Omega, who walks in the center of the formation I lead.
I turn my attention away from the group, allowing my beast’s senses to prowl and pull me forward — though it takes effort, much more than it should. “West,” I announce some time later. My Crimson Riders take their next steps in that direction in near perfect unison.
The Omega is a distraction that I abhor. She falls twice more, and the sounds her body makes crashing through the foliage resonate like explosions. It’s grating. I catch the scent of something on the wind, but my beast’s ears seem finely tuned to her shallow breaths and the fact that her parched throat needs water. What is that scent? I turn towards it. The Omega needs water. I turn back.
“My Lord, do you smell that? Sickly sweet,” Sipho says, stopping abruptly. “North.” His face twists away from me, his gaze cast in the direction of the ports. He’s right. I should have identified the scent long before.
It’s distinct, too memorable to ever be forgotten. My hackles rise instantly. Fur sprouts down my spine and stiffens. My toes curl and the claws tipping them threaten to tear through my boots. I lift my nose to the wind and my face forms a snout. With my beast’s senses, I can taste something foul and rotten on the wind, but I can also smell Trash City so precisely, I know the moment that their clan changed direction, veering from north to west, and I can pinpoint the exact place that the murderous Betas lost Trash City’s trail and chose a different path. The wrong one if their intention was to escape me, though I don’t suppose they ever really had that chance.
“Trash City continued west, but the killer’s family changed direction. They’ve gone east, towards Undoline.” The fools.
I have my guard patrolling the village border. It is the nearest village to Orias and I expected them to seek out their familiars there. From the information I gathered of the killer’s family, they are well liked among the traders in Undoline and may very well have extended family in that area or in the next villages even further east.
“Trash City, meanwhile, ventured deeper into Paradise Hole. They’re headed west.”
“There is nowhere for them to go west,” Sipho says. “Unless they intend to spare us a great effort and throw themselves off of the cliffs.”
I nod. “It is only a matter of time before we root them out, wherever they’re hiding. We will continue west for now through the woods of Paradise Hole, leaving the killer’s family to our guard positioned outside of Undoline.”
Paradise Hole is the name given to the rotten woods that spread and spread and spread. No one knows their provenance, but the rot that once only plagued the North Island has come here and, while Trash City was able to successfully hide itself in the woods of Paradise Hole on the North Island. On the South Island, they will not be so lucky. I guarantee it. I take a step west to lead the charge, but am arrested by Sipho’s voice.
“And the northern scent, my Lord?”
“We will return to investigate after we have apprehended Trash City,” I say. Sipho nods. “Remember, Riders, I want Trash City taken alive.”
“Hau!” my Riders chime in unison, the hard clash of so many voices startling the Omega, who jolts. She looks to me immediately after she settles as if…seeking comfort or reassurance.
No.
I take another step further away from her, and then another…but…I cannot divorce myself from the sight of her swollen eyelid — and I did that — or the sound of her ragged breathing. She suffers. She should. And Dorsten is offering her his water skin. No.
“Killer, come to me.”
The Omega jerks again, dropping her gaze from Dorsten’s extended hand without touching the skin he holds, though she looks at it longingly. She bites her bottom lip. It’s full and the prettiest colorscape, pinker towards the center and ringed in a light brown. I frown, not liking that I am noticing the small details. I have seen Omegas before and not been so distracted by them. Omegas are distractions. This is why Shadow Lords since long past do not take them. I must remain steadfast. I must remember my duty to my people.
The Omega picks her way across the dense forest floor then stops, still not close enough to touch. “I will not waste time and you cannot afford to waste time, given the state of your many injuries. We know that your family intends to seek refuge in Undoline with your extended kin. Do they intend to reconvene there with Trash City?”
She drops her gaze to her feet and shakes her head. She touches her ear and then flinches and I wonder if it’s pain that causes her to react like that to the touch of her own flesh. Her fingers are long and elegant, nails trimmed short. Palms likely callused if she makes food for a living and dismembers Alphas for sport.
“I don’t know, my Lord,” she says.
Anger makes me stiffen. “Do not lie to me, Omega.”
She shakes her head, gaze only flashing to meet mine infrequently. I hate the way it feels when our eyes meet. Like a clashing of swords. Sparks rain over me. “I’m not, my Lord. I don’t know where my family’s gone and Trash City only mentioned different rendezvous points. Point L, Z and…and I think there was one other. I just…I can’t remember. I swear. I’m sorry.”
“And you have no idea what those letters may mean?”
“I told you, Yaron,” she says, expression flashing with frustration as her gaze strays once again to me. “I’ve never met those people before today and I had no idea my family was working with them. I don’t know anything.”
I am already advancing on her. She is already stumbling back. All of my Crimson Riders are watching us, watching me as I grip her neck roughly. My other hand is on the small of her back, fisting her hideous shift. “You seem to think you know me well enough to call me Yaron.”
“I…” She blinks, her eyes so fucking beautiful. But they’re both brown. The Fire Fate has one blue eye. Perhaps their resemblance is only coincidental. I am momentarily distracted and don’t hear what she says when she answers.
“What, Omega?” I hiss.
She swallows. I can feel her throat work beneath my palm. “I said that I was sorry. I don’t know why I keep calling you…that. It just feels right…my Lord.”
My beast whimpers. Whimpers. “You…” I start. There’s a cracking in the woods that draws my beast’s attention. His ears are already visible — massive flaps on the side of my face — and they twitch in the direction of the crackling. It’s picking up now and it’s not coming from the east or from the west, but the north.
“My Lord?” the Omega whispers, voice softer than ash.
I look back into her eyes, and then at her body, bent slightly backwards over my arm. Her feet are sunk into the mud up to the ankle. We are off of any known path. Yet she walks without complaint, without shoes on because I have given her no other choice.
She looks over her shoulder. “Is…”
“Can you hear it?”
She shakes her head, eyebrows furrowing over slightly swollen eyelids from where I struck her so monstrously. “I don’t hear anything, my…Lord. But I can feel…something.” Her fingers fan over her stomach.
My beast releases a short, flared roar in response to the pain that warps her expression. My hands instinctively pull her against my chest, my gaze sweeping the woods to the north. I open my mouth, but before I can speak, a rolling thunder comes crashing through the woods. Distant, at first, it quickly becomes louder. Louder and louder.
My beast is sniffing at the wind, suddenly capable of disentangling itself — me — from the scent of her. And the scent I pick up? It’s foul and familiar, a scent one who crosses it never forgets. If they survive the encounter.
“My Lord?” Sipho calls. “The heart trees are migrating…”
The heart trees are agitated, few that there are this deep into Paradise Hole. Though the rains have not yet begun, their roots have begun to move, disentangling from the soft soil as they carry themselves away to safer ground. I am reminded fleetingly of the horses’ unease at the church when I intended to burn the Omega and her family. The natural world senses something immense approaching. Like the coming of the dawn. Or the end of it.
“They’re coming,” I shout, clutching the Omega close. “Riders, defensive formation!”
My beast surges, my hand forming a paw with claws before returning to a hand, though my claws remain. “Omega,” I hiss in a tone I’ve never used before, because though I try to remain severe, it’s difficult to infuse hatred and rage into my tone when she looks up at me like that, eyes wide, hands cupped beneath her chin as if she’s nothing more than a battered orphan seeking shelter. Shelter her. “Remain by my side, no matter what comes through those trees.”
“What’s coming, Yaron?”
Yaron. Her disobedience will need to be punished. Or praised.
“I believe we are about to be beset by…”
But before I can say more, before I can take a step in any direction, before I can soothe her with the purr that’s threatening to bang its way free of my chest, before I can unhook my battle axe, the ground explodes open beneath our feet. I’m thrown off of mine, the Omega thrown away from me in the opposite direction. Several of my Riders take flight with us, several more fall to the ground. One of my Riders releases a pained shout, yet not even that is enough to grab my attention like the disembodied torso of an Alpha dragging its way out of the ground.
Surging up onto my feet, I reach into the waterlogged soil, grab the undead Alpha by the forearms and tear them free of the body they belong to. The Alpha might have once been a white male, but he’s been beneath the soil for so long, his skin has turned blue and is crusted in a sheen of dirt. He is not swollen — why would he be? He’s already dead and not taking on water. But I can still tell that this Alpha has been buried for a while.
No, not this Alpha. These.
Alphas fight their way out of the soil all around us, begging the question of whether they were planted here and only here and we were drawn into a trap, or if there are Alphas out here planted everywhere. Everywhere. Lurking just beneath the soil of the entire Shadowlands, the entire South Island, all of Gatamora.
No.
“Destroy the brain stem! Dismember the bodies!” I roar, trying to see past three undead Alphas surging towards me to find the Omega. I can’t see her. “Omega!”
“Yaron! I’m here,” she says, voice breathy and soft. I glance towards the sound of her voice and see that she’s standing between two trees, her hands touching both. She looks panicked and afraid, but I find it curious that she hasn’t thought to run. She could use this opportunity to try to escape. I might have even believed she planted the corpses here, is working in cahoots with Trash City and the Fates, and lured me here on purpose.
Except she’s still here looking so panicked and nervous.
She isn’t a killer, is she? No. She hasn’t lied to me yet, has she? Not once. She’s a good girl, little Kiandah, and I’m still going to kill her because she’s just standing there and right now, I actually do want her to run.
There are only two dozen Crimson Riders with me here, the full breadth of my army dispersed across the island to continue the hunt. I thought two dozen excessive hours ago, and now I regret our nominal numbers. The Omega is entirely exposed. An undead Alpha female has noticed her and is turning in her direction. The Omega slinks back between the trees, looking like she might run, finally, but she looks at me first.
Yaron, she mouths and I can’t fucking stand it because she speaks my name like she knows me, knows something I don’t, like I belong to her and she needs me and she knows she can count on my protection, and the response in my chest is all but catastrophic because I want to be that for her. I don’t want to let her down.
I unhook my axe and sweep the heads of the two undead Alphas in front of me before launching my axe through the trees, over the tops of the now headless bodies and into the back of the undead Alpha zeroing in on the Omega. The Alpha slams into the tree to her left, its body severed in half vertically.
Kiandah jumps, bones leaving her skin, before her gaze flashes back to me. She meets my stare, her one eye swollen, filling me with a renewed revulsion because she looks at me like she trusts me. And I was the one to give her that mark.
“Kiandah, run!” I say and the surprise in her face confuses me for a moment that lasts just a few heartbeats too long. This is the first time I’ve said her name aloud.
Nailsgouge into my calf, sinking in deep enough to cause my left leg to buckle. Claws — the dead Alpha has claws. I roar and kick the creature free, but it just keeps coming. I slam my heel through its skull while another two undead launch themselves at me. I fight them off with fangs and claws as they cling to my arms with fangs and claws of their own.
“Omega!” I roar, concern blistering my throat.
“Yaron?” Her tone is shaky, so afraid. And still fucking here.
“Omega, get out of here now! Avoid their fangs!” I shout to my Riders as I see Guy to my right take a bite to the shoulder. He roars in pain. I lunge toward him and shred the undead Alpha clinging to him, removing its head. “Close in! Malik! Dorsten! Fall back to the Omega!” Why isn’t she leaving? Why hasn’t she left?
I watch Dorsten and Malik attempt to charge towards the Omega and I try to follow them, but more undead Alphas lunge into their paths, five on two. I take a moment to expand the depth of my hearing to try to calculate just how many we’re up against here, but the thrashing of those in the foreground is too great. Plus, there’s something else in the woods, just out of reach of my senses. A great presence that my beast raises his hackles to, that I know to destroy because it’s also something to fear. But it’s too far away.
I draw my awareness back around me, momentary panic surging at the realization that the Omega is entirely unprotected and my Alphas are nearly overrun. The undead Alphas number in the thirties, forties, perhaps. They swipe with their claws, catching cloaks and tearing through flesh. My Riders are not wearing their full battle armor and I hesitate to draw my beast forward fully because he presents such a large target and one single bite from one of these foul creatures wreaks havoc.
I have not forgotten the pain and the devastation to my body, having been bitten at least three times in my last battle against these creatures. My reflexes were slowed for weeks, I was groggy, couldn’t easily draw my beast forward, not to mention the pain. It was nothing I’d experienced before and it affected not just the site of the bite, but rampaged throughout my entire body like a poison — like venom, but with the intention to maim and not to bond or to heal.
A creature lunges for me now, and I take my claws to his throat, decapitating him cleanly. I kick through the next undead blocking me from reaching the Omega as Malik and Guy successfully battle another cluster of undead back. I finally reach my axe, still impaled in the back of the undead Alpha female and remove it, letting the ball collapse onto the ground, each of its two separated halves still writhing until I remove the head.
I turn to the three undead Alphas now chasing my Omega deeper into the woods and take off at a run. I leap, landing between them and Kiandah just as she falls in the mud. I swing my axe. My stroke takes out two at the neck and the top half of the third’s head. I swing my battle axe over my head and when I bring it down into the third undead’s back, I split it apart along the seam of its spine.
“Riders,” I roar. “Give them no ground!” We fight on, me with the Omega pressed against me, her body bouncing awkwardly against my back. She holds herself up and just as my concern mounts and we are swarmed by half a dozen undead at once, I feel it, the first droplet plummeting from the sky, heavy and threatening. I curse.
My Riders can struggle to fight through the sludge of Paradise Hole. We can cede stable ground and fight on the turf of the undead. But we cannot fight against the rain. “The rains are coming! Fall back to Orias!”
I slash my way through the head of another monster and turn, only to come face to face with three more leaping for us. Kiandah clutches my clothing and doesn’t move out of my way when I try to thrust my body between hers and the incoming attackers.
“Fuck,” I curse. I’m stuck and going to have to suffer a bite. I lift my left forearm but as the creature nearest to me jumps, he hits a wall of shimmering blue fire. Her hands are up, outstretched and shaking, but powerful enough to produce a translucent wall of blue that ripples and shimmers just beyond her fingertips. The creature incinerates against it and just as quickly as it arrived, it disappears. The Omega slumps against my body, spent, and I curse again. The rain droplets are spattering more rapidly now against my hair and shoulders and the top of her head. I need to get her out of here.
“Riders,” I roar, hoping to high hells they can hear me over the chaos. “Disperse! Back to Orias now!”
That is what I tell them, but that is not where I head. My legs grow beastly, morphing to their more lycanthropic shape. My claws dig into the ground and my hind legs explode the seams of my pant legs. I gather the Omega in my arms, clutching her close, and launch myself off of the ground with every ounce of my strength. I feel claws catching at my lower limbs and when I land, I crush an undead beneath me. I want them fucking off of me and so I leap and sprint again. I hold the Omega tight against my chest, trying to shield her as I fight my way free of the last of the undead at the same time that I run straight against a wall of water.
The rainy season is brutal and exposure like this won’t lead to anything but death for the Omega and I both if we don’t find cover. Her need is more urgent than mine. I would have no trouble making it to Orias with my Riders, but my Omega is already injured, breathing erratically, pulse weak, skin on fire. Already, we’re both soaking wet, my hair plastered to the sides of my face, water sluicing from it down my back beneath my cloak.
The rain beats with far too much force against the Omega’s bare arms and the result is that my concern for her beats far too loudly in my ears. It makes it far, far too easy to ignore the sound of the fighting continuing at my back. The zombie horde are still thrashing away, sure to be conquered by the rains soon if my Riders don’t get to them first. The undead will survive the rains, sure, but likely in pieces. We will recover and destroy the pieces when the rains relent, but that won’t be for some time. Time that my Omega does not have. She needs cover. I survey the trees before me, waiting for the right tree, waiting for the right time.
Heart trees are famous. They grow only here in the northeastern-most region of the South Island. They once covered the Shadowlands’ entire northern shore, but that was before my time. Before Paradise Hole. Even as a boy, I remember my first visit to the Heart Forest as a newly ascended Berserker. The infection of Paradise Hole had already begun to spread, but the Heart Forest was bigger then, still teeming with life. Now, despite my restoration team’s best efforts, anything that once was green has turned grey. The heart trees are all that remain. But, we will not lose the heart trees. Not while I remain Shadow Lord. Just as I will not lose this Omega.
My jaw clenches with renewed determination as I find what I’m looking for, as if the heart trees themselves have heard my vow and accepted my offering. Similarly to mangroves, heart trees have roots that bury deep into the waterlogged ground, however the roots are as thick as my biceps and their trunks are swollen at the bases, tapering up towards crooked branches. The roots keep the trunks and sparsely decorated boughs up off of the ground and, when the rains begin, the trees dance in abject delight. Trunks as wide as ten, twenty feet in diameter, like the one I stand before now, move, their roots physically carrying them great distances. Heart trees are known to migrate as far as twenty miles in a heavy storm as they seek out new pastures.
“Omega, brace yourself for the darkness.” She doesn’t reply and I don’t let myself be distracted with her wellbeing. I wait for the heart tree to take its first breath.
The trunk splits, revealing the darkened interior. I hear the sound of the Omega gasping in between the much louder sound of her teeth chattering. Yes, it is a beautiful sight. The heart tree lifts, its roots pushing deep into the swampy earth, and the Omega in my grip jumps, clinging to my cloak and shoulders as it rises up. It is a spectacular thing to behold, the Heart Forest coming alive.
Trees begin to slowly move, walking in all directions. The one before us takes its next breath, opening at the whorl on its front — its heart — and I use the opening now, which is just wide enough, to lift the Omega up and toss her inside. The rains are punishing as I track the tree another dozen steps, waiting for it to breathe again so that I may join the Omega inside of it. My paws are sucked into the swollen soil on each step, making motion difficult. I snarl up at the skies, my chest tightening at the thought of her alone inside of the tree for all this time.
The tree inhales, the opening finally large enough for me. I launch myself inside, my legs twisting to those of my Alpha from those of my beast. I crash onto the ground, hands and feet scrambling over the smooth wood, trying to gain purchase. I worry I’ll crush her, and then I worry some more when my hands don’t find her at all.
“Omega,” I snarl.
She gasps and my hand meets skin. “Yaron…” she whimpers. Whimpers.
“Omega, come to me.” I haul her against my body, switching my sight to that of my beast so I can see her more clearly. She’s soaked and so am I, my heavy cloak and leather armor weighing me down. I unhook the clasp at my neck, liberating myself. My cloak squishes on the floor. I shove it behind me, remove my wet shirt and toss it into the pile. My boots and trousers were shredded throughout the course of my many transformations. I tear their remains away from my skin now.
I sink into the bowl-shaped hollow with my knees spread and my back against the heart tree’s interior wall. I grab the Omega’s thin shoulder and lift her up into a seat. I grab the material at the back of her neck and use one of my claws to carve a path through the wet cloth, following the line of her spine.
She shivers violently, her teeth chattering together. She tries to clutch the rag to her chest, or maybe, she’s so cold her arms have locked — in either case, I have to pull her between my thighs and wrestle the garment away from her. I toss it against the far wall, wrap both arms around her naked body and wrench her against my bare chest.
“Omega, calm yourself,” I order, but the longer I hold her against me like this, the harder her breathing becomes. Harder and more erratic, punctuated by involuntary whimpers and whispered moans, she’s shaking badly now. I hold her tighter. “Omega, I will not harm you,” I say, and the shock of what I’ve just told her hits me a delayed moment thereafter.
She is my prisoner. It is my duty to harm her. Have I…lied? No. No…I am the Shadow Lord. I do not lie. Perhaps, what I meant to say was that I will not harm her now. Not until after Trash City has been found. Then she will be punished for her treachery.
Cold air slams inside of the heart tree on each of the tree’s deep inhalations. The Omega shakes violently each time. Rainwater has begun to fill up the basin of the tree — a reserve for the heart tree to draw on later, but right now it simply soaks us through to the bone. Outside, I see nothing but a dark grey wall of rain, no matter if I use my beast’s sight or my Alpha’s.
“Omega. Breathe. Follow my breath.” I take exaggerated inhales that she promptly ignores in favor of jerky breaths that make it sound like she’s drowning. The sensation burns into my chest, lancing me like a brand, every time. I worry that, in the dead of night, months from now, I will still feel the pain of that sound.
I feel unsettled. Scrambling now, I tell her, “The heart tree travels east towards Undoline but far before that, we will reach a hunter’s hole. It is dry. There is food. That is where we will ride out the storm.” Another violent tremor rocks her. My gut clenches. I need my beast to warm her better, but within this heart tree there is not space enough for that. “Omega, nod if you understand me.”
She nods and the slightest relief causes me to tighten my arms around her. “Good girl.”
She shivers even more exaggeratedly, but I merely fix my grip, fastening it around her unflinchingly. She does not relax, but shivers more wildly. My abdomen is clenching in panic. I feel fear — genuine fear — for the first time in as long as I can remember. I feel helpless to do anything to end her suffering, to save her life, if that is what is on the line here because she seems like she is falling to pieces. I have not felt helpless ever before now. And I cannot stomach it. I will not forget this sensation. It will torture me months from now. Years.
“Omega, do not show your weakness now. You, who threw flames from your fingertips to defend your family…” To defend me. “We are nearly there.” I peer out into the world on the tree’s next exhale and as the rain cuts down hard, I can only locate approximately where we are. “The tree will move us within walking distance on the next exhale, maybe two.” What I don’t tell her is that walking outside now, through the thick sheets of icy, pelting rain, will be brutal.
She nods so pitifully and yet it shoots heat all the way down my legs to the heels of my feet. She’s here. She’s hearing me. And yet, she’s so weak. My Berserker howls and bitches and moans, but I refuse to give him my voice. I say nothing, until, “Brace yourself, Kiandah.” Because on the heart tree’s next exhale, I jump down out of the heart tree and I carry Kiandah into the storm.