Chapter 6
Far away, a storm rumbled. The metallic aroma of ozone hovered in the brewing atmosphere as brilliant flashes of lightning struck in the distance, warning Chief Asheda’s tribespeople to prepare for the anticipated gale.
Three human years had passed since Saer’s return to Earth.
The pinnacle of summer hung in the sticky air, just a few weeks before Asheda’s wife, Donanni, expected to deliver their second child after a multitude of failed pregnancies and heartache.
At last, so long after Ruki was born, their second miracle would enter the world.
It startled Saer to realize he absorbed some of their excited, but anxious anticipation.
Or did he just learn to mimic humanity so well that he thought he felt what they felt?
Asheda never warmed to Saer beyond tolerance, but Ruki and Donanni treated him as family.
Ruki’s sixteenth birthday allowed him to lead his own hunting excursions with his family’s blessing. The young man took advantage of this opportunity, despite the dark clouds in the sky.
He brought Saer along.
In the village, preparations for the impending weather continued while Saer and Ruki readied their hunting supplies.
Odds and ends were tied down, women and children sheltered away, and the animals huddled together, tended by the shepherds.
Chief Asheda tucked his wife and unborn child into the largest and most sturdy building of the compound, the meeting hut.
Ruki pecked his mother on the cheek before leaving, too excited and rushed for anything more.
Asheda didn’t allow his wife to help with any preparation despite her protest. The risk proved too great for her and their baby to be harmed, Ruki explained to Saer. They’d worked for and fretted far too much over the tiny life to lose it.
A mile from camp, Saer planted his feet and switched his focus to Daemoenic heat sense.
Ruki knelt to examine bent and broken foliage, searching for tracks with passive interest.
When the young man glanced his way, Saer gazed back, stone-faced. The boy straightened his legs. “Why do you stare?”
“I don’t. I wait for you to finish pretending to track.” The corner of the Saer’s mouth lifted in a wry smile.
Ruki huffed in annoyance. “You think I rely on you so much?”
Saer inclined his head, the wry smile growing, but didn’t speak.
Again, Ruki made that same sound. “I don’t need you to hunt game, Saer.”
Of course, not.
“A storm is coming.” He answered in a matter-of-fact tone. “There will be no trail, and you’ll then have to rely on blind luck.”
“And what would you rely on besides luck?”
Saer shook his head, moving to push past the boy. “We’re wasting time.”
“No.” Ruki grabbed at Saer’s arm, and though he didn’t carry half of his strength, he tugged hard enough to make him face him again. The boy attempted—and failed—to find Saer’s gaze. “Everyone else may be willing to let it go, but I won’t anymore. What are you?”
The muscles in Saer’s arm tensed. Ruki had brought up the discussion on and off in the past, but always dropped it with Saer’s avoidance. This time, he attacked with renewed bravado.
What was more, the impulse to confide in Ruki tickled dangerously at the back of Saer’s mind.
Why?
Focus. Return to Neyu.
Saer gave a more forceful shake of his head. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“The tracking doesn’t begin to cover it, Saer. You came out of nowhere, out of fire. We had to teach you everything, like you’d never seen it before despite that you’re a grown man! You hover where there is death—”
Saer remained calm until Ruki’s last observation, which he cut off with a snarl. “Why do you ask these things now?”
“Are we not friends?” Ruki’s voice spiked. “I’m a man, now. I thought—” Cutting himself off, Ruki frowned, licked his lips, then tried again. “What else do I do to prove I’m trustworthy?”
Saer’s mouth opened, then closed again. He couldn’t refute the claim, because a dangerous truth hummed in Ruki’s words.
When had they become friends?
He opted for avoidance instead. “The villagers put you up to this.”
Ruki shook his head. “No.”
“Your father, then.”
“No! They want to forget how you came to us. They won’t mention anything abnormal about you because they think if they ignore it, it won’t cause problems later on.”
Saer’s temper flared. “Am I abnormal to you?”
“Saer—”
“You believe I’ll cause problems for you?”
“You’re twisting my words.”
“Then leave it alone!” Saer’s final shout echoed across the forest, answered by thunder from the closing storm.
Ruki quieted, but his brown stare remained rooted, his square jaw set. He tried again, softer this time. “If you can’t tell me, Saer, who can you tell?”
The impulse to reveal all sprang to the tip of his tongue, but Saer bit down on it, wincing and turning away. “Tell what?”
Ruki made an exasperated sound. “Who you are, what you are!”
Saer shut his eyes, the yearning to connect almost a painful thing pushing against the insides of his ribs. But he had one job. One goal. One master to please.
And Hellsfire, he missed Neyu. The pang of loss and longing hit him, refocused him.
Stall.
When Saer did part his lips and speak, the sound was drowned out by another violent rumble of thunder. Rain fell on the pair. Leaning in closer, the young man raised his voice over the evolving storm. “What?”
Saer shouted in turn. “I can’t tell you. Not now.”
Lightning cracked down, close enough to shake their bodies with its force. A steady downpour of rain soaked through their leather clothing, running in rivulets over their skin and steaming off Saer’s flesh. Even so, Ruki persisted. “If not now, then when?”
Saer narrowed his eyes, rainwater dripping off the ends of his eyelashes and the silver hairs framing his face.
He paused for a heartbeat before making a decision. “When you die.” They would have years before then. Decades. He’d surely find the key to the cure before Ruki’s passing.
“What?”
Saer offered no change of expression, no words.
Ruki blinked as though bewildered. “I don’t know if I can do that.”
“If you swear to try when the time comes, I promise to tell you…who and what I am.” Water slid down Saer’s face, across his long black hair, and down his shoulders and back. He held his hand out to the young man.
Ruki swallowed hard. He clasped Saer’s palm.
“I swear.”
The tempest turned deadly enough that the hunting duo didn’t further delay their return. Fighting the wind, they fell silent, struggling through the torrential downpour and taking twice as long to get back to their settlement as it took to leave.
As they crested the final hill to view their village, lightning struck at the settlement’s center. Once.
Twice.
Fire sparked on the reedy rooftop of the largest building. The wind swept it, fed it, spread it quicker than a hummingbird’s heartbeat.
Chaos.
Ruki’s eyes widened. He scrambled down the hill with Saer following close behind. “Father!”
Far off, other voices shouted the chief’s name. “Asheda! Asheda, are you well?”
“Ruki.” Saer gripped the boy’s elbow, pointing him in the direction of those calling to his father. By heat sense, he confirmed the chief was surrounded by a handful of villagers, collapsed on the ground. A monstrous, broken tree branch lay next to him.
Asheda bled from a wound on his temple, streaks of red flowing down his face, curling off his chin.
Further away, someone screamed. A woman. Shouts beyond. Whistling wind. Crackling and hissing fire. But above it all, always, that high, keening scream.
Saer’s jaw tensed as he turned towards the shriek in time to hear it abruptly stop. Mayhem surrounded them.
Fire engulfed the meeting hut.
He froze, staring for too long—it was where they left Ruki’s mother and her unborn child, and a sudden fear and urgency leapt into his throat.
heat sense focusing, Saer could only detect the blaze. But something else...
Transitioning his vision, wisps of spirit energy dissipated.
The father and son didn’t know they’d died—Donanni and the babe. Ruki and Asheda would be devastated, and it punched him in the guts, a sensation he didn’t expect. Why should he care when that energy was what he sought?
But he knew them.
Ruki loved them.
Saer growled before turning away and rushing to Ruki’s side.
“Donanni.” Asheda struggled to say his wife’s name. Villagers’ arms helped him turn while he vomited on the ground.
“Father!”
The breathless cry found Asheda’s ears. The chief’s eyes opened to slits to see his son kneeling, covered in mud, and reaching for his father. Saer loomed over the boy’s shoulder.
“Ruki…Oh, Ruki.” The chief tried to speak, but someone yelled above him and pointed towards the orange light, jerking the young boy around.
The villager yelled at Asheda’s son, “Your mother is inside!”
Crying out, Ruki jerked away from his father and made to bolt towards the inferno, though Saer snatched him before he could rush into the deadly blaze. “Ruki, they’re—” The words hitched, an unexpected mix of emotions roiling in his guts, but he forced the words out. “They’re both dead.”
“No!”
Ruki swung out of Saer’s grip and sprinted into the meeting hut just as the roof collapsed.
“Ruki!”
The roar of the fire swallowed the young man’s scream, and Saer’s stomach plummeted. Ruki.
I hope I’m as old as Gaugii when I die. Or maybe even older. I want to see everything before my spirit joins the ancestors.
A tightness choked Saer’s throat, a cavern opening in his chest.
Hollers ricocheted through his skull, thunder shook the earth, freezing rain stabbed against his flesh, and yet everything around him suspended in a moment of peaceful stasis as he saw…
As he felt…
As he was drawn…