On the Hills of Eden

“Get up,” the voice called out in Menzoic.

Pallas saw as the curly moustached man nudged the sleeping girl’s shoulder, her head wobbling from side to side atop her limp neck. The roughness of the bark against the back of her head and neck undoubtedly causing enough discomfort to bring her back to the waking world.

“The scouts are back already.”

This was another one of those dreams, she figured.

The girl opened her eyes, putting a hand to her nape to try and rub some of the discomfort off.

Opposite the two of them was one more person, his back hunched over and his face so thoroughly buried within the pages of his book it only made sense that a pair of sleek wood-framed glasses sat perched atop his nose. They all seemed to have congregated about a smouldering firelog, its fumes permeating the air and imbuing it with a distinct sweet, birch-like scent.

A bummer that her streak of undisturbed nights had come to an end, but not an unexpected one. It was a commendable effort, nevertheless.

The four people sat in a circle amidst the forest’s heights, three out of four of them clad in the same light leather armour and fireproof vest that was standard of the Merkezi footsoldiers. The one busying himself with the book was dressed in much lighter clothing, a simple pair of cotton pants and a cloth shirt topped with a tunic that seemed more suited for indoor life than field work out in the Minervan forest. That being said, though, all of them wore the signature white turban of the Merkezi people. A staple of the Republic’s brief existence between the faltering line of Incolumnitan Kings and the new autocracy under the currently still reigning Lord Intoros.

It seemed to be peaceful, at least. Not that it would last very long, but, Pallas appreciated every moment not spent as a spectator to wanton violence.

From beyond the trees came a pair of footsteps. Three sets, actually. Footsteps that were soon paired with three more faces.

“We’re back!”

Two of the approaching men seemed to wear the same get up as the other foot soldiers. The third, though, the one who had called out to them, wore the same lax attire as the man with the book.

He looked up briefly to meet his fellow’s gaze.

“Great,” he said, eyes already back within the pages of his book. “Anything noteworthy?”

“No. Everything tracks with what’s been established so far.”

The man chuckled slightly. The slight grin spreading across his face spelling nothing but sheer unbridled excitement.

“Good,” he said, the smile audible in his response. “Then that means we’ve found the 2nd.”

The… second?

Pallas examined the words in his book closer.

Estimated Edenberry Concentration - District 7

…

The 2nd Soteira. They had found her, just as the Hashashiyyin had tried to find Pallas.

“And what exactly do you plan on doing next? It's not exactly a guarantee they’ll stay in one place, especially considering the circumstances,” the moustached man said.

“We observe,” the man replied. “And we witness their genesis.”

The leaves above them rustled slightly.

“Only then will the truth be revealed.”

Suddenly, from the boughs overhead, a figure emerged.

“The Ikedentros have arrived!”

The man, evidently a Merkezi foot soldier, made his landing- clouds of mist and droplets of sparkling water springing forth from the grass as he did so.

“They’re en route to the settlement.”

“Wonderful!” the man replied.

“Then let us grant them our audience.”

Pallas coughed, her throat closing up as her diaphragm seized up.

Beneath her the earth itself seemed to sway, the trees tilting from side to side as she rocked about in her hammock, hacking and choking all the way.

Just barely able to get a hold of herself, she eventually managed to calm her throat down to the point where she could steady her breathing.

Taking a moment to give her surroundings a quick glance, she saw her fellows’ bags and hammocks strung up against trees not too far from hers. In between them was a dying campfire, its glowing embers just barely able to get any heat out from amongst the ash and soot already piled up atop of it.

By her side sat Soleiman, his head buried within his arms as he half-leaned into her hammock. Slumbering away, unperturbed by the fact that she had been hacking her lungs out not moments earlier.

Most interestingly of all, though, her hands weren’t bloodied. Not even in the slightest. Come to think of it, not even a moment of violence had passed in that dream of hers.

A novelty for once. And a welcome one at that.

She tried propping herself up using her elbows, stopping when she saw the cotton chiton the villagers had provided her with suddenly began turning red.

Lying herself back down onto the meshy lattice of the hammock, she reached a hand under the folds of her chiton, running it over where her chest had been pierced by the Protoataphoi.

Surprisingly, though, she felt not a single hint of wet blood. Everything that had spilt out during that battle had long since hardened and petrified, leaving her with a small but incredibly solid plate of organic armour that shielded her wound.

In fact, she felt no traces of wet blood at all. Nothing to indicate that the chiton could’ve been stained by her bleeding.

She lifted her head up to check the pure white fabric a second time.

Nothing.

Her mind thoroughly boggled, she absentmindedly put a hand to the back of her neck.

It was bleeding.

She flinched in place, pulling her hand back to reveal it had been drenched in blood. Viscous, wine-coloured blood.

She suddenly sat upright, sending the hammock shaking violently as she put her other hand to her neck to find that the blood had disappeared. It had somehow shifted to her abdomen, now soaking through the fabrics of her chiton to reveal a patchwork tapestry of crimson and scarlet blobs spread all across her tummy.

Though that too soon disappeared, the blobs fading away from the fabric and the blood upon her skin seemingly seeping back into her body.

“Pallas?”

She turned to see Soleiman had risen from his slumber, the dirt in his eyes evidence that he had been sat there sleeping for a long time.

“Yeah?”

He suddenly lunged forward, throwing himself into her embrace and wrapping his left arm about her, the hammock holding them swaying under the sudden hug.

Pallas parted the hair of her messy fringe, placing her hands atop his head. What little shock that had previously taken her had all but faded away within moments, dissolving into the tears that now ran down her chest.

“You missed me?”

He nodded.

Pallas took to rubbing his head, her fingers running through his short pointy strands of hair that made his scalp feel like a field of rolling grass.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said slowly, her voice deep and tender. The slow, controlled movements of her diaphragm a stark contrast to the uncontrollable seizing that rocked his. “There’s nothing to worry about, Soleiman.”

He slowly peeled her face off of her chest, the two glimmering pools of tears she knew all too well first appearing from the embrace.

She smiled softly at him, cradling his head as those glistening clouds of light swirled above his pitch black irises.

Immediately, he dove back into their embrace, his sorrowful cries ringing out into the forest as he buried himself in her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped, his two words barely able to get themselves together amidst the unending deluge of sobs. “I’m sorry, Pallas.”

“It’s okay, Soleiman,” she responded, holding him even more tightly. Feeling the shaking of his chest against hers. “I forgive you. I’ll always forgive you.”

“I…” he coughed, his voice nasal as he sniffled to no avail to clear his nose of tears. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to kill it.”

He moved away from her, his breathing now steady enough for longer sentences to be strung together without him breaking down into a fit of tears.

“I’m sorry I failed.”

He looked at her now, eyes darkened with strain and face red from emotion. A trail or two of mucus had even snuck its way out of his nose too.

And a singular patch had been stuck to his right cheek.

“That’s alright,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “At least we’re all alive, right?”

He sniffled.

“Yeah.”

Carefully, Pallas wiped the tears rolling down his cheeks, parts of her palm rubbing against the cool cotton of the patch. The warmth of his flush face seeping into her cold hands.

“There,” she said, patting him on the shoulders. “Better now?”

He nodded.

“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” she said. “Remember what mom said about failing?”

“Yeah,” he said, sniffling again and wiping the mucus off of his face with a tissue from within his vest’s pocket. “We just have to make sure we keep on trying, right?”

Pallas smiled at him, the echoes of their mother still ringing true through their thoughts.

“Right.”

He smiled back at her.

Then, withdrawing some tissues from his right pocket, he blew his nose.

“Really? Right in front of me?”

He laughed softly, half-turning to the side to try and squeeze the rest of the mucus out. “Sorry, sorry.”

She chuckled in turn.

The wind blew about them, the cooling forest air clearing out all the sorrow and the guilt and the pain that had plagued him for the past few days. Its refreshing breeze breathing life into his clogged sinuses and blowing her messy mane of hair about. Its circulating currents taking all the pain of the moment up and away into the clouds that hung above Phia, giving way for new hopes and a renewed vigour that would, hopefully, tow them through to the end.

“By the way,” Pallas said. “What’s with that patch on your face?”

“Oh, it's nothing,” he replied. “Just scratched myself a little, that’s all.”

“Didn’t know you missed me that much.”

Soleiman chuckled.

“Alright then, if you’re okay with it, I’ll go and tell the others you're up,” he said. “We’ve been trying to discuss what to do these past few days so we’d be prepared once you woke up.”

“Shouldn’t I come too?”

“...No,” he said, eyeing the circular black patch of dried blood over her heart.

“It’s not that bad, you know.”

Soleiman shook his head.

“It’s okay, you just focus on resting for now,” he said.

“If you say so.”

It had been a while. Pallas wasn’t sure how many minutes or hours had passed, but she knew it had been a long time since Soleiman had left. At least it certainly felt that way.

As she lay motionless in her hammock, hands on her stomach as she followed her mother’s breathing techniques specifically designed to put a person to sleep, she couldn’t help but realise that it wasn’t working. Four counts of inhalation, seven spent holding her breath, and then a long eight counts for her to slowly release that air back out into the open. In, hold, and then out. Again and again.

But she couldn’t sleep. In fact with each breath she took she felt as the hammock’s lattice somehow felt more and more uncomfortable, as if she was pressing herself into it each time she completed a cycle.

Above her, the light of the noon sky shone through the gaps in the trees’ canopies, their rays swaying and shifting as the leaves rustled about in the forest breeze. And somehow managing to sway and shift right into her eyes. It was like some twisted form of Chitite water torture, but with the glorious blinding rays of the day’s sky instead of droplets of water being used to torment her.

Groaning, she got up, little ripples of blood surfacing along her thighs and abdomen as she did so.

What was up with that, anyway?

It only ever seemed to happen whenever she rose from lying down, and only just began from the moment she woke up earlier that day. To have blood autonomously emerge from her skin before disappearing back under was something she had not seen herself do before.

That being said, though, she had an idea of what was happening.

She placed her hands on two opposing edges of the hammock and pulled outwards, watching as pools of blood appeared all over her triceps and forearms as she did so. And then disappearing back into her the moment she stopped trying to pull the hammock apart.

It seemed that her body had somehow learnt to subconsciously support her movements with blood. Something that she had previously been able to do only with conscious thought and effort.

How she had managed to develop the new ability came as a complete loss to her. That she couldn’t explain. But she didn’t mind that so much.

Perhaps it was just her body adapting to the stress.

Slowly, she shifted her body across the hammock, lifting her legs up and out of it and placing them onto the tarp laid beside her. Counting herself down, she climbed from the depths of the hammock, slowly rising to her feet.

And she was fine.

She put a hand to her heart to check that it hadn’t begun beating uncontrollably as she shuffled over to put a hand on one of the trees her hammock had been tied to.

And, yeah. She was fine.

Her heart hadn’t begun leaping out of her chest, nor did her legs feel weak in any capacity. She hardly even felt lightheaded, which came at a mild shock given that she had spent the last few supposed days lying down and in a state of complete inaction.

She looked down to see faint traces of red had sprung out all across her body, particularly concentrated about her legs and knees.

She could walk.

Pallas gave the camp around her another look, trying to see if she could find anything to do to try and scope out the extent of her new powers’ new developments. She ended up settling on fiddling with a small roll of cloth she spotted lying by their pile of sacks in a random corner of the camp.

Then, she sat herself down, unrolling the thing before snapping a large band of cloth off. Once she’d done that, she focused her mind down into the very tips of her fingers, extruding the stickiest, most viscous blood she physically could out into the cloth’s porous fabric. Far stickier than anything she’d been able to produce up until that point. Dyeing it a deep, rich red.

Then, she held a hand out with the band clutched tightly between her fingers.

Slowly, the band slowly began to move. It rose steadily and in segments at first, but then synchronised with itself and rose all at once- much faster this time. And before long, Pallas had managed to stand the entire 4 metre length of cloth up using her blood alone.

She pulled her arm back, letting it drop onto the tarp below.

The blood-soaked cloth cracked forward as she whipped it, its sticky end latching onto a thick branch comparable to her arm in width and wrapping itself about it. She yanked her arm back, contracting the thin cloth band in turn, and snapping the entire branch cleanly off of its tree.

Now that was a pleasant surprise. What she could previously only achieve with thicker hempen cords and coiled ropes she could evidently now do with only a thin band of cloth.

Pallas rose to her feet again, coiling the blood-soaked band about her fingers and clutching the roll within her other hand. And remembering which direction Soleiman had left in, she slipped on a pair of slippers left at the edge of their camp and set off into the forest wilds.

As she walked, the trees passing her by one at a time, she felt her mind wander. Her thoughts drifted away from the menial trek, whisked from the squelching of the soil and the wetness of the dew and to a realm beyond reality. A realm of meandering ideas and fleeting scenes, of a scenario not too detached from the path she tread. A daydream painted upon the canvas of her vision, a filter of unreality and of another’s memories draped over what she beheld with her own two eyes.

And she smelt sweet, birch-scented smoke.

Turning around, she saw the dying remains of the scorched birch fire log the Merkezi warriors had parked themselves around in her dream. Alone and abandoned, its white skin charred and blackened and any remnants of its once warming flames reduced to twinkling embers in its fumes.

She turned back to where she was headed, the sudden onset of confusion throwing her off entirely and causing her mind to go blank. All at once, the vivid plays of the theatre of her mind collapsed in their entirety, leaving bare the naked reality that lay before her.

A naked reality that took the form of a door, crafted out of wood, and set upon the facade of an unassuming small-ish shed.

Pallas turned around again, the fire log and the scent of birch in the air having long disappeared. Instead, she found herself in a settlement of sorts, with several other houses and cottages dotting the thin section of light forest before her.

These houses were all of varying sizes, with some being comparable to the two-room shed before her while others commanded capacities befitting entire families. Some were placed out in the open whereas others were built around trees. Some even affixed themselves to the branches off the ground, rope ladders joining them to their parent buildings below them. And all of them had been slapped together with little care for order, given the hodge-podge mixture of all sorts of building styles and sizes mixed into a vibrant, diverse blend of structures.

And despite the presence of animals- mostly chickens going about their day in pens adjoining the houses, the place seemed incredibly quiet. Much like Mesimeos when she first arrived, though strangely without that lingering aura of dread and trepidation.

It was serene.

Perhaps this place had something to do with what the Merkezi were discussing earlier, Pallas thought. Perhaps not. Either way, she kept her blood close to her skin, ready for an altercation at a moment’s notice.

Because never before had she lapsed into a dream as she had now. Even in times where she returned to her slumber after being painfully awoken by one of those dreams, she not once had experienced resuming the events of a nightmare that had roused her. It was almost as if she hadn’t woken up at all. Though, she doubted that. Soleiman’s tears felt too real for her to rub them off as machinations of her subconscious’ theatrics.

She turned back to face the door before her, examining the shed’s facade in closer detail. But there wasn’t much else to make out. It was simply a sheer wooden face, with a singular curtained window to the door’s side that took up most of the facade.

And soon, she reached a hand out to grasp its handle, gently creaking it open and feeling as every last vestige of lucidity left her mind.

The girl stepped into the warm darkness of the room before her, closing the door behind without even making so much as a pin drop of noise. There, she hastily shifted about, tracing her away about the layout of the room through memory alone. She found the round, rough body of a small pot she used to store a small bundle of dry kindling and a flint and steel placed not too far away from it.

And so, she began to strike the two items together, clacking them about at an agonising volume given the absolute silence of the shed’s interior.

Clack, clack. Each time sending off a few sparks that failed to set the kindling ablaze.

She adjusted her long dress slightly, feeling as sweat began to slowly build up under her garments.

Suddenly, a muffled voice worked its way into the room.

“In Thalassius’ name!”

The battlecry of the Thalassimathes, and the reminder that she had no time for failures.

Finally, the kindling caught fire, and she could see again.

At once, she scooped the little pot of embers up with her hands, wasting not another moment to push the door to the other room open. She slipped into it, closing the door behind her as she hoisted the pot above her head to better illuminate the stuffy darkness of the shed’s storage.

There was a sizable chest in here, she knew that much. Whether or not it had enough room for her to hide within, though, was an entirely different question- given that she didn’t remember whether it had been restocked with new coffee beans since last she accessed it.

She would find out soon enough as her eyes landed upon its old, dry exterior. Setting the pot down on the ground beside her as she kneeled, she withdrew a small key from within her dress and worked it into the chest’s singular lock.

There was a click, and then a crash.

The entire shed shuddered once and then again in rapid succession, immediately followed by the gargled scream of a man cut off before it could even end.

“You start clearing the houses! We’ll deal with the cultists!”

The girl suddenly felt her body seize up, her fingers locking about the lip of the chest just as she had lifted it up and rested it against the wall. She felt the joints all over her body suddenly petrify, her diaphragm straining to no avail against her unmoving ribs. She stopped moving altogether, her jaw locked in place and her limbs frozen in action, only able to breathe shallowly by rapidly engaging and disengaging her diaphragm to draw in minute amounts of air at a time.

And her heart hurt.

She closed her eyes, fighting as best as she could to maintain consciousness, to calm her nerves.

And slowly, her ribcage gave way, letting her slow her breathing and eventually break free of the petrification.

She collapsed, head limply lolling about as she took in deep breaths to try and fight back the light-headedness brought about by the hyperventilation.

In and out.

At least the chest appeared to be mostly empty.

Closing the lid of the pot of embers beside her, she hastily picked it up and stowed it atop a crate on the other side of the room. Then, she returned to the chest, slowly placing herself inside of it. Once most of her body had gone inside, she picked up a long draping cloth atop a shelf near the chest, arranging it as best she could over it. She then lay down within the long interior of the chest, her head resting against the few bags of beans present within it.

Closing it just in time to hear the door to her shed burst open.

Outside now, the Thalassimathes scrambled to put together a defence.

One of them, their skin clad in tired fabric and draped over with a wispy blue blanket, leapt from the trunk of a tree and up into the air. Looking back just in time to see an Ikedentros bury his fist halfway into the tree’s flesh, shrapnel and fragments of bark flying out in all directions.

They altered the gravity about them, spinning about and grasping a thin branch just above them and using it to pull themselves forward and start spiralling up a nearby tree.

As they scampered up the tree, leaping from branch to branch in desperate escape they heard as the trees continued to scream in agony below them, their pursuer not willing to even so much as give them a moment of levity.

Suddenly, they felt as one of their feet were ensnared in a vice grip, and within moments the Ikedentros succeeded in pulverising their skull against the tree’s bark.

All over the settlement, fighters of unspeakable strength just like him began appearing from the forest, their bodies clad in patchy leather vests and dirty cotton clothes and strange white-feathered ornaments.

These men took the village’s defenders by surprise, their sheer numbers and incredible speed downing one Thalassimath after the other in rapid succession, the springing flames and swirling waters of their opposition unable to accomplish anything in the face of inhuman strength.

Simurg would be more than pleased with the bounty they’d win that day.

In fact, his fellows had already begun the exultation of their Lord, dragging the still living inhabitants of the village up the forest’s many trees kicking and screaming. The spears they would use to impale and affix them atop the treetops in offering to the great bird clutched tightly under their armpits.

The man smiled to himself, barely able to contain his excitement. Barely able to notice the subtle misty glimmers of light off in the forest’s depths.

Before he could react, an unassuming small-ish shed down in the village suddenly exploded, fragments of broken planks and shattered glass sent flying in all directions, leaving a single white crystal in its wake- two bleeding bodies of his fellows impaled upon its cruel spires.

At once, he leapt from the tree, descending onto the scene just as two others quickly approached the strange growth. And, upon closer inspection, it was no crystal.

Though reflective, its colour was stained, imperfect. And it was completely opaque. Upon resting his hand upon its surface, he recognised all too well what it had been made of.

It was made of bone.

He saw something shift in the corner of his vision, at the base of the growth. And before he knew it, that something had torn through him, the blood of his heart staining its bladed tip.

From amongst the spires the 2nd Soteira emerged, her dress torn and impaled at some parts by spokes of bone. She leapt forward, pulling the spear from the growth and ripping it from the man’s body.

And the battle began.

She surged forward, thrusting the spear forward as the other Ikedentrite weaved her attacks. Again and again, his speed just about quick enough to evade her attacks as he shuffled backwards to match her run.

From behind her, the second Ikedentrite got into position to attack at her exposed back, his fist clenched and his eyes set on the back of her neck. He lunged forward just as she squared herself for another set of thrusts, his fist slamming into the vertebrates that joined her spine to her skull.

Feeling as it cracked beneath his fingers.

But within moments what weakness he had previously found within those vertebrae vanished, rejoining together to form an unyielding, solid front. Even stronger than before. And from them sprung forth several screwed bones, tunnelling their way through his fingers and holding him in place as she turned just in time to see the fear in his face and the panic in his eyes.

She drove the back end of the spear into the centre of his chest, the solar plexus, locking up his diaphragm and impeding his breathing. Then, she turned quickly, breaking open his already faltering guard by pulling his arm along- allowing her to bury the spear’s killing edge deep into his chest.

Hearing as the other Ikedentrite quickly approached her from behind, she released the screw-like bones from her neck, turning the blade of the spear to use it to drag the man’s body along. Swinging it about her, she threw it against the rapidly approaching Ikedentrite, watching as he simply threw it off of him and continued the pursuit.

He had already bypassed her guard, his body past the tip of her spear. Surging forward with the might of his back leg, he threw a punch square against her jaw- feeling only as the bones and the sinews of his fist crumpled against her face.

She slid backwards, readying her spear for another thrust as he withdrew in pain, clasping his hands when she felt his foot suddenly bury itself in her soft fleshy abdomen, sending her careening backwards across the soil.

Struggling to get back to her feet, she heard as several others quickly began gathering around her. And before she could even rise from her knees, she heard as seven pairs of footsteps began racing directly towards her.

And her heart hurt- an explosion of bone even bigger than the last emerging from her once again.