Season 2: Episode 7 – Mercy in the Desert

This series contains mature themes and is intended for adult listeners.

>Begin Porta Cor imprint.<

I’m still tracking something across the dunes.

I’ve not been close enough to see what it is yet, but it leaves a trail.

A fucking bad one.

It is not attempting to hide it because either it cannot, or it doesn’t care.

The latter frightens me.

I should leave it alone and head to Alltud, but I’m well stocked. I feel strong.

I keep going.

I press myself flat against a dune and look up enough to see the skyline. There it is, high in the distance.

It pauses. Searching.

I stay still, calming my breathing.

Then it moves again.

I follow.

The pivot shift-weight maneuver works much better now. I finally have the feel for it. Rebane will be proud of me. I can move through these dunes without exhausting myself.

On the next dune, I pause on the way up. The trail I follow is strange.

One side appears heavier, so I bend down to look closer. The left side sinks deeper and doesn’t lift clean. Is it dragging something?

I stay on it a moment longer and climb the dune.

I walk carefully, keeping to the firm sand.

Eventually, the dunes start to thin out. The sand is firmer in spots, but I can still find evidence of the peculiar trail to stay on track.

I see a group of cacti, and instead of posing as them as I did last time, I recognize from my teachings with Lidel that they are Daltina Cacti, which are not only filled with water but with nutrients I need and some sugar.

I step up to one of them with Goroeswyr drawn. Carefully, I slice into the bend of the arms as she showed me, and a sweet juice flows out. I taste some, and it is refreshing. I grab a couple of small containers from my pack, fill them, put them back in, and take one more sip before I continue.

Several hours later, the sun rises on my third day out of the oasis. I have not seen any trace of the trail for a couple of miles now, and I worry that I have missed a sign or a change of direction somewhere.

The ground is much harder here, and the sand so thin that it makes trails of any kind improbable.

I walk on for a bit more until the sun shines brightly above the surface. I turn slowly, scanning the horizon as far as I can see, but find no trace of the creature.

Frustrated with myself for losing the trail, I find a stable place to set up my portable shelter. Maybe with a fresh start that evening, I will do better.

I drink, eat, and sit outside until the heat starts pressing in again. I slip into the shelter and get a few hours of sleep.

It is nightfall, and I feel the monotony of the days as I pack up my shelter and continue. I turn back northward, my original direction, toward Alltud.

The creature didn’t just fucking disappear. I missed something.

The sun starts to fall, and I pass a few more dunes. They are not as large as the ones I crossed before. They won’t wear me down. I feel quite capable of moving across them now, as if we have somehow become one.

I start up one of the tallest dunes in this grouping, and before I clear the top, I pause and crouch down to the ground. I hear a strange sound that I cannot identify on the other side of the dune.

My heart feels like it’s pounding in my throat. What the hell is that? It’s not a sound I have ever heard before. 

It’s not simply loud; it’s… heavy.

Something shifts its weight on the other side of the dune. It’s not walking or crawling. Burrowing? Rolling?

The sand beneath me vibrates with its movements.

I stay low. I don’t move.

Something flashes above the dune, just a tip of it, but I can’t make sense of it.

Shit. What is it?

Then I hear a long exhale with almost a roar or growl to it.

The flesh on my arms prickles. Think, Kylah!

I calm my breath. No movement. No intent.

Slowly, I pull the world around me tight, as Rhyddid taught me, until I’m no longer separate from my surroundings.

Suddenly, a massive, craning shadow falls over my head. I am too terrified to look, but I can feel it swaying back and forth over me in a rhythm.

Something wet hits the sand in front of me and almost makes me jump.

I remain crouched down against the back side of the dune, keeping the dismorphia going.

The shadow lengthens over me, and as it extends out far enough, I catch the underside of it as it passes over me.

Holy shit. Draigtywod. Its massive head scans the horizon. Its neck is over me; its front legs planted on the dune above.

It is sand colored with flecks of metallic gold in its scales and long red horns protruding from the sides of its snout.

I marvel at its beauty for a moment, holding the illusion in place.

For a second, it pauses its search and glances downward. I hold my breath.

Without warning, it roars, and the sand around me begins to give way a little. I feel its muscles tense through the sand, and then it leaps into the air and flies off in the direction I came from.

I watch it until it’s a speck in the sky, holding the dismorphia longer than I need to.

Crap. I wonder if what I’m tracking survived that.

I realize I may have moved too far west for Alltud and shift my direction slightly northeast after getting my bearings with the stars.

A few hours into the evening, the light from a half-full Pell and an almost full Agos light up the dunes ahead of me. The way the shadows cast off the dunes make it look like a painting in a gallery.

Something on the ground catches my attention.

Fuck me! It’s the trail.

I kneel on the sand near it to look more closely. The impressions on the left side are deeper than before.

Whatever this creature is, it’s not having a nice stroll through the desert.

I follow the trail closely now and glance up often to the dunes in front of me, hoping to spy it again.

All night, I follow the trail and never catch a glimpse of it, but I do find a place where it looks as if it curled up to sleep.

Is it some kind of dog or cat?

As the sun’s rays stretch across the sand in front of me with the new day, I notice a dark figure ahead of me slowly making its way up a dune.

Still alive.

It is more hunched over than the last time I saw it, but I am certain it is the same creature I’ve been hunting all this time.

Distance can be hard to gauge here, but I think if I press through the day, I can catch up to it by evening.

It’s midday. Fuck, it’s hot. I’m more determined than ever to catch it now, and I’m making excellent progress.

I stop and drink some of the stored Daltina cacti juice. Damn, that’s good.

I spy the creature again as I start moving, but this time it appears to be sleeping or resting on top of a dune. Not a fucking safe place to rest at all.

The sun starts to sink, and colors streak the sky again.

Then, I see the creature try to stand, but it fails and falls back to the ground. I am so close now, I might be seen.

I relax and bring the outside in again, wrapping myself in the cloak of my surroundings.

I move closer to it now, coming in from the west side of it. The sun is on my back as it sinks.

After all this fucking time tracking this thing, I am close enough to make out some details on it now.

Whatever it is, it has some major injuries on the left side, as every time it tries to get up, that is the weak side that brings it back down under its own weight.

I can hear what I think is its breathing now, too. Except it’s a horrible rasping sound, like an instrument with too many holes in it.

Its flesh is some horrid grey color with bits of sand colored streaks in it, and the flesh is covered in little sores filled with pus. Infection.

It manages to stand up again, but sways and staggers.

Oddly, it wears boots just like mine. I don’t know of any wild animals that wear boots. Is this a Tylwyth Teg?

It rolls onto its back.

I see what I think are lips moving, maybe trying to speak? But no sound comes out.

I am now right over it, looking down at it.

My left hand unsheathes Goroeswyr and holds it ready, as I begin to let the elemental dismorphia dissipate.

My shadow slowly materializes long and steady over the creature with the last of the sun’s light, and it falls over the creature. It lifts its face to me, and its eyes find mine.

First, the eyes are surprised. Squinting either from the sunlight or from disbelief. I don’t know.

Then the eyes fill with anger and hatred.

It tries to get up again, flailing its limbs helplessly.

Wait. I know those hate-filled eyes. My mind flashes to a scene where those same eyes are over me, staring at me hard without moving, while a sandstorm builds in the background behind him. “Sandstorm coming,” I hear myself mumble in the memory. Maybe I repeat it here too, I’m not sure.

My pulse increases, and I shut my eyes. But the vision is still there. The sounds. The feel. All the awful truth of what he did to me. I steady my breath and open my eyes again. I am the one standing.

He’s trying to turn over again to stand up.

I can walk away and leave him like this. He won’t make it another ten hours or less, I’m certain.

He deserves to die like this, doesn’t he?

I will suffer for what he did to me for the rest of my life, as will any others that he abused.

There is so much hatred in his eyes. Hatred in what’s left of the features of his face. He looks so alien.

Another memory comes through from the arena. Awyr. I’m beaten. Angry. Always angry. I blink. This creature could be me.

He gets up partially again and tries to lunge for me, but then falls and lands on his back once more.

I know what to do now. The anger must end. I step back toward him with Goroeswyr raised, and without a sound, I bring the blade down into the main artery in his neck and step back.

Blood pools out and soaks the sand underneath him. What’s left of his hands reaches for the wound, but it’s already too late for that. He gurgles.

His eyes, so filled with hate a moment ago, go blank and stare up at me.

I wipe my blade off in the sand at my feet and put it back in its sheath.

Without a word, I exhale deeply and turn my back to his body and walk. My head fills with thoughts and memories as I walk all night.

By morning, I feel surprise as I see the entrance to Alltud looming before me.

Spotters run into the entrance, and a few moments later, more community members flood out of it. I can hear them cheering. Celebrating.

It makes me want to throw up.

They think I’m the winner.

But I am only the survivor.

>End Porta Cor imprint.<