ALL NOVEL Interlude - Blood and Sand
A long time ago
They were running, of course they were. Karya had burned an entire pass and the valley beyond it. Killed so many of them. He was… struggling with his emotions. A part of him wanted to do it himself, to avenge his brother’s death, but… it was done. And now, they had the others coming after them. Those that survived, Verostion’s few remaining commanders. Erakael wanted to stay, to make a stand, but in the end he had agreed with Karya. They were done here the moment this war happened. There was no coming back from it, Bolas and Verostion were both dead, but too many others had died with them, too many for everyone to forgive and forget.
He saw now what she had meant when she tried to convince him to do something other than push for conflict. But Erakael… he couldn’t betray his brother, he couldn’t turn his back on him. He remembered the time back on their old world, when he was small and his brother kept him safe for the years it had taken him to gain access to the Framework. Without Bolas, he would’ve died in the first month. It was… guilt that pushed him too. He knew that the reason his brother became mad, the reason why he sought so much power was so that he would be able to protect Erakael.
And now he was gone, and Erakael had an entire people looking up at him for guidance.
“They are getting closer,” Karya said.
Erakael snapped out of his mind and turned, looking at the small council gathered around him. They were fleeing south, through the territories that they had claimed, taking everyone willing to go with them. They knew that the army coming at them now wanted blood.
“We are too slow,” Dark Shell said, the Champion form Skreen looked haggard, if something like that could be said for his kind. The pure black chitin surrounding him was covered in dirt and grime from the constant march, and Erakael saw that he was tired from the weeks on the run.
“We have non-combatants, they don’t,” Karya said.
And that was the main issue that they had. Many would’ve stayed and fought, despite the fact that they were outnumbered, and probably outpowered. The enemy had all the great weapons that Verostion hoarded, they had more high tiered people. If a fight happened, Erakael knew that they wouldn’t be able to protect their people, the children and those who couldn’t fight. Their enemy didn’t have that disadvantage.
“I know, the Rolling Tide Hive came to me,” Dark Shell said slowly. “They are willing to buy us time, send all of their Warrior and Champion Forms to slow them.”
Erakael winced. That would mean their death. Skreen were many, but few of them had achieved great power. And the Skreen of the Third Iteration were not those of the others. Their world had not devolved into war among the hives like on the worlds of the First and the Second Iterations, they had not come to the Infinite Realm as one united and powerful hive, but many. They had worked together, had chosen who was going to go to the Infinite Realm, they… they sacrificed too many on their world to make sure that every hive would have representation in the Infinite Realm. Erakael knew that they would march into death without a second of hesitation, but he couldn’t ask that of them.
“Erakael,” Karya said, her eyes sad. “I know that you don’t want that to do that, but we don’t have any choice.”
“And what after Karya? They will die to buy us time, but what after? They will keep coming, and they will catch up to us again,” Erakael said.
She didn’t answer, instead she looked away, gazing at the sky. “I…”
They didn’t have the strength to defeat them, Karya, for all her power couldn’t do what she had done that day, not for months yet, and even then… It was a special circumstance, the enemy would not be foolish to fall for it again. Erakael himself… he could hold them on his own, but… what did it matter? They would overwhelm him eventually, and then there would be no one to protect the others.
“I… we just need to hit them hard enough that they decide it is no longer worth it to them to follow us,” Karya said slowly.
“I don’t know if we can do that,” Dark Shell said slowly. The three of them were the strongest left, they had others that were powerful, but…
“I might know a way,” Karya said.
Erakael looked at her and saw something that he hadn’t seen since all of this started, hope.
Karya
Karya stood in the garden surrounded by blood red flowers, she didn’t speak, instead she waited and hoped for an answer.
Ender looked at his flowers as he answered. “I was… glad that you came back, but this? It doesn’t concern me.”
“Maybe not now, but eventually they will expand and find you, then they will try to take this from you,” Karya told him.
He shrugged. “Then they will die.”
“I know that you could probably kill many, but eventually, they will overwhelm you,” Karya warned him. She knew that he was strong, as strong as Bolas and Verostion were, stronger perhaps. He was just as mad as they were, obsessed. Though his madness was all around her, his art, his garden. It felt wrong to try and use him this way, but… she had no choice.
He turned and glanced her way. “You would have me sacrifice my work, my garden.”
“You can always start again somewhere else. The lives that will be lost if the enemy catches us will never grow again.”
He tilted his head, almost as if he understood, but then he looked away again.
After a few moments of silence, she spoke. “We will help you, fight at your side, together we could—”
“—No,” he said. “If I agree, you can’t fight with me.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You are fire,” he said simply.
She blinked, not quite understanding. And then she realized what he meant.
“I don’t want you to die,” she said slowly, that was never her intention in coming here. She only wanted to try and find a powerful ally.
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then, he turned and met her eyes. “Do you still have it?”
Karya smiled and pulled out a flower out of her storage, she had it encased in a small glass container.
He looked at it for a long while, and then gave her his answer.
She stood on top of a mountain, watching the carnage. She… it was unlike anything that she could’ve imagined, anything that she had expected.
“Dread heavens,” Erakael whispered from her side.
Karya couldn’t do anything but agree. They made a gamble, they sent the people ahead with Dark Shell and the others, and they drew the army away—it was them that they were after, mostly. They led them into the mountains, to Ender’s territory. She… she hadn’t expected what happened.
They sent their strongest after them, maybe a hundred high tiered individuals, intent on hunting the two of them down. And they walked after them into the garden territory. And they died.
Even from so far away, she could see the fighting, hear the screams echoing in the distance. The garden was alive, it moved like one, killing, destroying all intruders. Half of it was on fire, and she knew why Ender didn’t want anyone else there who wasn’t an enemy. It would be hard to control who he went after, and she wouldn’t be able to control her fire and not destroy his plants.
The fighting lasted for a long while, or at least it seemed to. But then, she saw shapes flying away, running over the tops of the mountains that surrounded the territory, one, then two, and no more. Two out of the hundreds that entered the valley.
Karya didn’t wait before she jumped down and flew toward the garden, looking for Ender. She found him in the center, surrounded by bodies impaled by roots or strangled by vines. One had plants growing out of the body, as if they had used the corpse as soil to grow.
Ender was on the ground, breathing, but just barely, unconscious. He was covered in wounds, as she knelt next to him.
She heard Erakael land behind her, and then speak as she placed a potion on Ender’s lips. He didn’t wake up, so she picked him up and stood. She turned and saw Erakael looking at the dead, then turn in her direction and look at the man in her hands.
“I… we should leave, before they… no, I don’t think that they actually have anyone powerful enough left to come after us.”
Karya agreed. She looked around and knew that there was a lesson in all of this. The right person, at the right time and place, could do more damage than armies. It was how she killed Verostion and his closest allies, it was how Tali killed Bolas. For all the power that they held, even the mightiest could fall.
They took to the sky and flew away, leaving the ruined garden burning behind them.
Erakael
Five decades of relative peace, that was how much what they had done had bought them. They ran and settled far beyond the territories that the First and the Second controlled, and it wasn’t far enough. He looked at Dark Shell as he gave him the news that he had been dreading for years.
“They found us,” he said.
Three decades of growth, of trying to recover. And they were coming for them again. He looked to his right at Karya, sitting next to her husband—Ender—the other one wasn’t present. He didn’t understand what she saw in him, but he knew that they would’ve had a lot more difficult time of it if he wasn’t there. He fed their people with his power, and for that Erakael was grateful. Their two sons and daughter stood behind them, the two sons mirror images of each other and their father.
“The question is, what do we do now?” Karya said slowly.
“We fight, of course,” one of her sons said. “These are our territories, this is our home.”
Erakael agreed, he just didn’t know if they had the strength to hold them off. They had been preparing, but they had only just started to recover their population.
“We don’t even know if they will attack us,” Dark Shell said. “We’ve seen only their scouts.”
“Do they know that we are here?” Erakael asked.
“Most likely,” Dark Shell said. “They’ve been expanding in this direction for a while. I think that a new conflict is inevitable, because of the past or just because they want to expand here. It won’t matter to them.”
Erakael closed his eyes and tried to think about what he should do while the others argued.
It happened as he expected it to. War. They came, and they didn’t stop. It didn’t matter that they won some battles, that they killed their champions, in the end, there was always more of them.
Erakael sat in the meeting room while the others debated what to do, how to defeat them, how to push them back. He knew that it was futile.
“We got word that Zenker fought against two armies,” Karya said. “Perhaps we can approach some of them again, find some way to stop the war.”
He could hear the pain in her voice, the loss of her son had almost defeated her.
“They don’t care, their internal conflicts are nothing, they hate us more,” Dark Shell said.
It was true, Verostion was their leader, but he died with many others. People whose family or friends remained, and as long as they lived this would never be over. They couldn’t forgive, the same as Erakael and his people couldn’t forgive them. They were doomed to a cycle of war and death, until all who remembered were dead.
“No,” Erakael spoke finally, silencing the others. “We won’t do that. There is only one way forward now.”
“What?” Karya asked.
“We leave, the same as we did before. Only this time we go farther, as far away as we can. So far that they won’t reach us for hundreds of years. So that we will have time to grow and get strong. So strong that we will be the ones that come for them,” Erakael said. They kept coming, seeking revenge, well, he wanted revenge too. And he was tired of being at their mercy. For once, they would be the ones at his.
The scorching desert was somehow even more dangerous than the monsters. Not to all of them, some had powers that could help them keep the heat away, others could survive it. But others were hit harder than most, but none harder than the skreen. Their bodies didn’t handle the heat, and many had died just from walking. Still, they walked, didn’t complain, they died on the sands and Erakael felt every death. With every soul lost, his hatred grew. They pushed them to do this, to run for decades through hostile territories, losing thousands upon thousands of people in their quest to find a new home. Erakael had stopped listening to the daily reports, he couldn’t handle to hear it anymore. There had been no days when they didn’t lose someone in a long time.
But that had also made them stronger. They fought monsters greater than anything that they had seen near the core. They had conquered dungeons and gained powerful items. They all grew in power, eclipsing what they had once been. And that nurtured him and his rage. The knowledge that all of this hardship will only make them stronger, that this is what would give them the power to triumph against those who had pushed them out of the core, who had killed his brother.
“Monster swarm!” The call came from above, Dark Shell flying down with the other scouts.
“Where?” Erakael asked as Karya turned already sending orders for the soldiers to assemble
“To the east,” Dark Shell said. “Several thousand of them, they’ll be here in minutes.”
“I’ll go to the front,” Karya said, but Erakael stopped her.
“Don’t, call the soldiers back,” he said.
She frowned, looking haggard and tired.
“It reset this morning,” Erakael said.
He saw her sigh with relief.
Erakael spread his wings and flew away from the convoy, not even looking back. He could barely handle looking at them. He found the monster swarm easily enough, a dark tide charging at them. He landed in front of them and focused. Seven years they had spent in the desert, looking for a place where they could make a home. They hoped that the desert would end, but it never ended. The desert shaped them, the trials that they survived here forged them. Their power changed to help them survive in it, all of them had become hardened, had changed. He let his perk out.
—Glorious Army of the Dunes—
A perk, an ideal, fit for a leader surviving in the desert. The army rose around him, soldiers made out of sand, monstrous titans of dirt and sandstone, burrowing worms made out of dirt and rock. A desert was not barren, it was not simple sand, it was harsh and hard, but there was life. The monsters came, and his army charged.
It was night when he returned to his people, they camped next to a small oasis, on a stone plateau surrounded by sand. It was not large enough to hold all of them, so many made tents on the dunes. He saw them, saw how accustomed to it they had become. They had been forced to adapt, to learn how to survive here.
He walked into his tent and saw Karya standing there, leaning over a table.
“We are going to need to move quickly tomorrow,” Karya said. “The monster swarm is gone, but other smaller packs had been spotted to the west.”
“No,” Erakael said firmly.
“What?”
“No more, this, here, this is the place. This is where we start our home, enough running it is time for us to grow again.”
Karya blinked. “Erakael, we are in the middle of the desert, the scouts haven’t seen any territories that are anything else anywhere near here.”
“So what? We survived in the desert for years, it made us strong. We will survive, this place,” he gestured with his hand. “It will make us strong.”
She didn’t answer, but he didn’t need her answer. He ruled them, it was his decision and no one else's.