A/N: Merrrryyy Chwuehue!! ^0^/ Hehe. As I promised, more updates! And yes, its a double update. Wheeee. Christmas special will be about a day late ;-; apologies!
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An hour into the Box, Iolani Tori was lost again. The sun had cut above the horizon, bright and disgusting, casting its light upon that which consisted of shadows only. Now, shadows remained still—fixed in time, lasting primarily in his worldview that was only just beginning to cloud.
The wind was a block of ice that hurled into the side of his face, leaving him frozen and bruised despite the ugly rays of sunshine that insisted on blinding him even in the shade.
Io was in constant battle with everything in the world and that naturally included himself. He could afford to raise his castle walls and take to arms against the battle of sorrow that he knew could not be won, resulting in wave after wave of the enemy that would soon drown and destroy. But even in times like these, the stubborn sparrow could not seem to forget what it meant to be human.
While grief and sadness seemed—to many—the enemies of their fort, Io regarded them as visitors. Travellers from across the world who'd come to seek shelter from the rain, a warm meal to fill their tummies. These travelers, he would accept and attempt to understand; questioning their whereabouts and origins, their essence and motives.
Perhaps it was precisely this that made him feel as though the world was in flames.
Because Iolani had no filter for sorrow, took no arms against it and held no resistance against such an emotion, he felt it to an extent so great that on ordinary circumstances would destroy every other human being who remained oblivious to their existence.
What Io knew, however, was that the battle was not going to end.
It would be eternal,
Until his death.
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I'm sorry dear, voiced Lyra with a disappointed chirp. I'm exhausted from scouting the area. Plus, we barely had any rest since last night. The diurnal perched on Io's shoulder for a quick rest, wishing that Luna was here to help.
It's okay, hoped Io. As long as we...as long as we keep going Southwards, we're bound to see the trail that I left. From there, we should be able to find Luka. He'd definitely be searching for the next shell—he probably wouldn't even have thought that I'd somehow run out.
The past two hours had featured the pair mindlessly going about, running into another hen (chickens were very common, since all prey were expected to enrol in the current Season games) and a pigeon who was apparently guiding the way. The latter was however, in truth, fairly lost.
Io, despite having the world upon his shoulders, went out of his way to direct them towards the way he'd come from, doing his best to convey the message with confusing hand gestures and finger-pointing. He felt additionally tired after doing so, promising himself that nothing else would make him stop his feet until he found his eagle friend—a promise he'd soon break.
Not too long after, the sparrow was ambushed by a pair of predators near a well that he was passing. Thankfully, they turned out to be people he knew.
The swan twins were surprised to see him alone. Odile was telling his sister through their Link that he'd almost clocked him out with his wing.
What appeared to them most surprising however, was the look in his eyes.
He looks like you whenever you forget your routine on stage, Odette commented anxiously, her brother's narrowed eyes going unnoticed. I wonder what went wrong.
"Thank goodness we found you Iolani," the swan lowered her voice and made sure to be at her gentlest. "We were just heading towards the gate. Shri and a couple of others are down East on your trail—which was brilliantly thought of, if I may add—but the rest of us were told to guard the exit in case those snarky bitc—witches somehow managed to sneak you there," Odette saved herself as soon as her brother gave her a bony nudge.
Io didn't look like himself at all, which could have explained Odile's territorial instinct on sight. He felt to them like a stranger; a wandering traveller, lost in the world.
That the sparrow swept aside their concerns and narrowed his attention to a single detail, only those with knowledge of his dilemma would see why. Io picked up a stick and scratched something in the earth.
LUKA?
"Sullivan?" Odile exchanged a mixed expression of confusion and awe with his sister. "We haven't seen him."
"Iolani," the white swan furthered her brother's confusion when their companion looked eastwards, away from them. "Let's hurry. Everything will be over when we get to the gate. Come, let's—
"Iolani?"
"Io, where are you going?"
With a single nod of his head, Io began towards the east, willed now by the direction given by his friends, hoping that he wasn't too late. He turned behind to give them a wave, and perhaps it was the grieved look in his eyes or the solemn way he'd raised his hand, but Odile and Odette felt that there was something lonely about that wave—as though the world was about to end and he was the only one who could prevent it from happening.
They let him go.
*
Bageshri had not known what to make of the bloodied mess before her eyes. The girl, stumbling over undergrowth and ugly protruding roots that caught onto her woolen socks, had stifled a scream and turned to run.
Now, the onset of guilt and sorrow was only just beginning to claw at her cage. She had felt, for the very first time, an emotion as raw and fresh as blood. Crimson and dark, she hadn't seen that much at a single time, not with her own eyes, no.
But as she was running—running away—far from the still and unmoving corpse, the guilt and responsibility began to weigh heavier than her legs could carry. Had anyone else, apart from herself, seen him?
Who did it? Could she have prevented it?
Unknowingly, she had crashed into a shrub, having missed a vine that had caught onto the front of her sneakers. If only she hadn't left him if only she had obeyed her instincts not to split up if only she was there—it was her fault.
She crawled to her feet and turned to look over her shoulder, as though hearing her name. Shri did not understand what it felt like to care, genuinely, for someone other than her mother. It had been the two of them against the world and if asked, she would have preferred for it to remain that way.
Her fault
The osprey turned back, beginning in the direction she had come from. Mother would have laughed, 'you're the kind that hungers for learning', was what she once said; and at that point in time, Shri had thought it a critical jab at her greed. After all, would anyone have liked to be insatiable?
But if anything, Shri had—over the past couple of months—learnt one thing, and that was never having too little space for more in her heart. It wasn't that she was giving her mother any less, or so Iolani Tori would have said. He was the one who taught her many things.
It was acknowledging that there was no end to one's ability to care.
*
She lifted his arm and felt his wrist for a pulse. Naturally, there was none. The surface of his skin was colder than a block of ice even during the day, when rays of sunshine filtered through the gaps in the canopies above. The soil was, still, damp with crimson and Shri could not get the fact (that her soles were caked with the dried blood of her friend) out of her mind. Carefully, she turned him over.
Having inspected the body, she had pictured a scene of his murder. Primarily, it featured a shadow coming from behind, a hand on his jaw in a matter of seconds and the other, doing quick work with a blade and slitting multiple veins and arteries with a single cut. Examining his throat from the front confirmed her theory, adding to that a severed trachea that would have made his death silent.
The blood was getting to her head and the smell—the stench—was nearly unbearable.
What Shri saw next however, as her eyes traveled downwards and stopped at his chest, would have made any other human being throw up. And although young Shri would often help her mother out at a small clinic near the slums where diseased and infected wounds were common, she'd never seen something as horrifying as a heart ripped out of one's chest.
The hole was there. Empty where the creature of the cage once belonged to, and it lay gaping and alone, as though screaming for the heart to return.
She was brave enough to take a second glance.
The cut was made almost surgically, upon closer inspection. It was almost square, as though planned and executed rather oddly. She corrected herself—the heart wasn't ripped out of Slayne's chest, it was only cut open and taken. Why was it taken? And by who...?
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Io had not stopped since he last saw the swan twins, and with the sun being particularly merciless that very afternoon, it was inevitable that his legs were closer to snapping. They were narrowly surviving on dry biscuits and water to keep his energy levels sufficient, but more than physical exhaustion, Io was a different form of tired.
With a mind like his, there was no rest from scrutiny. The boy was built for thought and running away from that which made him himself was, as he considered long ago, not a proper solution. If he was stuck in the prison of his mind, so be it. He would be stuck forever.
It was not until the sparrow (even with his slow and mechanic gaze, a result of exhaustion) spotted a rare movement amongst the trees in the distance. From trunk to trunk, someone was close by.
Identity did not seem to matter anymore. Io couldn't have told them apart—friend or foe—even if he could see their faces. He could take anything at the moment, even a stab to the chest, since the additional pain could not compare to the one he'd experienced so sharply mere hours ago. Even now, it was sharp. It would always be.
Vaguely, he was surprised to identify the silhouette. Familiar, it darted from tree to tree and it reminded him of the time he was in the Philippines, when he'd seen (somehow, through the borrowing of Luna's eyes in an unconscious second) the person who tried to kill him.
The other sparrow.
Io hadn't known that they attended Flight School. After all, his history teacher conducted a lesson on Winged who, in fact, did not attend the school only because they weren't registered. They weren't naturally born as Winged. When Io posed the question of how they actually became one, his teacher swept the matter under the carpet and declared the class dismissed.
Of course, there was the possibility that Io simply hadn't known about this particular sparrow. There were many tree sparrows in Flight School, at least a good thirty of them. Surely, just because he hadn't seen them around didn't mean that they did not exist?
He followed.
Picking up his pace and closing the distance between them, Io could only hope that the sparrow was connected to Reux and would hence bring him closer to Luka, in some way or another. The probability was a quite a leap from what Reux appeared to be—a lone idealist carrying out his plans against a wider world—but worth the attempt.
But would Reux really attempt to assassinate him? Well, that was a good question even for himself. Io could never guess. For the most part, he was sure that Reux wanted him alive and kicking, just so that he could have the pleasure of torturing him mentally. After all, the tragedy could only continue if he was alive, and Io understood this best.
Wait.
He stared at the trees. The sparrow was gone; the silhouette was formally weaved through the trees past the clearing had vanished, leaving Io hopelessly alone and upset with himself. Was he seeing things?
Reaching up to rub his eyes, he saw the world spin—apart from the flames—before fixing itself in the proper direction once again. His eyes, weary and tired, could not seem to track the movement of anything at all and while the prospect of rest was frightening and amazingly foolish, continuing with vision that drew hallucinations was not a very good idea either.
Both were foolish.
Resting was time wasted, minutes, seconds that could have been short of a life saved and it was not just any life. It was Luka's. Yet, Io could not conceive how he was supposed to search for someone with a clouded mind and a frame that felt like matches stacked atop one another, ready to fall.
It was timely, then, that Lyra pointed out the third resting point that they'd come across—a decision made, seemingly, for him only. This time, his Avian did not need to urge him like she had been trying to do the past couple of times they passed a tent.
He parted the flaps, entered, and collapsed.