Brant trudged through the thick Jasmidianite mud alongside Baird and Aaron. The party had landed the two ships in a rare clearing a few miles south of the stronghold's location, and now they hiked the rest of the way through unforgiving terrain.
"You alright back there, bud?" Aaron asked, glancing back at Ace, who limped along with one arm draped over Sila's metallic shoulder.
"Yeah, I'm good." Ace replied. His words proved incongruent with the wince that followed them.
Aaron shrugged and turned to Baird next. "And what about you? You seem awfully down."
"Not down," Baird answered, "just thinking."
"Oh yeah? About what?"
Baird slipped a few folded pieces of paper from his pocket. "I'm just...really not sure whether I should sign these or not."
"Ah, I see. I get you. It's certainly a big commitment for a married man like yourself to take on."
"Exactly. Because on the one hand, I've got the love of my life, and the kindest man I've ever known, to take care of. And on the other, I've got all of you, my friends, and countless others who I don't know, who can still use my help regardless. I'm just not sure whether numbers or closeness are of greater priority."
Aaron nodded. "Yeah, I'm not sure I could answer that myself. But knowing you, I'm sure you'll make the right choice."
Baird smiled. "Thanks."
Several minutes of silent plodding later, the party approached a tangle of vines. Brant stepped forward, formed an axe in his hands, and chopped through it. He walked through first and found himself in a clearing, humid in atmosphere and foul in odor. Before him stood the demolished remains of the insurgents' stronghold.
Stone bricks lay strewn about on the damp ground, burnt corpses littering the spaces between them. Blue-faced swamp vultures perched atop the rotting bodies and ripped chunks of flesh off the bones. Visible steam ascended from their hindquarters as they groaned at one another.
Chariya raced ahead, startling both Brant and the swamp vultures. She leapt over a row of jagged bricks. The princess inspected the bodies with fear and urgency in her eyes.
Brant ran over to catch up, and all the others followed suit. The whole party spread out over the ruins, searching for survivors.
Brant snapped his head over to look when one soldier burst into sobs. The man held up a feline skeleton with only an isolated chunk of flesh here and there remaining. He collapsed to his knees and buried his face in his hands.
"Brant!" Aaron called as he bent down near a massive pillar, "Help me lift this, would ya?"
He obliged and slipped his hands underneath the opposite side from Aaron. They hoisted the pillar up and tossed it aside, only for Aaron to gasp.
"All my stuff!" he shouted. He stared with wide eyes at an immense jumble of crushed metal objects and snapped wires trapped under a mountain of rubble.
"Brother." Sila said, pointing at a smashed black robot resembling itself.
"Oh dear." Aaron replied, placing a hand over his heart.
Wendy approached the scene and growled. "Whatever bloody bastards did this deserve hell even before dying."
"I think I can arrange that." Aaron said, his voice devoid of any lightness.
Baird studied the ruins with a furrowed brow. "Lord have mercy..."
Aaron glanced up sharply. "On us. Not them."
"Of course." Baird replied. He jumped a second later and groped in his pocket. He slipped his phone out and placed it against his ear. "Honey? Yeah, I'm here...yeah, what's up?"
Brant exchanged a questioning glance with Aaron and Wendy as Baird stepped away, mumbling into his phone and listening intently in turns. After a few minutes, he hung up and rejoined the group with a grin on his face that awkwardly contrasted with the somber mood in the air.
"What're you smiling about?" Aaron asked with a bitter undertone in his voice.
Baird bit back some of the pleasantness. "Sorry if I seem insensitive here. Just...Abby just told me...wow! We...we have a little one on the way."
Aaron mustered a half-hearted smile. "That's great, dude. Congrats."
Wendy nodded. "Good to hear."
"Exuberant." Sila said.
Baird raised an eyebrow. "Exuberant? Who?"
"Me."
"Oh, well, you don't look the part, but I'll take your word for it."
Brant sighed and cast his gaze elsewhere. He widened his eyes as Hannah began descending a stairway full of cracks only he could see.
"Hannah!" he shouted as he sprinted over, "Don't go there!"
"Huh?" she asked as she looked up, still taking another step down.
The plank gave way, and the remainder of the staircase with it. Hannah screamed. With widened eyes, she stared at the long descent below her. Brant lunged forward and wrapped her in his arms, grunting as his shoulder made impact with the unforgiving stone foundations.
Hannah twisted out of Brant's grasp and offered him an apologetic smile. "Sorry 'bout that. You okay?"
He groaned and pushed himself to a sitting position. "I will be. Just promise me you won't do that again."
"Well, I didn't know anything was wrong, but I'll try mah best."
Brant nodded and allowed her to help him to his feet. Then he raised an eyebrow when she gasped and put a hand to her mouth. She darted over to a strange object in the shadows and picked it up. Hannah held up a mangled guitar. The body of the instrument bowed inward, and the cracked fretboard dangled loosely from it. Snapped strings wound around the disfigured guitar like tangled hairs.
Brant's features softened when Hannah stuck out her bottom lip and studied the demolished instrument. "That was yours?"
Hannah nodded. A tear rolled down her cheek.
He sighed and stepped closer to the sobbing brunette. Without a word, he pulled her to himself and allowed her to bury her face in his chest. He rubbed his hand gently over her back and only released when he felt her take a step back.
"I'm sorry." Brant said.
Hannah wiped her eyes and nodded. "Nothin' you coulda done 'bout it. But this stings."
"I'll bet. Was it a gift?"
She sniffled. "It was. Only birthday present papa ever gave me, 'cause all the other years, he was savin' up for dis one. And now..."
Brant felt his own eyes moisten as the girl fell back into sobs. "I can't imagine."
Hannah wiped her eye again. "You don't wanna."
With a sigh, Brant stepped away from the bawling girl to construct a makeshift ramp out of the collapsed stairway. It wouldn't be very stable, but his alternatives were nonexistent.
A few minutes passed, and finally Brant finished his labor. He motioned for Hannah to go first. With hands ready to catch her, he followed close behind. To his relief, no mishap befell them.
Hannah scurried off to show her nearest friend the mangled instrument, which happened to be Baird. Meanwhile, Brant snapped his attention to the sound of a faint groan. He hurried off in the direction he heard it.
Chariya and Brant both reached the spot at the same time and stared down at a pale man of skinny build who laid on the muddy ground, pinned there by a section of a wall. Brant immediately moved to lift it, but its weight was too great even for him.
He glanced over when the man turned to Chariya and muttered a few inaudible words at her.
"I am truly sorry," the princess replied, "but I did not catch that. What?"
"Why didn't you come back? You could've saved us."
"The whole reason I left was for your salvation." Chariya retorted, "Do you—"
"We tried..." the man trailed off. His head dropped and he never completed his statement.
Chariya let her head drop, and Brant found himself sighing and stepping away from another crying woman.
For no apparent reason, Brant's skin began to crawl, and he narrowed his eyes at the sensation. He ascended the highest pile of rubble and squinted into the midst of the thick line of trees and knotted vines to the north.
"Guys," he called out, "we've got company."
Aaron's eyes snapped up to Brant from where he stood below. "What do you mean?"
"I mean what I said. Dove's got a company of troops with him. They're coming straight our way from only a mile north."
Aaron's forehead wrinkled. "You can see through all that?"
"I can."
"Dude, that's some crazy...what's the word I'm looking for?"
"Acuity." Sila answered.
Aaron nodded. "Yes, acuity! You've got some insane acuity there, dude."
"I know." Brant said as he hopped down from the rubble. He set his jaw and cast a solemn glance about. "Now, who's got the olive branch? He's undoubtably after it."
Aaron turned his head. "I think Keira had it."
"Okay..." Brant said, scratching his chin. "I don't see her anywhere."
Wendy leapt up and launched herself several feet into the air with her rocket shoes. With a nod, she gently let herself down. "Behind that mossy wall over there."
Brant nodded. "Get ready to fight. Hard."
Wendy began offering an objection, but by the time two words had left her mouth, Brant had already dashed over to the overgrown wall. He hopped up and scaled the top with minimal effort. His feet crunched on a pile of chunky gravel as his eyes met Keira's.
"You'd better tighten your grip on that thing." Brant ordered without ceremony.
Keira frowned. Her gaze swept down to the branch in her hand and back up to his eyes. "I'm gonna hold it as tight as I'd like, thank you very—"
"No, I don't give a rip about your feelings. Dove's approaching. He's got troops, and he obviously knows his artifact is here. We can't let him have it."
"I don't—"
Brant silenced Keira with a wave of his hand. "There's no discussion to be had here. He cannot get that branch. Now, if you're to keep it outta his hands, you've gotta be able to keep it out of mine."
Keira scoffed. "Of course I can! You can't even touch it."
The brawny man rolled his eyes. "I mean in a theoretical sense, of course. If I could conceivably overpower you and wrest it from you, it ought to be handed to someone else."
"Well, let's see you try!" Keira exclaimed, a glint of both annoyance and mischief in her eyes.
Brant thrusted his hand forward. His fingers wrapped around the leafy branch without consequence. He yanked his arm back, throwing Keira off her balance.
She regained her footing and stared up at Brant with baffled eyes. "I thought...but—"
"Me too." Brant said, frowning at the organic object in his hand. "What in the world?"
Shaking his head, the blue-eyed man raced back to where Aaron and Wendy stood. Both pairs of eyes immediately snapped to the olive branch and remained fixated on it. In unison, their brows furrowed.
"Oh boy," Aaron said, "what kinda sorcery did you have to conjure up to do that?"
"It's none of my doing, I swear." Brant spat, glancing back at the sound of Keira running up behind him. "Listen, we've gotta come up with a plan here. Unless you have a way to shatter this thing in twenty minutes, all we can do is keep it from him."
Aaron shook his head. "No way. I ran some tests on it during the flight over."
"Dense." Sila declared.
"Very much so. Besides the obvious organic characteristics it does have, it also possesses hardness equal to graphene and diamond. The catch is, it's denser. By a bloody ton."
Wendy glanced sharply at him and bit her lip. After inhaling, she said, "It was off the charts."
Brant bit his lip. "So destruction will have to wait until long later."
"Yeah, obviously." Keira snapped. "So what's your bright idea?"
Brant shook his head and sighed. "I—"
"I don't care what his bloody plan is." Wendy interjected, "It's Chariya's choice. We ought to gather around and see what she's got to say."
Aaron grinned and patted the Danlashian's shoulder. "Good call."
Wendy hurried off to assemble the others while Brant, Aaron, Keira, and Sila stood and waited in a heavy silence.
Finally, Chariya approached, with Baird, Hannah, Ace, and the ten soldiers dragging behind at their own paces.
"So," she began, "Wendy has informed me that Dove and a body of troops are approaching from a mile north. Is that correct?"
Brant immediately nodded. "Yes, and I can tell just by looking at him, that he's very intent on attaining possession of something, likely his artifact."
"And how is it possible he would be aware of its location?"
"More than likely, he's being led by the spirit itself. But this is all beside the point, princess. We need to keep it from him at all costs. How're we gonna do that?"
"Retreat?" Sila suggested.
Chariya stood silently for a minute and scratched her chin. "Rare as it is that I agree to such a thing, I believe retreat really is our only good course of action."
"You're sure about that?" Brant challenged. "We've all got heavy hearts and cloudy thoughts, not at all conducive to the light footwork and heavy concentration we'll need to trek back through that swamp. Besides that, we would need to take it easy for Ace's sake, meaning they'd easily overtake us. And—"
"It is better to try and fail than it is to fail, having never tried."
Brant narrowed his eyes at the princess. "Cute words, but inapplicable. Let's say best case scenario, we make it to the ships ahead of them and take off. Then what?"
"We escape." Aaron interjected.
"And you know what else happens? They obviously see and hear us, call in air support, and just like that, we've got squadrons of Alcontean jets roaring in to take us down."
"You say that like it's a problem." Aaron remarked with a smug grin.
"Drop your ego for a second." Brant commanded, "We're not home, guys. We're fighting on their turf. They can call in reinforcements, deploy garrisons, all that stuff, but not us! We have no backup."
"That is precisely the reason I say we should retreat." Chariya said, "I find our chances of success in an airborne confrontation much higher than this."
"But what you're not realizing is, on the ground, I can help you. We're bound to have a confrontation at some point, and to me, at least, it seems we should make a stand. Here, we have plenty of cover for those who can't fight, if we only search for it. If we work together, and try our best, I think we can do this."
Chariya stared into Brant's eyes for several seconds. "Somehow, you have persuaded me. Do not disappoint me now that you have achieved that honor. Men," she called to everybody, "prepare to fight."
********************
A/N: That was...heavy, wasn't it? Definitely not what Chariya was hoping to see, and even if you may have suspected it, I'm sure you hoped for otherwise yourself. Anyway, if you liked it, make sure to vote and comment. Thanks.
Okay, so where to begin? I guess I'll ask one particular question here: Did you cry at any point reading this, and if so, when? I guess that'd be a good gauge who and what you're invested in at this point. 😁
(I know when I was writing it, I think everything hit me pretty hard. The base itself in shambles, the dead bodies, I think what hit me hardest had to be between Hannah losing her guitar and that one guy who was still alive. It's kinda heartbreaking he lived just a few more moments to pierce Chariya's heart with guilt.)
Anyway, for a random question, what's something you take for granted that you wish you didn't?
(For me, I guess losing our power for 4 hours last night kinda opened my eyes to how much I take electricity in general for granted. Like where I live in Washington, our productive hours in the day would be so much less without it, because not only are the days often a bit shorter than further south, but also it's often cloudy and cold. So not only would the clouds themselves conceal the sun, but then we'd always be focused on keeping warm. And that's not even getting into lack of internet. So yeah, I need to appreciate electricity more. 😆)
And that'll be it for me this morning! I'm feeling in a good editing mood right now, so I think I know what I'll be doing until breakfast. Have a great one, guys and girls!