Survivor by Tyelca

Survivor

Read Survivor

Crack. Whip. Pain, searing hot across his back. Run, move, out. Get away. Get away. Wall. Climb? Climb. Grip, pull, find support. Grip, pull, find support. And on, and on. On the top now. Jump down or climb down? Jump. It’s faster. A look shot over the shoulder. It’s closer now, the whip. Faster. Faster. Crash into the ground. Roll over, back on his feet. Run. Run as quick as he can. Dig his toe-paws in the earth, use the torn muscles in his legs to gain momentum. Use arm-claws to push down those around him. Get out. Get away. Fast. First. Do not get caught.

Open terrain now. Run, it’s the only option. Run to get out, run away from the pain. The laughter follows his footsteps. Cold in his ear, in his mind, cold in his body. He shivers. Keep going, now. Don’t stop. Keep running. There, a gate. Open. Far away still, but a possibility. A way out. Darkness around, torches unable to lighten the long entrance hall. Single stroke of white. Light? Color? Exit. Focus. Run. Get out. Don’t think, run. Move.

He hears the whip crack not a single feet to his left. He speeds up with hitherto unknown reserves of energy. Just a few feet more… Vaguely he is aware that the struggle for survival is fought all around. He does not care. There is only one goal. Painfully slow does the exit come nearer. Others fall down around him. Others die around him. He won’t. He can make it, he knows he can. He feels it in his bones, distorted as they are.

He makes it. Outside? He thinks he is outside, but that’s all he thinks. He’s not safe yet. Not out of reach. But close. So tantalizingly close. He risks a glance sideways. From the countless others around him, only a few have made it as far as he. One moment he wonders if the majority is dead or captured, but soon discards the thought. Not useful. Not interesting. Not important. He zigzags between the standing rocks and skeletons that litter the ground. It slows him down, the twisting and turning, but it also makes him a harder target to hit. It is a risk he takes. But it pays off: the fire whip always cracks the ground and never his legs or his back. For now.

The plain is enormous, an outside he remembers only vaguely. Mountain smoke seals of the sky; a ceiling so low it can almost be touched. But the air is cold and fresh instead of stuffy and old and that in itself is unbelievable. If he were to be struck down now, he would have breathed freedom. And that would be enough. But he isn’t struck down and he slowly allows the believe that he truly is out, gone, away, to trickle in.

It has been so long that he almost forgot there was a world outside. A real world, not a shadowplay of fire, pain and darkness. His legs ache, exhausted from the distance he’s already crossed. He is out of breath, wheezing to get more air in his lungs. These discomforts are temporarily, he knows. He ignores them and moves on.

He doesn’t believe he will ever be safe, but then again safe is a relative concept and he deems himself far enough away to find shelter and rest. He has not heard the whips for a long time, has not seen their fiery tips, and when he looks over his shoulder, the entrance has disappeared into the distance. Rather than sitting he lets himself fall down. He feels hunger, thirst and exhaustion, but since he has neither food or water he decides to sleep.

When he wakes up the hunger and thirst are still there, and even more prominent than before. But his legs feel better, although his muscles still ache, so he pushes himself upright and continues his flight. He does not have a real plan, except to somehow survive long enough to find those from before. His memories of before the darkness are vague, but he knows they’re there. Tall pillars of green and little lights in the sky. And others, same as him, tribe… kin? He doesn’t know. But these imperfect recollections are enough to form a plan: find them. Find them, and then, somehow, it will be alright again. He will leave the shadow that still clings to him, his body and his mind.

But first things first. He is still hungry, so he needs to find something to eat before he embarks on his mission. He is still somewhere on the plains before the Mountains, and it continues in all directions, and endless sea of dust and rock. No meat, no flesh. No grog. Although, he remembers he was not the only one who made it this far. One of a handful, yes, but not the only one.

For a brief moment he thinks about that, why he has escaped where so many others fell. Why the firewhips did not hunt all of them down when they could have, easily. Why there is only quiet around. Then his stomach grumbles and he continues on his hunt. He smells the air, dry and cold, but with putrid hints of another. He follows the scent, stalks it, softly, quietly, quickly, until he almost stumbles over the body. It is hidden in a shallow depression in the ground, covered in mud by way of camouflage, and still asleep. The body is ugly, he observes, thick grey skin with lots of scars and crudely reset bones. With one hand he pulls the body over, turning it to its back. The face, still unaware of him, is even more disgusting. The nose is flattened, by what he knows is most probably hammer blows, repeated over a long period of time. Above it, two eyes are spaced out widely over a broad forehead. The skin is swollen in some places and the wrinkles in the flesh are filled with dried blood. The mouth is even worse: teeth protrude over the lips and are sharpened like fangs while in the open cavity of the mouth a thick tongue lolls around.

The sight is unpleasant and for some reason offending, so he reaches out, grabs the tongue and with one pull removes it from the mouth. This does awaken the nasty creature as it screams in pain and surprise, but he is prepared: in his other hand he holds a knife and he plunges it inside the skull, between the two uneven eyes. He waits until it is dead and moves to pull the knife out again. When he touches the handle, a shudder runs through the corpse. For a moment he sits motionless, convinced this was somehow a trap, but when nothing happens he slowly relaxes. Again he reaches for the blade and again the corpse moves. But now he knows the trick and spends a few thoroughly enjoyable minutes making the cooling body move like a puppet on strings. Then he transfers his attention to the tongue he still held in his hand. Now it hung limply, boringly, but he was still hungry so he lowered the thing in his mouth, chewed through the layers of muscle and swallowed. He reflected that he’d had worse and then set to stripping the corpse of everything useful. It wasn’t much, but he was happy with his new pair of boots and the sharp dagger he now rigged to his belt.

Then he rises and looks around. To the eye, all directions are the same. To the mind, however, certainly to his mind, attuned to the Shadow as it is, he knows which way not to go. In turn this means he tramples in the other direction, and for long days his routine remains unbroken.

Slowly the terrain shifts, from rock and dust to rock and more rock, with some hints of color splattered over them. This in turn becomes a mountain range, with white tops and cold winds. He finds his way through, fighting against the bitter cold until he descends into green valleys, dotted with colors he does not remember. He marvels at them, marvels at the beauty of the world before ripping some of the colorful things from the ground and stuffing it in his mouth. Immediately his expression changes, coughing, trying clear his fangs from disgusting stems. His elation quickly sizzles out, leaving a cold indifference somewhere low in his chest. He actually growls, surprising himself, not sure whether he likes the sound or not.

He thinks back often to that growl, a sound of dominance and aggression. Violence and darkness. It was not the first time such a sound reached his ears; the Shadow was filled with them. It was the first time he produced it himself, and he feels a pride that he doesn’t want to acknowledge. These thoughts trouble him when he makes his way through woods, over rivers and below the vast expanses of sky. But he does not forget his mission: finding his erstwhile people and thereby finding himself. He is aware these wishes are ambitious and that he may die long before he even approaches one of his own, yet he has hope and that hope propels him to go on. He does; after so long under the Shadow time has become meaningless and distance arbitrary. He has long since ceased with directions.

He does not truly expect to find his tribe, the people he also belonged to in a grey past. If he is honest with himself, he does not even know whether they still exist, or if the Shadow has ensnared or perhaps even eviscerated all of them. So when he first feels like he’s being spied upon, he just shrugs and pushes down the instinctive fear (for in the Shadow eyes are always watching) and continues on his way. When the sensation comes again, he eyes the high treetops warily, but when he sees nothing out of the ordinary he dismisses the notion again. The third time he swirls around, certain of the presence of someone. But the forest is empty. He keeps standing like that for a moment longer, all senses on high alert, but he detects no one. He releases his breath and turns around again, only to come face-to-face with something he remembers as if from a dream. Long pale hair that glints under the dark sky, unblemished pale skin, widening eyes.

He does not move, everything silent, waiting. The face stands higher than his own and he has to look up to see it, which, he is reasonably certain, is not how it was in earlier times. His own skin had also long since lost that luminescence. That glow. He’d even forgotten about it entirely. In the Shadow, one did everything not to get noticed.

This all happened in a few stunned second, and then the familiar-looking being moved. It used a crude weapon: a thick branch cut into a blunt bludgeon, that it admittedly handles with terrifying accuracy and speed. At first he does not feel the blow to his face, and then he ducks to avoid the second one. Slide. Distract, feint. Try to seize the club, careful to not get hit again. Move lef- No! Duck, jump, away, out of range! Wait, breathe, appraise the opponent. Draw your own knife and dagger. Search for an opening. Penetrate its defense, seize your chance.

Slash. Whack. Rip. Tear. Bite. Maim. Kill.

With a sigh he sits back, leaning on the balls of his feet, trying to catch his breath. His arms and front are covered in red blood, the body before him nigh unrecognizable. He should feel bad, he knows, to have done… this, but all he feels is an anger that grows, low in his stomach at first, then submerging him like a tidal wave. How dare this creature attack him like that, without any provocation? How dare it ruin his chance to return to the past? For he is aware that if the other kin-creatures know of this, they will not accept him. They will hunt him, they will kill him, and they will feast around his corpse. Slowly his anger subsides again, ebbing away, leaving a layer of cold hate in its wake. He knows, now, that this reaction will be his welcome if he ventures further.

He lets that sink in. His hope, his dream, his last chance. He found them, and they reject him. They reject him, and they will pay for it. Not that he himself will present them with his reckoning; he knows he will not survive. But as he looks over the corpse, the spurt of red blood slowing down into small pulses, like a broken fountain. He doesn’t feel regret when he watches the last of the vital fluid trickle away. He doesn’t feel anything, truly.

He stand, licks some of the blood off his hand. Off his dagger and knife, before sheathing them. He turns back. He goes back. He returns.

As he makes the long journey anew, he knows why he escaped the Shadow, why the firewhips did not follow him until he was beaten down into the dirt. Why he was allowed to survive the cold of the mountains, the darkness of the woods, the ferocity of this encounter. He has left the Shadow, but the Shadow hasn’t left him, and never will. He knows that now. He understands why the creature attacked him on sight. It had not yet been corrupted, not yet been in contact with the Shadow. It recognized the Dark, though, and reacted.

He manages to reach the plains, breathes in the familiar dust and doesn’t lament the loss of sky as the smoke covers his head. He marches until he finds the gates, the very same gates through which he left, so long ago, wide open, welcoming in their familiarity. He enters, feels the oppression push him down and he growls.

From then on, as he resettles into his old life, he notices nothing is the same. Where he wanted to get out he now only wants to stay. When the demons with their whips of fire come, he doesn’t flinch away. When the whip strikes, he revels in the pain and he hates it. He hates everything, nowadays. He finds himself working harder than even the whips want him to, and finds himself increasingly lonely because of that. He doesn’t care. He snarls when anyone comes too close and as they, one by one, decease under the merciless ministrations of the demons, he survives. Even more, he thrives. The pain and hate sustain him in a new way, make him want to push harder. And when his peers are replaced, he finds they are more like him. More ruthless, more savage than their predecessors. More predator.

They growl and snarl and bite and kill each other, and he laughs and he roars and is delighted and he hates them. But this is his new life. He is the example, the prototype. They are the improvements. He is the survivor, they are his survivors. He is the singularity, they are the copies. An he remains alone.

He knows and he knows and he knows and he knows. And he hates himself for it.