ACoL book 2 - Chapter 8: Relentless

The river turned to vapor as a maw filled with fire and magma crashed into its surface. A wall of steam slapped the zerok, almost knocking them both out of the air. The brutal turbulence shook Vincent, filling his eyes with stars. He felt something pop in one of his joints. Rock exploded from thermal shock, liacyte shattered. Shards from the explosions stung his legs. Dust and ash, funneled by the pass, chased after the zerok until it enveloped them. Grit flew into Vincent’s eyes and coated the inside of his mouth. The air itself shouted with cicadas and earthquakes.

Everything was orange. The dust, the ashes, the air. The heat permeated it all. The zerok pulled upward, flailing toward the sky like swimmers drowning in the zeffyr’s chaff. But the heatwave must have pushed them forward because soon, Vincent felt cool wind break against his face. Down below, the zeffyr, hidden in the cloud of destruction it was creating, continued to carve a rut into the valley. Odd, it seemed to be ignoring them.

The zerok climbed. And like before, the zeffyr eventually continued its pursuit. The zerok tried to lead it into the mountain face to slow it down, flying low until it seemed like they were in danger of glazing the rock. Vincent could only catch glimpses of the colossus. Where rocks touched the zeffyr’s maw, blinding flashes erupted. He saw a boulder fall into its opening and as soon as it passed into its threshold, it exploded. The shattered pieces glowed orange and melted. Rock should not melt that fast...not even if it fell into a volcano. It was as if the fragments had fallen into a powerful microwave.

When they both gained some distance, Selefi slowed down and flew beside Madeen. Vincent could tell they were communicating. Selefi left her side and flew off.

Where the hell is he going? Vincent thought.

Selefi kept his distance, falling behind while Madeen led the colossus on a wild chase. She dragged it into as many obstacles as she could. The air shook with the sheer scale of its destruction. It was an unstoppable force, carving angry red lines into the land. Lava and molten glass spattered its trail. Madeen did a u-turn and flew over it, riding the heat. Again, the colossus appeared to ignore them. But then it changed direction and pursued them both. Madeen did this several more times. She was testing it.

Eventually, Selefi rejoined them. Vincent could see The La’ark barking instructions, though the words were inaudible. Still, Madeen seemed to understand. Could the zerok read lips? The chase was endless. Madeen was pushing herself, Vincent could feel it. But she kept ahead of the zeffyr. Like a shovel that had hit clay, the colossus plowed into the hard rock. They were leaving it behind, they were finally making headway.

In the distance, he saw a group of zerok dotting the vista. Selefi veered off hard to intercept but Madeen stayed on course. A few minutes later, Selefi returned, joined by the fliers. There were nine of them in total. The La’ark signaled toward a large flat plateau for them to land on. There appeared to be a small, spring-fed lake at its top. When they landed, Vincent stumbled and struggled to stay upright. But as soon as he found his footing, he headed straight for the spring. Dust caked his parched throat. He dipped his snout into the water and drank as much as he could. Madeen and Selefi joined him. The other zerok landed shortly thereafter.

There was something different about these zerok. Was it the way they moved? The way they held themselves? They were leaner than most and they looked lighter than Madeen. One of them had snow white feathers with thin black stripes running down its middle. Vincent was surprised to see that its eyes glowed with a vibrant blue. When it opened the eye on its gullet, it also glowed, only with an orange light. He didn’t know zerok could be channelers too. Besides the lambent iris, the pupil had a gray fog behind it. Was it blind in that eye? It did not seem to be looking anywhere in particular.

“Shaydos...” The La’ark rasped, “I regret I lack the time for a proper introduction. So, forgive my haste. All of you...deserve better. I am humbled by your aid.”

The white one, who appeared to be the leader, closed his eyes in acknowledgment.

“This is Vincent Cordell. He is the one you must escort. The rest of his cabras got left behind. A zeffyr appeared at our encampment and we have been pursued by it ever since.”

At this, all of them stepped back in shock and let out an angry hiss.

“Yes! That is the cause of the destruction you see in the distance,” The La’ark said.

Dark clouds and towers of smoke rose in the direction of the zeffyr. “I will tell you what I have observed,” she continued, “if there are no obstacles in the way, it is faster than your wings can carry you. It cannot be outrun. However, its ‘sight’ is imperfect. Madeen will evade its pursuit, and for a while, it will show no sign of having noticed her maneuver. But it will always change course and continue its pursuit. I can only surmise that it has some method of locating Vincent, but it cannot see him all the time.”

“Second, while it can be slowed down by the mountains, we cannot get too far from it. Otherwise, it will vanish, and it will reappear near us. I do not know how. But we must remain close enough to it to lead it. I do not know how far from it we can get. But it nearly killed us.” She turned to Selefi. “I thank you for your aid. I need you to do what I asked. Find a Telen. Or find a chain that leads to my brother, whichever comes first. I need to establish contact with him. I do not care if my brother is with a diplomat, sleeping, or emptying his bowels. You get him! Link us! Go!”

When Selefi took off, The La’ark continued.

“We need to keep the zeffyr in the Aindo Ring. You know these mountains. We must keep its destruction away from villages and the main roads as long as possible. We must keep it in the wilds, where nobody lives. We can use the zeffyr’s blindness to our advantage. When you see it turn, change course. Run it into anything you can find. It’s...it’s the only way. We need to last until I connect with my blood. He is the only one who can stop this.”

There was gravity to The La’ark’s words. Vincent felt a heavy weight settle on his shoulders. As she addressed the Shaydos, the white one with glowing eyes approached him. Its footsteps were deliberate, but gentle. It lowered its head to his level, and they met eye to eye. Its gaze was as fierce as an eagle’s and yet there was a soft sapience behind its glare. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He felt like he was being scrutinized.

“He has chosen a name for you to address him by,” The La’ark said, “it is written on his beak.”

Vincent had not noticed the scribblings on the zerok’s beak, hastily scratched on keratin with some sort of ink. “I can’t read the language,” he said.

“I thought you could understand any language?” She was referring to Vincent’s uncanny ability to hear any language in English. It was a universal translation that appeared shortly after he arrived in Falius.

“Not text. It only works on speech,” he said.

“Glimmer. You may call him Glimmer.”

“Glimmer...” Vincent repeated. He didn’t know what else to say.

Glimmer closed his eyes in acknowledgment. Then he raised his head and looked in the direction of the destruction. The zeffyr was getting closer.

“It is time to move,” The La’ark said.

***

It had been four days. Four days since they met up with the Shaydos. Or had it been three? Had it been three days of relentless pursuit? Or five? Time was a meaningless concept, a fabricated idea sentient beings created in a vain attempt to understand how the universe worked.

Vincent was in hell. His mind was gone, and he was surrounded by a land covered in flames. He did not know who he was anymore.

Day one with the Shaydos: Three of them stayed behind while the rest flew off to retrieve the cabras. Glimmer was fast, faster than Madeen. His kin were graceful flyers, their thinner, leaner forms seemed to cut through the air. Using The La’ark’s observations, they were able to “juke” the zeffyr. When it pursued them, they would change direction to throw it off. When it course-corrected, they switched directions again. The La’ark was right, the colossus seemed to have moments of blindness. It was as if every so often, at regular intervals, it sent out a ping and waited for a response. It was pinging Vincent.

The La’ark counted. She said every twenty tults, it was cued in on his location. A “tult” was clearly a Falian unit of time. Vincent himself counted out approximately forty seconds. Every forty seconds the zeffyr saw him. And its sight lasts for about ten seconds. He knew this because it would chase after Glimmer, its maw tracking the zerok. Then it would become blind again, heading in a straight line toward Vincent’s last known location. So, it could be evaded. They could trick it, kite it into cliffs and mountains and gain some distance.

The problem was...it never stopped. It never rested, not even for a moment. Nothing posed a threat to it and nothing that got in its way stood a chance. Glimmer put an entire mountain between them and their pursuer. While they took a break, Vincent watched an orange spot appeared on the mountain face like an angry boil. Molten rock spewed from it as the zeffyr emerged. The entire section of the mountain collapsed. They got away just in time, narrowly avoiding the shockwave. If the zeffyr ran into something that offered some resistance, its heat output exploded. Its light became blinding. It summoned however much energy it needed to obliterate its obstacle.

There was no time for sleep. At most, they earned themselves twenty or thirty minutes before the zeffyr caught up. So, when night fell, the fight continued. It was torment. Sleep deprivation was taking its toll.

Day two: Storms were forming. Systems were drawn by the fires gathered like dark spectators. Lightning flashed and the air filled with stinging gases, ash, and rock dust from demolished cliffs. Small patches of forests burned, beasts fled in terror.

Glimmer tried to keep the destruction localized in order to minimize the devastation. So, he led the colossus back and forth, left and right, overlapping the paths it had already gouged into the land. The problem was that the chaff it kicked up was making the air unbreathable. It burned their eyes and scorched the throat.

Day three was when Vincent began to lose himself. He was beyond exhausted. He was little more than a husk who simply existed. He was thirsty, he was hungry. His chest was fluttering, and his heart was skipping. His body needed sleep. In fact, it begged for it. When he shut his eyes, he nearly got it. But the jostling from the flight kept him awake. And when they took breaks, there was never enough time. He would get close to nodding off only for The La’ark to scream at him or for some explosion to rock the land.

After running the zeffyr into a particularly thick mountain, they took a break. The third zerok, who was nicknamed Shadow, took over for Glimmer. The latter flew off to bring back food. The La’ark and Vincent had not eaten in days and so they needed sustenance. That sustenance, however, came in the form of a slain beast. There was no time to cook it. With the zerok’s help, The La’ark ripped the meat right off its bones and ate it raw. She looked feral, biting down and wriggling her snout to loosen the flesh. Then she thrust some into Vincent’s hands.

“Eat...” she rasped, blood dripping from her maw.

Vincent stared at her, as if he didn’t know what she was asking. Raw meat...it was unsanitary. It was unfathomable. But he couldn’t protest. He was disassociating, though he wasn’t sure whether that was the schizophrenia returning or it was sleep deprivation psychosis. He raised the meat and took a bite. It was warm against his tongue and he could taste the tang of blood. He immediately gagged.

“You need to eat,” The La’ark insisted, “open your maw. Do not think about it. Do not chew. Swallow.”

Her eyes were heavy, and her voice was trembling. The La’ark was not doing too well either. Vincent forced the meat into his mouth and then she clamped his jaw shut. His sinuses filled with the soft scent of carrion. The gag reflex seized his entire body. But she held him firm until some alien function took over and he downed the whole thing. When she let go, he nearly threw it back up. But it stayed down.

The La’ark satisfied, chose a place by a rock and sat down. Her snout sank into her hands. Vincent felt gravity tug at his head and he collapsed onto the dirt, closed his eyes, trembling. Sleep was coming to him, and it was coming fast.

But then they had to leave again. He almost wailed. He felt his scaly skin flushing from sleep deprivation. Existence was misery. Being awake was agony. He wanted to scream, but he was too tired to do it. He saw everything in glimpses, clouds wafting past his face, flames licking the land. He could feel Glimmer trembling against his back. The zerok were incredible...and yet days of nonstop flight were wearing them out too. Their flight quavered and they became unsteady. Yet they persisted.

How long would this last? This nonstop pursuit? An explosion rocked the air. Shrapnel and debris flew and struck one of the zerok flyers. Vincent opened his mouth in a dry gasp, a pitiful facsimile of a cry as the Shaydos went down. It tried to recover, but it could not. It was too weak, too exhausted. It crashed against the land and then it got devoured by the zeffyr.

Glimmer shrieked, his voice sounding like a pitch-shifted hawk wailing. The keening, loud and angry, shook Vincent’s bones. It was the first time he had heard a zerok utter a cry of grief. It was a horrible sound. It broke him. His body was shaking, he was a heaving wreck. He just wanted this to stop.

After putting some distance between them and the zeffyr, The La’ark gestured frantically to Glimmer from her flyer. She pointed to a river that was coursing through a humongous vein of rose-colored liacyte crystals. Some of them were at least twenty to thirty feet tall. The Shaydos banked toward them. The shores were jagged and uninviting, but eventually the Shaydos found a clearing and landed.

Vincent immediately let himself fall. He didn’t have the energy to hold himself up. His snout met the ground, there was a flair of pain, and he tasted blood. His body was shaking uncontrollably. Somebody approached him and he heard The La’ark’s voice.

“Come, drink.” she said, “Telo’s Wing...I hope this buys us time. The presence of vast amounts of liacyte is supposed to make it harder to track its victim. Now get up!”

Vincent allowed himself to be dragged toward the river. He plunged his snout into the water and drank. His trembling sent ripples through the surface. When he was finished, he rolled onto his back. His wings touched a few of the crystals. A transformation began to take place. The flesh on his wing darkened from the point of contact and a night-time blue spread across his body. Glowing cosmos appeared. It was a mysterious interaction only he had when contacting liacyte.

As celestials bloomed across his form, he stared up at the liacyte that flanked them. They towered over him like judges. The Shaydos perched on their pinnacles and cried out in grief, wailing for their fallen comrade. Vincent turned his head. The La’ark was panting, sitting with her back against a rock. Her snout was buried in her hands. Vincent mouthed something, but no words came out. Only a dry click escaped his throat. He wasn’t sure what he was saying. Ashes danced in the air above. “I...I...”

The La’ark’s ears twitched and she looked up at him.

“What is it?” she snapped.

“Leave...” he paused for a moment, forgetting what he was going to say.

“Save your words, Vincent Cordell.”

“You need to leave me...” His voice was more like a death rattle than a voice.

Something wet was running down his cheeks. Tears? It did not feel like he was crying, yet his eyes were wet. The La’ark looked him up and down, a scowl etched on her snout.

“I killed them...” Vincent said, “I lied...I got them killed.”

His voice trailed off. He remembered the helmet he wore, stained with a soldier’s blood. Somebody screamed because of a mangled wing. His knife flashed, spilling Xalix’s blood. His hands were wrapped around somebody’s neck. Teresis, the telen he killed. He drifted among scattered memories. He was destruction. It’s why Girishnal chose him. It was his nature.

“No,” The La’ark said. She did not elaborate any further.

Vincent closed his eyes. His body wanted to sleep, it needed it. And yet...it had been trained to flinch at the thought of it. Sleep was death. And so, it refused. It jolted him. He opened his eyes and turned back to The La’ark.

“I’m not worth this...you have to leave me. You said...you said I would pay for my lies. Let me pay. I’m not...” He drifted a bit, trying to find his words. Why were they so evasive? “I’m not good.” Vincent deserved death. He wanted it. He was so damn tired. Voices whispered in his ear, caressing him, nudging him toward his demise. A silence stood between them as The La’ark considered her response. When she spoke, her voice was softened but filled with the same severity.

“You listen to me, Cordell,” she rasped, “we need to know our enemy. We need to know you, whatever you are. You want to take...to take the easy way out and call yourself brave. It does not work like that. That is cowardice speaking. Your guilt is just. Live with it. Learn from it.”

“It’s logic...” Vincent said, “I’m the target. Leave me. Don’t do this...I’m not worth it.”

But he was wrong. He saw himself trapped in that inferno, skeleton wailing but refusing to die. No, he didn’t want to get caught. And yet...wouldn’t that be justice for somebody like him? He closed his eyes. Every time he drifted close to sleeping, he flinched. He was convinced he would never be able to sleep again. It was locked from him. He was going to be forever trapped in this limbo, a husk of a person.

The La’ark was right. The liacyte bought them more time. Vincent was finally able to drift off into a state that nearly resembled sleep. He heard the Shaydos’s chirping and clicking, but they were transformed into meaningless nonsense as he lingered in the realm of dreams and broken thoughts. He kept hearing The La’ark whispering.

“My brother will fix this...” she said, “He is the only one who can. The telen...we need the damn telen...”

This respite from the zeffyr did not last forever. An explosion shook them. It was time to go, the zeffyr found Vincent’s scent. But he couldn’t get up. He didn’t want to. It was his time to die. In fact, he was already dead. Just let it happen. Then the destruction would stop. Vincent felt something nudge his arm. He opened his eyes and turned his head. Glimmer had his beak tucked under his arm. His hand clasped onto the zerok’s feathers as the Shaydos lifted him to his feet. Then he allowed himself to be taken.

Time lapsed. He was gone. His limp body hung from Glimmer’s grip as they soared over a spreading hell. He breathed, he saw, and he heard...but he acknowledged none of it. All he knew was a land covered in flame and magma.

On the fourth day...or was it still the third day? Vincent did not remember night. It became irrelevant since time blended together into one endless dream. The cabras caught up. The Shaydos flew in, bringing Menik, M’kari, Tuls, Jeris, Madrian and Sperloc. Their voices felt distant as he nearly dozed off. But like so many other times, as soon as he put his head down to nap, it was almost time to flee. Somebody helped Vincent to his feet and he leaned on them.

Voices yelled, angry, virulent. Somebody was arguing. Sperloc? Vincent could see the historian sparring verbally with The La’ark. He kept jabbing his finger toward Vincent. Spittle flew from his mouth. He could not hear the words, but he knew what Sperloc was saying: Leave him behind. He’s doomed! The others...they stood in awe of the zeffyr’s destruction. Their feet were rooted to the ground.

“Tell them!” Sperloc bellowed, “tell them what he is!”

Behind him lay a panorama of hellfire. Flames danced and spun as they wrapped around the trunks of trees. The bright oranges of the burning valleys mixed into the blackness of their smoke. Dark roiling towers reached their fingers across the blue sky, seeking to snuff the sun itself out. The La’ark walked right up to Sperloc and smacked him right across the snout. It was a raw, hollow sound. He stumbled backwards and for a moment, it looked like he would attack her.

“Find yourself, Sperloc!” The La’ark snapped, “because I hear a coward’s words!”

Sperloc bared his teeth at her, so Menik jumped into action. He pulled Sperloc back before he could retaliate. However, that seemed to be unnecessary. An awareness came upon the old tuhli, he got a hold of himself and remained silent. However, he was shaking with fury. Vincent heard Tuls whispering. He could not make out the words, but it sounded like a prayer.

“We will get through this, Brother,” he said. There was terror in it. Vincent didn’t know if the relos was trying to comfort him or if he was talking to himself.

“Stop calling me ‘Brother’!” Vincent roared. He didn’t know where the anger came from, and his voice, husky from sleeplessness, did not sound like his own. There were cracks in his words. “I’m a...a..” a traitor. I don’t deserve to be called ‘brother’.

“I am sorry, Vincent,” Tuls said, shocked by the outburst.

Sorry? Vincent stared at the relos. What was Tuls sorry for? He was already forgetting his own outburst. Only the unhinged rage remained, but it was quickly dwindling. He did not have the presence of mind to sustain any emotions.

The zeffyr reappeared through the wall of smoke and ash. The zerok grabbed their riders and took off. Vincent’s body, bruised all over from the constant battering, screamed when Glimmer picked him up. But he was too weak to cry out.

The land looked like wax that had been gouged with a soldering iron. The fires continued to climb, higher into the sky. They sucked in the wind from the surrounding lands, creating eddies and small tornadoes. Heat storms grumbled in the heavens, like monsters leaning over the mountains, ever-changing, ever-shifting. And the zeffyr, insatiable in its hunger, continued to consume anything that got in its path.

The terrain, once beautiful and precious, was being vandalized and laid to waste. The Shaydos had no choice...if they flew too high, the zeffyr, without anything to obstruct it, would pick up too much speed. It would overtake them no matter how hard they tried to shake it off. And so, they sacrificed the mountains. They sacrificed the lakes. They sacrificed anything that was solid or stout enough to slow it down. How long could this go on though?

They found pockets of liacyte and bought themselves time. But the zeffyr always learned where they were. Its arrival was merely delayed. It was inevitable, like death and time itself. In the middle of the destruction was Sergeant Dave, weeping, oblivious to the hungry inferno. Vincent’s voices jabbered in his ears and in his head.

When he dropped to his knees to drink from a river, he saw his haggard reflection in its water. His blue tongue hang from his open maw, dangling from its side. He heard a feral dog, manifested by his psychosis, snarling in his ears, grinding its teeth and laughing. After he quenched his first, his face fell and hit the ground. The phantom dog continued to growl. His body was...off. Something didn’t feel right. Nausea had been building in his stomach for hours now. He crawled back over to the river and retched. Water, mixed with strings of bile spewed between his teeth and floated away. Somebody said his name. But he didn’t know who.

“Game sickness,” The La’ark said, “we ate raw meat.”

“Your gut is untested,” Menik said, kneeling next to Vincent. “It’s not ready for carrion. Get it all out.”

“Help....” Vincent said before another wave cut him off. His claws clutched the ground. His body was an earthquake now. He could hear his wings trembling. When he was finished, he didn’t bother to clean himself. He simply let his snout flop.

“Where’s the Triasat?” Tuls asked while Menik cleaned off his snout. The shandan warrior searched through Vincent’s pockets, but Vincent grabbed his arm.

“Don’t...” he said, “save...save it.”

Menik looked like he was going to ignore the request, but he accepted Vincent’s refusal. Suddenly, The La’ark stood up, alert.

“What is it?” Menik asked.

“Telen...” she said staring into the distance, “I have been waiting for you. You have found my brother too?”

Vincent could sense the presence of a familiar lore. A telen was contacting The La’ark.

“I am The La’ark. Do you know who I am? Have you heard of me? Good. I have a problem and my brother is the only one in Admoran who can take care of it. So, connect me to him...do not argue...JUST DO IT!”

The La’ark waited, pacing back and forth. She was chewing unspoken expletives.

“Brother,” she said to nobody in particular, “are you with company?” There was a pause as she waited for a response. “Then you listen to me and listen close...” she continued. Every word had a purpose. It had weight. An almost manic expression twisted her snout. “Are you near any cities?”

She waited for a response only she could hear.

“Good,” she said, “Then stop where you are. Tell everybody in your caravan to flee. Tell them to run as fast as they can. And prepare yourself for a fight. Raise Sincalindre.”

Another explosion shook the land as the zeffyr plowed through another mountain. It had found them.

“Why?” The La’ark shouted, spittle flying from her mouth, “because I am bringing a zeffyr to you! So, raise your conduit, Thal’rin! Raise Sincalindre!”