Huge apologies for the unforgivably long wait! I had exams and distractions and laziness and short version I am a terrible person at keeping to any kind of schedule. I hope any other hypothetical readers aside from Dragonfree haven't forgotten this exists despite the massive gap. If there
are any closet readers lurking, since this is the final instalment, this will be your last chance to let me know you've been reading, so please come out and give some kind of comment, even if only a little one! It would be greatly appreciated. :3
<previous
Losing
“Missed again!” Tefiren called out gleefully. Trees and branches rustled and crashed behind him, the sounds of a horde of Sceptile fighting to reorient themselves.
Breathless laughter forced its way out of Forsira as she ran alongside him, shaking her head in incredulity. Even she couldn’t quite get her head around what he’d just done. Sometimes it was almost a shame that he never did the same thing twice.
She could hear footfalls from behind as They began to take chase again. It almost made her chuckle. The forest ahead was thinning out, sloping downwards; between the trees she could see sand, and beyond that, the sea. They didn’t stand a chance of catching the two of them this time. There was nothing They could chase them into.
Forsira caught Tefiren’s eye, seeing a wild gleam there. He hadn’t spread his wings to take off yet, so neither did she.
The sand tickled their feet as they ran out onto the beach, heading straight towards the ocean. She could hear Them behind, crashing through the last of the trees, but They were too late. Barely a wingspan away from the shoreline, Tefiren spread his arms, pumping energy into alternate leaves and flapping powerfully to lift off the ground. Forsira followed suit only a moment later, her feet brushing the water’s surface before she beat her wings to rise into the air over the waves, leaving every one of the Sceptile stranded on the shore.
Tefiren was whooping with unrestricted glee in front of her as he rose into the rainy sky. Forsira flapped a few more times, flying up to join him. He glanced at her over his shoulder and his eyes widened in surprise.
“The leaf thing!” he said, nodding at her wings. “You did it!”
Forsira smiled at him. She’d managed to get every other leaf on her wings to glow, just like he always did. “Of course,” she said. “It is the best way to take off, after all.”
It had taken her an awful lot of practicing while they’d been sitting around in various hiding places with little else to do. But she’d persevered; Tefiren had kept insisting that They’d catch her one day if she couldn’t do it, and while it had seemed like light-hearted joking on the surface, she’d known that deep down he really was worried.
Tefiren grinned the same grin he always did, but she could tell that something about it looked relieved.
There was nothing ahead of them but open sea, so they wheeled around to face the island and saw the row of Sceptile ranged along the edge of the beach. There were so many of Them that it almost made her stop short.
That was what she and Tefiren had just escaped from? It had seemed easy a moment ago, but now Forsira suddenly felt that they’d been lucky to get away.
She was too far to properly make out their faces, but Forsira could imagine the predators’ gazes, just watching, waiting for their prey to come back to the land.
Tefiren let out a half-chuckle. “They don’t give up easily, do They?” he said, the cheeriness in his voice sounding a little strained. “That’s the thing about this game. We can win for a while, but it never lasts. Even if we find the perfect way to lose Them, They’ll be back again later.”
Forsira flew a little closer to him, nudging him playfully. “Hey, who wants this game to stop?” she said, trying to think like he did. “You’d get bored, surely?”
He managed a grin. “Of course I would.”
She flapped her wings a couple of times to ascend. “Come on. Let’s focus on losing Them first. Live for today, remember?”
Below her, Tefiren glanced around the rain-filled sky, a hint of nervousness about him. “But… how can we lose Them?” he said. “There’s nothing here.”
Forsira chuckled. “Oh, come on, Tefi!” she said, almost admonishingly. “I thought you’d know this one! Rainclouds!” She looked pointedly upwards to the dark clouds pouring down on them.
Tefiren rose to join her, looking up with her. “But we can’t do that one,” he said, as though it was obvious. “We’ve done it before. It’s predictable. They’ll be expecting it.”
Forsira wheeled around to look at him head-on. “Even if They’re expecting it, They still can’t see us in a cloud, can they?” She glanced up again. “This one isn’t even a thundercloud. So it’s even safer.”
Tefiren snorted. “Safe is boring,” he muttered, but nonetheless he followed her up.
With a few more flaps of her stripily-glowing wings, Forsira rose higher and into the belly of the cloud. She shivered in surprise as she suddenly became soaking wet all over, blindly making her way through the dark watery mist. With a small smile, she thought back to the first time she’d been inside a cloud, the day Tefiren had swooped into her life and –
“
Wheeee!” she heard from below, twisting in alarm as a vaguely glowing shape zoomed at her, only dodging out of the way at the last moment before it crashed into her. Tefiren grinned from up close through the haze and then began wheeling around in wild twists and loops until he was merely a whizzing, glowing blur in the distance, giggling all the while.
Smiling to herself, Forsira shot away after him, chasing down the shining light and gleeful laughter that she knew was his, following his crazy paths until she finally managed to catch up to him. She reached forward and smacked him playfully on the tail with one of her blunt leaves. “Gotcha,” she said.
He turned to look at her through the haze, pouting.
She laughed. “What has got into you?”
“I have no idea!” he replied, his eyes twinkling manically as he wheeled in a tight loop around her. “We could stay up here forever, and They’d never be able to find us! They don’t have a clue where we are!” he declared, a singsong quality to his voice. With another giggle of glee, he gave a huge flap of his wings and shot away near-vertically up through the cloud.
Grinning, Forsira flew up after him, but she almost stopped flying in surprise as suddenly she wasn’t in the cloud any more. The dark mass was still below them, but there they were, covered in raindrops and gliding across open, clear sky.
Tefiren flicked his head cheekily, sending drips flying at her from his crest leaves.
Forsira didn’t respond. She was still staring in wonder at the cloud they’d just flown out of. “I never realised there was anything above a cloud,” she murmured.
“Neither did I!” Tefiren said excitedly, circling closer to her and looking down as well. “Good, isn’t it?”
“It’s almost like the island isn’t there,” she said. There was barely anything but cloud as far as the eye could see, blocking out her view of the ground below. The island on which she’d lived all her life, the island that was her whole world – it was so strange not being able to see it. Only the ocean was visible around the edges, off in the far distance. “It’s like we could just fly away and go and live somewhere else.”
Tefiren had been following her longing gaze out towards the sea, but at this he laughed. “Live somewhere else?” he said as if the thought was mad. “But that would be so boring!”
Forsira sighed. “You’re right,” she said. “We could never fly out that far. And we can’t stay up here forever, either.” She looked evenly across at him. “We should go back down. They won’t know where we are any more.”
“Neither do we.”
She grinned at him. “Doesn’t that just make it more fun?” With that, she let the energy out of her wings – it was beginning to get tiring to keep it there, anyway – and folded them to drop through the cloud. She closed her eyes as the water ran over her, then opened them as she felt the whipping and scratching of branches, spreading her wings frantically to slow her descent before she hit the ground. Tefiren’s method of landing was fast and all, but there was something to be said for having some kind of control over where she was going.
There was a huge kerfuffle of leaves as Tefiren crash-landed in a pile of undergrowth behind her. Forsira turned to him, unable to help smiling. He looked back at her, half-covered in shrubs and twigs and fallen leaves.
“Looks like you’ve found a good hiding place already,” she said cheekily.
He pulled his way out of it, shaking his head. “No,” he said. “No, that won’t do. It won’t hide us well enough. We need to find a better one.”
Forsira took in the forest around them. There wasn’t anything else nearby that struck her as a potential hiding place – and she’d become good at spotting those over her time with Tefiren. “It might take us a while to find one,” she pointed out. The risk of staying out in the open for too long had increased severalfold recently, ever since the battle they’d fled from. It seemed that They were growing ever more relentless, determined to flush out the last few.
Tefiren’s eyes lit up nonetheless. “Not if we make one!” he said. “I can dig, remember?”
Forsira remembered the Linoone burrow; this wasn’t a bad idea. Tefiren had already turned to the pile of undergrowth he’d landed in and was scrabbling away rapidly at the soil. Not having the same mastery of digging as he did, Forsira stood by to keep watch – she always had to assume that They might be just over the horizon.
There’d been a time when Tefiren would constantly stop, tense and look around no matter what he was doing, regardless of the fact that Forsira was already keeping an eye out. But now he remained engrossed in his burrowing, leaving the task of lookout entirely to her. He trusted her.
After a tense wait with nothing to distract Forsira from the ever-present threat of Their sudden appearance, Tefiren wriggled back out of the hole he’d made and indicated that it was ready. It wasn’t the comfiest of holes, she thought as she crept inside – the soil was soaked through from the constant rain, making the whole thing rather muddy, added to which it was almost completely dark within – but at least it would be safe. Tefiren crawled in after her, scrabbling at some of the undergrowth above ground to hide the entrance.
Forsira stood up too high in the hole and bumped her head into the ceiling, feeling the wet soil give slightly above her. This was not encouraging.
“Are you sure this is safe?” she asked Tefiren.
“Probably,” came his voice from somewhere beside her in the darkness. “We’ll just have to find out.”
Forsira still wasn’t convinced. “What if it caves in while we’re sleeping?”
“It won’t,” Tefiren insisted, fidgeting next to her. “Look, Sira, we don’t have time to go and find a different hiding place now. They could already be on our trail. We’ll just have to stick with this one.”
Forsira looked at Tefiren, just able to make out the shape of his face as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, and wondered if he actually didn’t mind the thought of a cave-in. Perhaps he’d prefer to die quickly and quietly in his sleep, as opposed to the alternative.
She snuggled closer to him in the cramped space. “We can’t run forever, you know.”
She felt him twitch beside her. “What? Of course we can. That’s exactly what we are doing, and that’s exactly what we’ll keep doing. What are you talking about?”
“There’s so few Archopy left,” Forsira said. “We might even be the last two, I don’t know. They’re never going to give up. I just sometimes wonder whether it might be easier to…”
“No,” Tefiren said fervently. She was so close to him that she could feel his heart beating faster. “I don’t care if it’s easier, we can’t do that. We can’t just let it end.” His voice became more pained. “Please, Sira, don’t talk about this. You know I can’t…”
Forsira sighed wearily. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Forget about what I just said.” She closed her eyes and leaned into him. “Live for today,” she murmured.
She felt Tefiren nod and shift his arm to stroke along her crest leaves. “Today.”
- - -
The Sceptile known as Zathern raced through the trees, his female companion at his side, his fellow hunters darting from branch to branch ahead. He was fixed solely on their prey, the lone Archopy that was fleeing from them all, out of reach for the moment but soon to be within it. More of his comrades lay waiting in the trees ahead; it was being chased into an ambush. The prey may have been spreading its wings, trying take off, but it would never fly high enough to escape in the time it had left.
Two Sceptile suddenly shot to the ground in front of it, their weapons readied. The Archopy let out a squawk, flailing its wings as it wheeled around to flee from the new threat that had just appeared in front of it. It didn’t seem to have realised that this merely took it back towards its original pursuers; in its blind panic, the prey was rushing straight at him.
Alarm sparked somewhere within him, but he ignored it. He knew what to do. His blades already lit, he slashed at the Archopy, once, twice, as it went past. It didn’t get much further before collapsing to the ground, wounded and bleeding. In an instant, he leapt onto its back, holding it down and rendering it immobile as his female companion walked calmly around to the front of their prey to deliver the killing blow. Her eyes were cold, hungry, the same as the rest of his fellow Sceptile as they gathered behind him to watch, he knew.
His hand shaking slightly for some reason that was unknown to him, he grabbed hold of the Archopy’s crest leaves, yanking its head up to expose its throat to his companion.
“No,” it mumbled desperately, its voice revealing it to be a male – not that it mattered. “No, don’t, please…”
“Don’t talk,” the Sceptile told it flatly. He wasn’t sure if he was saying that because talking couldn’t help the Archopy now, or because it made this easier for him.
A hint of a grin passed across the female Sceptile’s face as she knelt down in front of the prey, her blades lit. He closed his eyes just before he felt the Archopy go limp underneath him. There wasn’t any particular reason why; he just happened to close them briefly at that moment.
The deed done, he stepped off his fallen prey. The rest of the Sceptile were still watching him, something other than cold hunger beginning to return to their demeanour, but he couldn’t recognise their expressions in his current state. Without acknowledging them, he turned and walked away. Only his female companion followed; where the rest went, he didn’t particularly care.
After he had been walking for a long time, he finally stopped and sat himself down on the damp, muddy ground. There he began shaking his head furiously to clear the monster inside from his mind, to let the real Zathern out again.
It was a while before he’d managed it. Feeling as though he’d been suffocating, Zathern took a deep breath, blinked and glanced around the forest. Karsa was there, smiling sympathetically. She seemed to have been waiting for him.
“You okay?” she said, sitting herself down beside him.
“Yeah,” Zathern said flatly. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“That was almost the last one, you know,” she said in what might have been an effort to cheer him up. “They reckon there’s only those two that are really annoying to catch left. We’ll get them eventually, too.”
“Yeah,” Zathern said again. And then there would be no Archopy left. They’d have won. If you could call it winning.
They sat in silence for a while.
“You still haven’t actually killed any of them yourself,” Karsa said eventually.
He turned to her sharply. “And that’s a bad thing?” he asked, some force finding its way into his voice.
“No, it’s not, but… well, you could have done by now. That one just now ran straight into you – you could have been the one to kill it, but you left it to me.”
“So?”
“Well, it’s nothing, really,” she said. “It really doesn’t matter if you don’t. But I’ve seen Tharann looking at you – this time, he looked… sort of disappointed. Or annoyed.”
“What does Tharann have to do with anything?” Zathern spat. “He’s got what he wanted from me already.”
“I don’t know,” Karsa said. “He might still want something from you. I wouldn’t put anything past him.” She shuddered, before continuing more hesitantly. “But besides, Zath… don’t you want to try it, just once? Aren’t you even a little curious as to what it feels like?”
“Not particularly, no,” Zathern muttered. “And f
uck Tharann. I don’t care.”
Karsa sighed. “Oh, Zath,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder, making him face her. “What happened to you? You were so much more…
alive when I first met you. Where’s all that enthusiasm gone?”
Her words sparked something in Zathern, and for the first time in what felt like forever he thought back to his childhood. He looked around the forest – they were still on the sunset side. The pattern of surrounding trees was vaguely familiar, reminiscent of a friendly battle, perhaps, or a hunt – a proper hunt – he’d had when he was younger.
Suddenly he found himself choking out a mirthless laugh. “You don’t have a clue.”
Karsa frowned. “What?”
“Enthusiasm? Back when I first met you? That wasn’t even the half of it.” He laughed again, without being able to stop himself. “You should have known me when I was a kid. Living over here. Everything was fun and exciting, and nothing bad was ever going to happen.” Zathern realised he was glaring at the ground, shaking with emotion. “But then They happened. You lot.
Us. We ruined it. Everything would have been
fine if we hadn’t…”
Karsa had her arm around him. “Hey, Zath,” she said softly. “You shouldn’t think about that. There’s nothing we can do to change it. Just forget.”
“No!” he protested, breaking away from her. “I don’t
want to forget that! Not the times when life was good, when I really enjoyed myself.” He looked at Karsa emphatically. “This right now isn’t good. This is just making the best of a bad life. And all this time I’d forgotten that life used to be good – really, properly
good – and I didn’t even realise what I was missing. Don’t you dare tell me to forget that again.”
He held her gaze firmly, a little surprised by his sudden outburst.
Karsa paused for a moment. She seemed to be thinking. Then she stood up, pulling him up with her. “Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s try to bring back a little bit of that. You always seemed to like our training battles – I take it you battled even more when you were younger?”
Zathern’s face twitched into a hint of a smile. “Loads more.”
Karsa moved to position herself across from him. “And you really enjoyed it?”
He nodded. “Absolutely.”
She was beginning to bounce on the balls of her feet, reminding Zathern of the enthusiasm of his younger self. “I don’t suppose you ever used to be one of those careful, tactical fighters? I bet you always just threw yourself into it.”
“Definitely,” Zathern said, chuckling.
She grinned. “Thought so. Right, then!” Karsa pumped energy into her leaves and positioned herself into a battle-ready stance. “You’re on the sunset side, your home. Nothing bad has ever happened and nothing bad ever will. These here are perfectly blunt, harmless blades – remember them? This isn’t training for a hunt or anything of the sort. It’s just a normal, friendly battle. Zath! I challenge you!”
Zathern couldn’t help but smile. “Why are you doing this?” he asked her.
Karsa shrugged. “I want to help you,” she said simply. “And maybe my way of dealing with things isn’t the best way for you to deal with them, so I’m trying something else. Anyway!” Her grin returned. “Do you accept my challenge?”
Zathern channelled energy into his own leaves, forming them into blunt weapons. He couldn’t recall the last time that tingle of deadly sharpness had been absent. He needed something like this, he realised. He really needed it.
Karsa was still across from him, looking at him expectantly, and Zathern had never been more glad that she was here. He nodded at her, feeling surprisingly enthusiastic, more than he had in a long, long time. “I do!”
With that, he leapt straight at her, ramming one of his blunt blades into her chest before she could dodge out of the way.
Sure, there were still two Archopy left, and that wouldn’t just go away, but he’d have to face up to that when it came. It wasn’t anything worth worrying about right now, in the midst of a battle with his best friend.
- - -
“See, Tefi?” Forsira smiled at Tefiren, banking around him in tight circles. “I said we should get out and fly around more often.”
The sun was out again, warming the backs of her leafy wings. They’d made it through the rainy season – Forsira had felt they should enjoy the sunshine while it lasted.
“Yeah,” Tefiren muttered, not quite sharing her enthusiasm, “but…”
“Oh, come on!” Forsira said, leaning in to poke him so he had to flap hard for a moment to stay in flight. “You just wanted to sit inside hiding places all the time, but where’s the fun in that? Honestly, Tefiren, you were almost becoming boring.” She grinned, daring him to join in her playful mood.
He matched her grin. “Me, boring? Never!” And with that, he made a lunge at her tail through the air.
Shrieking in surprise, Forsira pushed energy into alternating leaves and beat them hard to curve upwards and over in a loop-the-loop, coming down right behind Tefiren and grabbing for his tail instead. He yelped and flicked it to smack her in the face with his tail leaves before zooming up and away into the sky.
“Hey!” laughed Forsira, flapping fast to shoot up after him. He zigzagged teasingly from side to side ahead of her and then dipped to the right, rolling all the way over in midair. Forsira tried to copy his movements, but she wasn’t as agile and ended up flailing around in a tangle of leaves and wings as she tried to right herself. Tefiren soared above her, looking down and chuckling.
Forsira mock-glared at him and then gave three huge, powerful wing beats, rising up to his level. She reached out to tap his tail, but before she could, Tefiren flashed her a grin and suddenly folded his wings, dropping swiftly back down towards the canopy below.
Indignantly, she folded her own wings to fall after him. He’d already started gliding again some way above the canopy; Forsira waited until she was just a bit lower and then twisted in midair, spreading her wings to fly upside-down. It was a lot harder than Tefiren had made it look, but with a bit of awkward, backwards flapping she managed to make her wobbly way through the air until she was flying underneath him, grinning up at him teasingly. His eyes widened in surprise.
Then something grabbed her tail.
Her first crazy thought was that Tefiren had somehow done it, but he couldn’t have – he was still above her, his surprise turned to sheer panic.
Forsira’s insides lurched as she felt herself being pulled down through the branches, saw a Sceptile clinging to her tail and realised her mistake – she’d been flying too low, too close to the canopy. Tefiren would never have been so careless.
Screeching desperately, she flailed wildly with her wings, but she couldn’t fly for two; the Sceptile was too heavy, dragging her inexorably down to earth. She threw a helpless glance up through the canopy, seeing the receding shape of an Archopy shooting upwards and away, before she crashed to the ground.
Cold, merciless predator’s gazes pierced into Forsira from the countless Sceptile that surrounded her, blocking any chance of escape. Their stares only lasted a moment before one of them leapt onto her back, crushing the breath from her as it pinned her down.
Her heart pounding hard in her ears, her mind racing in too much terror to think, Forsira gazed around at the gathered Sceptile – this had to be every single one of Them, all here to witness her death. She’d known it was coming, but not yet, not today. She wasn’t ready.
Closing her eyes helplessly, she found, of all things, that her last memory of her parents flitted to the forefront of her mind. Her mother, snatched out of the tree by Them – and then her father, frantic and afraid though he’d been up to that point, leaping down to defend his mate.
Opening her eyes in sudden hope, Forsira stared straight up at the canopy.
There was a chance she could still be saved. She just wasn’t sure if she wanted it.
- - -
Tefiren had shot upwards on instinct the instant he’d seen the Sceptile. But he couldn’t go any further. There he stayed, circling at a safe height, unable to take his eyes off the treetops he’d seen Forsira dragged through. The mass of leaves and branches now blocked her from view – but it didn’t change that he knew she was down there, with Them.
He should have been fleeing. He wanted to,
needed to flee, to get out, get away and put as much distance between himself and Them as possible before They caught him too. It was what he’d always done. It was the only thing to do.
But They had Forsira.
It was stupid of him. It had been such a foolish move. Despite his best efforts to avoid it – it shouldn’t even have been
hard in the first place – somehow, somewhere along the way he’d grown to care about her. He’d given Them an advantage over him, someone whose death was just as unthinkable as his own.
But that was just the way things were now, and although it was ridiculous to think it, part of Tefiren wouldn’t have had it any other way.
He loved her. He couldn’t just let her die.
They’d already won.
But he didn’t
have to do this; nothing said he had to. He could fly on, keep the game going. It was supposed to last forever. He’d always thought it would last forever.
Except it wouldn’t, would it? If not today, then another day, someday, he’d lose, and Their blades would be waiting for him. Tefiren had always known that – he’d just done everything he could to run and hide from that terrifying truth, the foregone conclusion that was his eventual death.
But why did it have to be
today?
Forsira was still down there; he still hadn’t taken his eyes off that spot in the trees where he knew she was. His wings were shivering so much he could barely keep himself in flight, the energy in his leaves flickering and threatening to go out. He knew he had to do this, but he still couldn’t bring himself to move. It was too much, the thought of those ruthless blades scything towards him and all of it just
ending, right there and then.
But that was what Forsira was going through right now. He’d hesitated so long that he could have already killed her. He had to act, before it was too late.
He had to.
A huge, horrible scythe of terror cut through him at the finality of his decision. There would be no going back from this. Closing his eyes and drawing in a shuddering breath, Tefiren pointed himself downwards, forced energy into every single one of his wing leaves, and fell.
- - -
The first thing Forsira heard was a wordless, desperate scream. Tefiren was falling towards her, his wings glowing with such intense brightness that she couldn’t even make out his face. He spread his shining leaves just enough to slow his fall, swooping forward in a frantic swipe at the Sceptile on her back. Blood splashed over Forsira; the Sceptile roared in pain; then it was off her and she could move.
She scrambled to her feet, turning to Tefiren. He was shaking; there were tears in his eyes as his gaze found hers.
“Run, Sira,” he said in a broken sort of whisper before turning and lunging at a Sceptile behind him with a strangled roar.
Barely able to take in what was happening, Forsira somehow managed to force her body into action. None of the other Sceptile seemed bothered that she might escape, not now that they had Tefiren. She backed away further, scrambling up a tree, but there she halted. She couldn’t leave, not with Tefiren fighting for his life below her.
Desperation lent him strength as he swung the huge glowing blades that were once his wings at his attackers. Sunlight shone on his crest leaves, which blazed with such intense light for a moment that it hurt her eyes to look at him, before a searing beam of energy blasted into a Sceptile’s chest, shunting it backwards. But there were too many – even as several Sceptile jumped into the fray, dodging Tefiren’s frantic swipes to land blows when his back was turned, several more of Them simply stood around, watching.
It was unnerving, the confidence with which They knew he would eventually give in. They weren’t even paying any attention to Forsira. It was as if, now that They had the one that was so hard to catch, she wasn’t worth Their effort – she could be dealt with easily at a moment’s notice. She’d learnt more from Tefiren than They gave her credit for, enough to last a good while on her own, but even knowing that, even knowing Tefiren wanted her to save herself, she couldn’t bear to flee and leave him there.
He was weakening now, wounded all over, his wings dimmer and his lunges slowing, his screams and yells coming out even louder and more desperate as he swung around at any Sceptile that came near him. A blind swipe managed to hit someone in the throat – the victim gave a strangled scream that sounded female and staggered backwards – but as Tefiren let loose a broken laugh of triumph, another Sceptile took the opportunity and leapt onto him from behind, shoving him to the ground. He cried out in pain, his leaves finally flickering and giving up. His feeble struggles came to nothing as a second Sceptile simply joined the first in pinning him down.
The first Sceptile grinned, something about him seeming familiar – Forsira realised that this was Verdan, the first of many to fail to catch Tefiren, and now the first and last to succeed. “You have no idea how much you’ve been getting on my nerves, Archopy,” she heard him hiss, leaning close to Tefiren. “In fact, I still don’t trust you not to suddenly escape.”
Tefiren didn’t even seem to register who this Sceptile was or what he was saying. There was a despairing finality in his eyes, and Forsira knew that Verdan was wrong – he would not be escaping from this.
Even as Verdan’s claws began to dig into his wing leaves, Tefiren merely found Forsira with his broken gaze, tears running down his face. “Please, Sira,” he begged. “Why haven’t you run?”
Forsira shook her head wordlessly. It tore at her heart more than she could describe to see him this helpless and afraid, and it was all she could do not to leap down in a frantic, suicidal attempt to save him somehow. She couldn’t leave him, not even knowing how much he wanted her to. There was some kind of fascinating horror to it all, keeping her watching.
“Like to see you try and escape now,” Verdan hissed into Tefiren’s ear. The Archopy’s pleading gaze remained fixed on Forsira, and Verdan bristled as he continued to be ignored. He’d torn Tefiren’s wing leaves to shreds, leaving him a shadow of the elusive, uncatchable Archopy he’d once been. There was nothing Tefiren could do now.
“Okay, Verdan, you’ve had your fun,” said another Sceptile impatiently – Forsira saw that he was one of the only ones with no trace of the inner predator in his eyes. “Let’s get on with this.” He knelt down to Tefiren’s level. “See, there’s still one of us left who hasn’t yet drawn blood. It would be such a shame for him to miss out, wouldn’t it?”
The crowd of Sceptile shifted, parting to reveal one of their number who was standing near the back.
“Sira,” Tefiren mumbled again. “Run, please…”
But Forsira still couldn’t. Her gaze was fixed on the Sceptile at the back of the group. A fresh wave of despair was beginning to overtake her as she heard him muttering desperately, saw him leaning over the unmoving body of the female that Tefiren had struck in the throat.
The voice was familiar. The face was familiar. She hadn’t seen him in such a long time, but she knew who this was.
What on earth was
Zathern doing here?
- - -
“Karsa…” Zathern murmured, staring down at her lifeless form. The monster inside had been jolted out of him the moment he’d seen her get hurt, but as he took in her body and the gash across her throat, he still felt chillingly numb. He could barely comprehend it. Her final fixed gaze towards the sky wasn’t a cold gaze like that of the monster inside. She simply looked afraid. And now she’d never talk or battle or do anything ever again.
He dimly became aware that everyone else had parted around him, leaving a clear path between him and the Archopy that Skorrhen and Verdan had pinned down.
And suddenly it didn’t matter that this Archopy looked just as frightened, if not more so, than Karsa had in her final moments.
He’d killed her.
Slowly and shakily, Zathern stood up and stalked towards him. He pushed energy into his blades, feeling the tingle of the deadly sharp edges even without the help of the monster inside. Tharann was one of the last Sceptile he passed; Zathern saw him grin unnervingly but simply glared back. This had nothing to do with him. This was about Karsa. The one who’d been there for him, helped him forget the bad things and remember the good – he’d
needed her. And now she was gone.
Zathern knelt down in front of the helpless Archopy, whose terrified gaze went straight through him. He didn’t seem to have realised just what he’d done.
Zathern raised his blade but was suddenly stopped in his tracks.
“Zathern,
no!”
Another Archopy – and even though he’d never heard the voice in his life, he knew straight away who it was.
His blade flickered into nothing, all the cold fury and desire for revenge draining out of him as he looked up at where the voice had come from and saw, clinging to a tree branch not so far away, his old best friend.
“Forse…” he whispered hoarsely.
Never mind the feeble echoes of the good times in his childhood that Karsa had been trying to evoke. Here was Forsira, the one he’d really had all those times with, the one he’d first meant something to – and her gaze was begging him to stop.
Zathern looked down at the Archopy he was supposed to be killing. He suddenly didn’t know what to do.
“Zathern,” Forsira said again, her voice high and pleading. “Please don’t hurt him. He’s my mate. I love him. You can’t…”
Her words ignited a flare of anger within Zathern. “
She was my mate, too,” he snapped, jerking his head back towards where Karsa lay. “I loved
her. And he killed her.”
“He didn’t mean to!” protested Forsira desperately. “How could he have known?”
Zathern saw the glazed look of terror in the male Archopy’s eyes and couldn’t deny there was no way Karsa’s death could have been any kind of calculated move. Forsira’s mate had simply been desperate not to die. Zathern knew in his gut that he’d have done the same, if he’d been an Archopy, if he’d been one of the ones marked for death.
The Archopy’s eyes met his, connecting with him for just a moment. “Don’t hurt her,” he whispered. “Please.”
Zathern looked back up at Forsira, feeling a pang of horror at the suggestion that he’d ever do that. “I don’t want to hurt her,” he said numbly. “Or… or you.”
But he had to do something. The rest of the Sceptile were still around him, waiting. He could see some of tilting their heads, their monsters inside confused as to why he would hesitate so long when the prey was right in front of him like this. Tharann sighed impatiently.
Shakily, he moved towards the Archopy again.
“Why?” Forsira suddenly called from her tree. “Zathern, why are you even here? What happened?”
Zathern stared up at her in confusion, realising for the first time that he didn’t really know. Seeing Forsira’s new face reminded him of her as a Treecko or Grovyle, back when he’d drag her around everywhere and they’d have the greatest of times. What on earth
had happened for him to be standing here now?
“It’s easier,” he found himself saying, almost automatically, the same thing he’d kept telling himself ever since he’d come here. “It doesn’t hurt as much, like it would have if I’d stayed with you, after Raphyn… after he… You were going to
die, Forsira,” he told her, almost pleadingly. “I had to leave.”
But had he really
had to leave?
“And my father!” he said hastily before he started thinking too hard. He glanced at Skorrhen, still holding the Archopy down. “And they kept persuading me – they made it sound so easy and I couldn’t… I couldn’t refuse.”
But those weren’t the real reasons he’d stayed, Zathern knew. The real reason lay dead a short distance away, killed by the scythe of this Archopy before him. Karsa. She’d been the one who’d made everything bearable. He’d stayed so he could be with her.
The feeble flare of anger that tried to rise up in him was extinguished again as he looked at the fear in the Archopy’s eyes. He didn’t want to die any more than Karsa had, and Zathern really, really didn’t want to kill him.
He closed his eyes and forced energy back into his blades anyway.
“No!” Forsira said again. “Don’t!”
“If I don’t,” Zathern said slowly, not opening his eyes, “someone else will. He’s going to die anyway.”
His words elicited a whimper from the fallen Archopy. “Please, Sira,” Zathern heard him mumble, his voice broken and pathetic, “you
have to run…”
At least it wasn’t like Zathern would be killing Forsira herself. It could have been worse. He remembered his mother begging him to come back to her even though she‘d have been killed either way. And in the end, what had it mattered that he hadn’t? It was the same here. Someone was going to kill this Archopy; it didn’t make a difference who. But Karsa was dead because of him. Surely Zathern had the most right to?
He took a deep breath, trying to stop himself from trembling. His eyes were still screwed shut; his blade still didn’t feel lethally sharp.
“He killed your mate,” Tharann’s voice said, almost in his ear, mocking, tantalising. “What are you going to do about it, ‘Zath’?”
In one blind, red, furious moment, Zathern wished it could have been Tharann who was pinned down in front of him and at his mercy. The deadly sharpness took over, and before he even knew what he was doing, he’d lashed out at his father, his blade lunging forwards to where he wanted the Sceptile to be.
It was Tharann’s cruel chuckle of satisfaction that jolted him back into the reality of what he’d just done.
- - -
The life faded from Tefiren’s eyes, and it was like Forsira was watching everything she’d ever cared about fade away with it. The terrifying savagery with which Zathern had struck – she didn’t want to believe her old friend could have done that, and yet…
Zathern was backing away, shaking, the light gone from his leaves. “I didn’t mean to do that,” he said as he watched Tefiren die. “I’m sorry.” He took another step back, still staring, wide-eyed. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, as if that would somehow reverse what he’d done. “I’m sorry!” He looked helplessly at Forsira with deep, terrible guilt in his eyes. “Forse…”
She ignored him, too fixated by Tefiren’s body and his horribly empty gaze, utterly devoid of that gleeful twinkle of his that she loved so much. All that was left was a glassy terror, the fear that had always been there but that he’d worked so hard to hide from, now fixed on his face forever. Tefiren was gone.
It dimly registered with Forsira that she was crying; she wasn’t sure when that had begun. Everything seemed so unreal.
Then the two Sceptile who had been pinning Tefiren down stood up off his unmoving form and turned to look at Forsira. There was an odd familiarity to the experience, snapping some sense of reality back into her. She had nothing left to lose – those hungry stares weren’t nearly as frightening any more, she observed in a strange, detached way – but Tefiren had wanted her to escape. He’d given his life for it. So she turned and fled from Them, just as she had done so many times with him at her side.
As she heard Them take chase, Zathern gave a sudden cry of “No!”, and the sounds of a scuffle reached Forsira’s ears. He was buying her time to escape – the thought made her heart rise, ever so slightly. Her wings already spread and glowing in Tefiren’s pattern, she beat them shakily but powerfully, rising into the air. Zathern must have been holding his ground against Them, for she managed to break through the canopy without any trouble. Tefiren would have called this one boring.
Fighting off the choking feeling in her throat, Forsira focused on flapping harder, flying higher until she was completely out of reach.
There she circled, the joy of escape made empty by her grief.
Tefiren had done what he’d set out to do. He’d saved her life by sacrificing his own. Forsira’s emotions suddenly overtook her, and she let the tears flow freely, sobs shaking her whole body. Tefiren had actually died for her, even though death was the one thing that terrified him more than anything else. She had never imagined that she would mean that much to him, that he would be that brave in the final moments of his life.
But what was she supposed to do now? Continue his eternal game against Them?
She knew she couldn’t. Everything would feel so hollow without Tefiren to share it with. With him gone, she’d only last a few days. Her death was just as inevitable as Tefiren’s had always been – They’d catch up to her in the end.
Taking a few shuddering breaths to calm herself, Forsira flew on aimlessly a little further. The sunlight sparkled off the ocean’s surface ahead of her; she was a lot closer to the sea than she’d realised. It brought back a memory of something Tefiren had said a while ago as the two of them had escaped together over the waves: that they could win against Them for a short time, but it would never last, because They never gave up.
But what if she really could win forever? What if there
was a way that she could avoid ever dying at Their hands?
The ocean ahead of her was so calm and peaceful. It seemed to go on endlessly.
Letting the extra energy out of her wings, Forsira turned to the sea and began to glide calmly towards it.
She’d always loved flying. She wanted her final flight to last as long as it could.
- - -
The waves lapped at Zathern’s toes as he sat at the edge of the beach, watching the shape of an Archopy receding ever further into the distance. He wanted to call out to her, to tell her to stop, but she was too far away to hear him, and even if she could, why would she want to listen to the one who’d killed her mate?
Zathern knew she wouldn’t ever be coming back. This was the last time he’d ever see her.
He supposed it was for the best. This way, she’d die peacefully, almost naturally, not murdered at the hands of the group that he was part of. Having taken her mate’s life was horrible enough; he wouldn’t have been able to bear seeing her killed, too.
But memories of the two of them as children, battling, exploring, talking – mostly him doing the talking, he had to admit – kept running through his mind; damn it, he just wanted his
friend back. He wanted everything back to how it had been before things had fallen apart. Even Karsa’s echoes of the good times would have been something – but Karsa was gone now too. Nothing could bring her back, the same as Forsira, or his mother, or anyone else, even… even
Raphyn. There was no-one left.
Everything that had been building inside Zathern for so long finally burst out of him, and, stupid though it was, he curled up on the sand and cried.
The world shouldn’t have been like this. It was just so unfair.
It took a while for his sobs to die down, but even once they had, he didn’t move from where he lay. It wasn’t as if there was anyone else to see him like this; the rest of Them had retreated back to the sunrise side as soon as they’d figured Forsira wasn’t coming back. They were probably over there right now, congratulating themselves on a job well done. Part of Zathern bitterly wished he was with them, that he could be as casual and apathetic as They’d always been able to be. But it hurt, and he couldn’t hide from that any more.
If Karsa were still here, she’d have helped him forget this pain. They could have started afresh together, and it would be like none of this had ever happened –
– like none of the Archopy had ever existed?
Zathern sat up, feeling a horrible jolt inside him. He was probably the only one left who cared what had happened to the Archopy. The rest of the Sceptile had always been so oblivious, and They wouldn’t give a damn – that just left him. And now he wanted to forget about them, too?
No. They deserved more than that. They’d been his friends, his family, his home for half his life – the only half of his life that had really been worth living. Someone had to remember them. It was the only way that they could live on, in a sense, the only way that Skorrhen and the others could have been thought to have not quite completely succeeded in wiping the Archopy out.
Drawing in a shaking breath, Zathern stood and turned back towards the sunset side. His heart was heavy with loss – it would be every single day, he knew – but he had to start facing up to that if he wanted to remember his friends. He wasn’t going to run and hide from it any more.
With new resolve, Zathern began to walk into the forest, the trees that had once been home to the species of Archopy.
He wouldn’t forget.