Btw Den échoume na to kánoume aftó ! Ílpiza óti i áskisi tha katharísei to kefáli sas! Den thélo na sas agóna! - We don't have to do this! I was hoping the exercise would clear your head! I don't want to fight you! (from the last chapter)
He couldn't do it. At some point, running away had become an unreachable goal. Because Phobos needed to be beaten. Will was waiting for him. Not that it mattered; he'd never see her again if he ran, but she'd never be able to look at him again if he killed Aldarn.. And something had happened; at some point recently that determined that the final option was never going to happen. He knew he could blame Will for it. Almost definitely.
He was afraid to die. He'd never particularly wanted to die, though he'd never wanted to live, either, and there wasn't much point. Life had given him a toxic fear of going back to the only place he truly belonged, and there wasn't much choice but to simple stop living. No one would miss him; Aldarn would get over it; Drake would be glad for the lack of competition; Julian.. Julian could go find himself another son. If the idiot knew what was good for him, he'd cut his losses and bypass Drake again. He might aswell - Julian clearly had high standards, and if 'father' had meant anything today, it was not for the man he'd said it to. It was for the girl who'd been listening where she shouldn't have; not that Caleb minded. He just wished she wouldn't worry. No one would miss him.. That wasn't true anymore. Will even missed the people she didn't know; she mourned for them. And last time he'd seen her dressed in black, the funeral had almost been hers. "Fuck."
He wasn't even bothering to run anymore - not away. Will could think what she liked of him when he killed Aldarn; he didn't have a choice. And whatever she did, he didn't want her to bother worrying. And maybe she'd have the intelligence to run if she saw this. It wasn't the act of killing, which had initially rattled Caleb.
It was the crowd of people; so desensitized that they were calling out cheers. Punching the air. They were excited; to see someone they knew, dying.
He doubted that Will could handle that.
When Caleb pushed off again, it was in the opposing direction. He'd need to catch up with Aldarn if he was going to do this. For Queen and for country... Neither his own.
...
"Man! What are we missing!" Will paced, as she spoke, and Cornelia wish the girl would stand still. She was making her nervous. "If the trap isn't hidden.."
"Then it must be in plain sight!" A silence followed her words, and Cornelia found her frustration building, and she knew she was one step from pacing alongside Will.
"The only thing in plain sight is about a gillion Hoogong eggs!" Hay Lin's words were meaningless - only telling them what they already knew; pointing out the obvious.. Five girls, a table, and Hoogongs.
"Ew, and they're sticky!" Caleb hadn't even known; he hadn't been able to figure out what was wrong, but she knew he'd have bigger things on his mind. There was always something.. And Cornelia knew Will had just been holding his jacket, but Cornelia wished she'd had a chance to remember his smell.. He might never be back again.
"Sticky?" She should've apologized; she should have told him about how sorry she was for even thinking he could do that to someone - to Will.. There wasn't an accusation quite as bad as one revolving a boy and an underage girl, and Caleb had been so mad at her when she'd.. When he'd.. Something rose in Cornelia's throat, and she felt her eyes prickle, as what might've been a best friend or something more, was out - running a race to kill or be killed. Caleb had never got to telling them what would happen, but Vathek cleared up the details. "The egg is sticky?"
Cornelia blinked at that; blinked back tears that she didn't deserve to be able to shed.. She'd never really let herself be Caleb's friend, and what if he didn't make it? But Will was busy smearing off the blue stain on Taranee's hand, and Irma looked just as suspicious. "Water!"
"OOOH!" Hay Lin squealed as the eggs began to crack, but something was wrong; Irma had washed an egg from blue to green.. Were they meant to do that? "BABY HOOGONGS!"
"Hay Lin.." Cornelia saw Irma's worry, and Will's panic, as Hay Lin cooed over an egg, and she didn't hold back from yanking the girl away from the egg, "They're not Hoogongs.."
"They're Larvek!" Cornelia stopped at that; she couldn't remember what a Larvek was! What was it? Only Will ever seemed to be listening properly, and as she panicked now, Cornelia could only defend her own conscious' berating her. Nobody listened! Taranee didn't even seem to be listening! Not all the time! And Hay Lin just listened to the stuff she was interested, and Cornelia shrieked when a caterpillar-monster creature's shell cracked around the curled up body, and the creature seemed to lengthen as it woke. Oh. Now she remembered.
