The Fall


Chapter 9: Rising Sun


She had pressed her face into his fur, pretending the static crackling against her cheeks was warmth, not sharp and biting; and that the phantom pulse she felt far below her own chest was there for the same reason skinny dark-haired girls were allowed to fall off cliffs and die at the apex of one long, cold crescendo of terror.

Arms grabbed for her—stiff, brittle corpse arms with needle nails arcing away from strong columns sprouting everywhere and tearing up the ground with their roots—trees, trees, they were trees and branches whipping at them and obstructing their path in woody snarls, why had she forgotten what they were called? Why did her thoughts feel so slippery and far away—

NO.

Then no thoughts, only a word. Her mind was drowning in an ocean of NO and odd currents were rippling through it, latching onto words and pulling them free—Arashi was there again, suddenly more present in her head than she was, trying to attach sound to meaning in a way he had never thought necessary in the life he first lived, but suddenly thought more than necessary now, to submerge her in a word she understood at least until the thin fog of madness had gone for good.

Meanwhile he kept running. This was like the first day they had met, bolting through thick forest, afraid of the thing on their heel that hadn't been each other. His flanks slammed into trees, branches whipped at them and curled around Arashi's limbs, odd shrieks and screams sieved through the woods far to the right—

"Hide, hide, go hide," Moth whispered, and her voice was weak and drowned by the unsteady thumping of the Sky-horse's paws and the sounds of wood and earth giving way to them and—

Something shrieked, so close the hair on her arms stood on end.

Arashi stumbled into sunlight, letting out an involuntary yelp when he caught sight of the ledge only steps ahead of them. He skidded, scrambled back, but the grass had thinned out and grew only in the cracks in the slippery stones—behind them, a snarl, maybe far enough that whatever was on their tail hadn't seen them yet, but close enough that it had heard. Arashi's paws flailed for grip but he careened over the edge, headfirst. For a moment, Moth was weightless, and she held her breath and braced for the impact—when it came, it seemed to hit her through her chest, knocking away whatever air she'd managed to keep in her lungs. Arashi crumpled against rock with an audible wince and scrabbled to the darkened shadow beneath the overhang.

Moth choked as loudly as she dared, clinging to his back and trying to breathe again.

SHHHH.

She froze at the hissing in her head.

He was barely breathing; beneath her, his back was still. Moth curled his fur into her fingers and grit her teeth at the static shock. Her mouth was open and no air came or went. She followed Arashi's eyes—his neck was craned ever so slightly, angry blue eyes fixed at what was above them. She looked.

There was the jagged edge of the rock wall, arcing above their breathless bodies, and then trees, some pieces of sky. It was all still, and silent.

As she watched, a spray of tiny pebbles skidded over the edge.

She ducked onto his back again and her pulse fluttered wildly between them.

Something above shuffled heavy feet against the overhang; Arashi forced them further into the rock. He was still unbreathing, and Moth felt the fear flowing through him like a river, taking every rational thought into its current and submerging it.

The river began to overflow. Moth looked up again—and this time, deep red monster eyes stared back.

She took a breath that shuddered and her eyes traced over the black devil horns longer than her arm arcing out from its face, its parted knife teeth. Her heart pounded in her ears, because a face like that should only exist in nightmares, or in the moving shapes she thought she saw in the dark.

It jerked back from the edge and there was a sound so out of place there, on the overhang—a young girl's shriek of excitement, and then a silvery blur over her head as the huge, heavy creature launched itself over the edge and landed flat on feet half as long as her body, tense and almost crumpled by the impact, but the packed earth seemed to absorb the shock on its own and ricochet the energy back up through its long, slender hind legs. It flicked a massive silver tail, regaining its balance, and rounded on them: huddled pathetically under the rock wall.

Moth stared at it—and before she noticed the little girl clinging to its back, she eyed the gray and silver mosaic pattern on its body, the bony teal studs trailing down its back and neck, the blunted snout, the thick bull horns curving over its red, human eyes, the tiny arms that clung to its chest, useless and tucked out of the way.

"Hi, you!" The young blond-haired girl on its back had regained her bearings—she sat on her knees in a white cloth dress, waving at Moth and wearing a huge grin.

"Oh," Moth whispered.

"I knew you'd meet Dusty someday. Here he is!"

Dusty the Earth-bull let out a low snarl, working his thick claws into the dirt.

Hadn't Cain drilled her on element matchups? Once, years ago. They'd been ingrained in her ever since—air beats water, water beats fire, fire beats earth.

Earth beats air.

"That thing is going to kill us," Moth murmured. Arashi's muscles were tensing so hard they had become stone beneath her.

"Now charge, Dusty!"

Dusty charged.

He moved so fast; Moth's breath caught in her throat when he became a silver smear in her vision; his claws tore the hard-packed earth into dust clouds that blurred the ground he touched and she fought the urge to leap off Arashi's back and run for her life.

"Move move move," she mumbled, locked where she sat by a strange instinct that forced her to trust him.

Dusty's jaws gaped; blade fangs caught the light and gleamed and the heat of his breath graced her face in the split second he was close enough to lunge and clamp down—Arashi shot from beneath the stone with a power she hadn't realized he'd coiled in his limbs to set free at only the right moment.

Moth held on tight and they whisked from beneath the silver tower. She felt the tremors in his legs and the weakness that pressured him to collapse again. Her eyes were still locked on the Earth-bull and he whipped around, grinding his jaws, disappointed they had closed on empty air.

"Oh, you're fast," the little girl exclaimed, pressed flat against his back. "Again!"

Arashi was frozen and his eyes drew wider with every heavy stride Dusty took in their direction; he shook his head, backed away, whirled to the side and let the Earth-bull barrel past towards the trees encroaching on the clearing's edge.

Static rippled through his fur.

Dusty turned on his heel, snarling savagely. His red eyes were slits.

Moth wondered if Arashi could deliver an electric shock, straight into his face.

She felt him protest the idea, pacing where he stood, eyeing Dusty warily for his next move.

Moth had a vision of thunder, a white column thicker than a tree lancing from the sky to stab the earth—she saw how the ground absorbed the power so easily. It would take something like that to even faze him.

She saw the electricity building in his fur, little white sparks leaping here and there, avoiding her or fizzling out with barely a pinprick of pain where they pierced her skin. They needed more than that; a lot more.

Dusty took a slow step forwards. Arashi let a growl rumble in his chest and he crouched, halfway between pouncing and fleeing. Moth had been distracted, briefly, by a rustling of leaves and undergrowth to her left. Yet nothing was there.

Arashi leaped forward, halving the distance, and Moth let out a breath at the terror splitting her heart when Dusty darted forward to meet them. The sound of his jaws snapping shut less than an arm's length above her back made her cry out.

Arashi weaved under his head, bunching his legs and leaping to headbutt the base of his neck. The Earth-bull let out a savage wheeze; his jaw grazed her back as he scrambled away, gaping.

"Oh, you'll regret that," the girl shouted. Her hand was rubbing against her beast's neck and Dusty had them fixed in a murderous gaze, a human expression on a creature that was anything but.

White bolts were crackling up and down Arashi's body and she felt them hit her with physical force: warm, dull stabs in her side like he was trying to throw her off.

GO.

But it was her own voice in her head, the same she had used earlier as Arashi fled across the plateau, harnessed and thrown back at her this time.

More bolts, so hot they began to hurt. Dusty was leaning forward ever so slowly like he was going to fall, his jaw trembling—

GO!

He lunged. Moth leaped from his back and knocked into the ground so hard she thought her vision went black; but maybe that was from the hot-knife pain lancing through her shoulders—she came to, crumpled on her side, to watch Dusty land a crushing bite across Arashi's back. Moth screamed; Arashi howled and writhed, the bolts in his fur whip-cracking between him and the ground. A white-hot electric blade suddenly curled up his forelimb and struck Dusty in the eye, who shrieked but didn't let go.

His grip had been loosened, though. Arashi ripped himself away and Moth gasped when more pain clawed its way up her back. Arashi sprinted away, leaping vast stretches of distance over the earth as he charged again towards the overhang. The Earth-bull snarled and nearly threw himself to the ground trying to follow, stumbling half-blind in Arashi's electrified wake.

And rustling—a sound so soft and slight it was nothing against the ripping earth beneath their feet, the jagged and monstrous breathing, their otherworldly shrieks and cries; yet still it fluttered against her left eardrum and she whipped around, staring into the rising wall of foliage and wood to her back. Leaves shifted so precisely and individually that it couldn't have been wind. No, there was something hiding there.

Her mind grew warier with every moment her eyes were off Arashi and she turned again, still gripped in the phantom pain trailing down her body and dragged down by an insufferable exhaustion that was not her own.

Dusty was charging like a real bull, his jaw hanging open like Arashi's bolt had petrified the muscles in his face, his black savage horns reaching out like arms. Arashi crouched, his back two paws pressed against the sloping overhang wall, his neck weaving as he searched for a way out this time; Dusty's footsteps were a thunderous heartbeat and she felt it like she was a spitting distance from where he touched down against his own element.

One more stride and he was on top of him, letting out a gape-mouthed roar painted with the timbre of the little girl's excited shriek; Arashi feinted and leapt right; Dusty's neck jerked like a viper's to meet him, slicing off the escape with his bull horns, sweeping them back with the speed and force of a sonic boom. Skin ground against stone, bone into flesh, and Arashi was pinned—Moth felt the impact and crumpled again, trying to keep the air in her lungs this time. Arashi roared and it was a hissing, breathy sound like a snake's voice, and he crackled white like a yellow-blue storm cloud, enveloped in dormant lightning like a second hide.

He writhed, Dusty snarled and ground his skull into the Sky-horse's chest, and Moth saw stone and dust particles whipping from the ground and rock wall and enveloping them both in a thin haze, an earthen inferno, and Moth was suffocated by what felt like needle blades piercing her skin and dust drowning her lungs. "Now, do it now!" she shrieked, and he did, falling still as the rock he was pinned against. The lightning in him let loose.

And yet—though there was a storm raging, born of a living beast and not a cloud, darkening the clear skies above and robbing the world of light to force it all into one solitary bolt, thicker than a tree—she turned her head away once more, towards the shaded undergrowth concealing in it something that did not want to be seen. The world went gray like it did when storms raged at noon and the sound of it cracking echoed behind her, and deep in the dark spaces between leaves she watched green eyes glint, in the savagely humanoid way beasts' eyes do.

Bolts of power arced through her veins so suddenly she gasped; and electrified, she stood again, turning on her heel.

The Earth-bull writhed on his side in the dust, rubbing his skin into dirt like it would ease the pain; white sparks clung to him and he wailed—barely a spitting distance away, the little girl crouched and was breathing fast, flinching, twitching, unaware that her hair was standing on end. The streaks on the simple white of her dress told Moth she had been knocked aside, maybe soon enough to be spared from the worst of the lightning, or maybe not; maybe she would have been Moth's second human victim of the day, maybe her heart was juddering in her chest and ready to stop. Moth had so easily forgotten the human nature bound behind the glare of eyes that had last seen millions of years ago and the living, breathing reason that it was there at all.

Arashi. He stood, barely, heaving gulps of air like his living storm had burned it all away, beneath the overhang. His fur stood on end and his eyes were wild, exhausted and brutish at once. His ears twitched madly, his tail flicked nervously, because he knew he had not won. He had used everything in him and he had not won.

Dusty flailed, working his powerful back legs under him again—and he rose like it was the earth pushing against him, not him against the earth. He shook his head in a dizzy fit, twitching, flinching, breathing raggedly. He eyed Arashi, strides away.

"Circle," Moth whispered under her breath, and the word echoed in her mind and in the one hid behind it, with meaning rather than sound.

Between them flashed the mental image of green predator eyes lying in wait.

Arashi understood.

He began to pace.

Step by step, Moth closed the distance between them, watching the Earth-bull react. He had no plan of attack; nothing but the centuries upon centuries of instinct coiled in him, and the human mind that would have harnessed that instinct and channeled it, were she not so stunned with pain that wasn't her own, were she not so young and in so far over her head. But Dusty knew this game. How long had it been since he'd played it last, with other prey—small thick-headed plant eaters that wouldn't give up, enormous earth-shaking beasts he'd caught alone that always almost won in the end? It had not been long enough for him to forget.

He mirrored Arashi, and began to pace on the invisible axis between them. This was a battle of wills now, not strength.

He wasn't aware, but it was also a battle of wits—Moth's own against that of a creature with half its mind compromised.

Arashi moved along the rock face and Moth paced at his side, eyeing Dusty intently as he neared the edge of undergrowth, noticing the uncertainty in his step as he tried to determine when to lunge again. Arashi feigned strength in his walk, held his snout level with Moth's head like he could hear her more clearly like that, or see the image of eyes in her mind with more clarity.

Almost there.

Dusty sauntered close enough to the tree line to brush it with his tail, ever so close to the bush that held the green stalking eyes, and Moth's heart was in her throat.

Nothing happened.

Maybe she imagined those eyes; no, she knew they had bored into her with the sharpness of knives.

Maybe they were no predator's eyes and simply those of a more peaceful sort of hiding beast and the human that guarded the other half of its mind; no, there had been bloodlust there in the green, the natural sort of carnal savagery that was as innate and at home in their gazes as a smile on a human face.

And maybe it was no beast at all. But no—those eyes were not entirely savage, not entirely human either, but of something that could choose both or one or neither.

Moth felt its choice the second it was made, like a tiny bone snapping in her chest.

From the bush it leaped. A piece of the forest itself came alive then, erupting in a shower of leaves to lunge at Dusty like a savage pale tongue, and crocodile jaws snapped open and then shut on the soft flesh of the Earth-bull's neck.

The little girl yelped and her hands flew over her mouth, stifling a high-pitched "No!"

Dusty jerked, snarling and writhing, biting air—the forest creature was immense, bigger than him from the tip of its skinny snout to the tail that flicked behind it, bigger than him from where its thick hind legs scrabbled dirt into mud to the many-colored sail rising on its back.

Sea-spine.

Dusty ripped himself free, Arashi long forgotten—deep red lines traced across his neck.

The Sea-spine did not flinch, but it recoiled out of the way, shifting its massive weight from foot to foot with an energy it shouldn't have had, not with its size. Maroon stripes decorated its long muzzle, skinny arms, nimble feet—mostly it was sand-colored, like its body was bound in thin strips of old parchment. It had a tiny orange crest, and a massive sail on its back like a rising sun—that was the pattern it had, Moth realized—its back was the horizon and the sail was the sun.

In its throat erupted a warbling growl, like it was gargling water.

And behind it there was a boy, barely emerged from the foliage. He was tall, familiar, dark in the face.

"Now take him out, Sunny."

Moth may have imagined the irritation on the Sea-spine's face, because it didn't hesitate and weaved ahead, darting from side to side with impossible agility. Warily, Dusty tried to dodge back and his legs trembled, clumsy and weakened by the lightning that lingered. The little girl watched with awed fear and Moth felt a surge of protective anger, like she wanted to run to her, scoop her off the ground, and get her out of that place. Not that any other place would be better.

She was watching a sort of violence that wasn't supposed to exist in this world—the Sea-spine struck with crocodile fangs and buried them in flesh, then twisted, Dusty swung his horns in vain, writhing in odd desperation that seemed almost human—but hadn't she been living that violence already, an ancient savagery that should've died long ago combined with a power too great for it to withstand?

Nowhere would be better.

Dusty lurched back, scrambled away, suddenly helpless, close enough to the girl to touch her, and the Sea-spine made no move in pursuit.

Above, a shadow passed briefly over the sun. Moth didn't look up this time.

The Sea-spine stiffened and fixed Dusty in its hunter's gaze—it sat far back on its haunches and Dusty stood petrified, no longer a weapon but a silver wall between the little girl and everything else. From the Sea-spine's throat an ocean of violent, venomous water erupted and sprang forth like a cloud, an amorphous shape that blasted into its target at the speed of sound to envelop it and bowl it into the dust.

The sun burned away its remnants fast and then there was nothing left, no ghostly silhouette or shadow, no footprints, just the tiny shape of a girl crouching where he once was and holding a stone.

Moth had held that stone. She knew how warm it felt to touch. She wondered if it was cold now, pressed against her lips like she was whispering to it. If Dusty wasn't dead; if the tournament didn't really force beasts to fight to their deaths, then he was trapped forever in that small granite rock, trapped from her, and there was nothing left of him but the memory.

Flapping wings, directly overhead—Moth watched the Z-wing descend, sickly purple with sprawling red gossamer between the bones of its wings, empty bug eyes bigger than her head and glowing like giant blue coals. It was big. It could stretch its wings almost as long as Arashi's body.

It made no sound and perched on the ground a distance away, folding its wings, falling still like it wasn't alive. Maybe it wasn't.

Two guards slid swiftly off its back, eyeing the girl like prey but moving no closer.

And then—the wailing.

Moth jumped. It was so hard-edged and sudden, no crescendo, just pure grief captured in a sound. She hung over her lap, her hair lank against the dust and shielding her face. She coughed violently and the wail cut off, she choked like she'd swallowed something vile, like she was trying to breathe but there was nothing. And then a sob, inhuman in its volume, its depth.

Moth found her eyes locked with the boy who stood in the shadow of his Sea-spine. It was the boy she had knocked into outside the arena, the one with the proud, angry face that gave away not pride nor anger this time. There was no triumph there, any more than there was for her. How could there be any triumph?

And why hadn't she just run? They could've made it far, far away from here by now, if she would have just come to her senses the moment the Sea-spine surged from the trees. She wouldn't have to be here for this, watching a little girl with only half a mind left scream like the insanity of the sound would fill the void.

Now the Sea-spine eyed her. It gazed Arashi up and down, the wild and instinctive half of its mind unfazed by the constant timbre of sorrow that turned the late morning air cold.

But the boy behind it noticed the guards and the way they watched her, expressionless and still, just waiting.

In the distance, another savage roar sounded, almost lost in the screaming and the distance it traveled. The Sea-spine ducked down suddenly, pressing the bottom of its throat against the ground so the boy could climb up onto its neck.

She thought he looked at her and said, "You're not worth it."

The Sea-spine took off on a half-sprint in the direction of the roar, running like her screams were chasing it out, vanishing again in the hole it'd ripped out between the trees.

Beside her, Arashi collapsed. Moth couldn't move to protest him, to urge they leave, to even sit down beside him. Instead she could do nothing but stare at the heavy rise and fall of his flank and wonder what she would sound like when he was gone, when she felt for the ensconcing wall of her thoughts and touched nothing but an absence of anything—a void through which she would fall forever.


God I should lighten up. I forgot how dark this world actually is.

Earth-bull: carno

Sea-spine: spino

Those two are some personal favorites of mine as dinosaurs. I'm trying to keep their descriptions loyal to their game designs as well as their real-life biology if I can.

Starry's Light—Yeah, lythro's pretty creepy. I did consider using Frontier vivosaurs in this, but decided it wouldn't make sense since they can only revive the dinosaurs/other animals that you can find in Caliosteo. Also I hope it made sense last chapter what was happening with the resistance—some village guards (not from Moth's village) found out about it and snuck in to destroy it, and the rebels weren't planning to kill the vessels and were just throwing some vague ideas around because they were excited. If that was just really unclear I'll go back and fix it. Anyway thanks so much for reviewing; I love reading your comments!

I'm planning to start writing chapter ten on Sunday, to give me some time to focus on other stuff. And up until I post next, you can send over an OC if you've got some cool ideas.

Anyway, thanks for reading! Now go review or something.

-Angel