Everybody but me is freezing cold.
We're trekking on the left-hand side of a major cliff, the facade of it rising high above our heads. Tree roots jut out through the dirt, but it's hard to see the defined edges of anything, since it's so cold. I can see my feet moving underneath me, stumbling over the uneven terrain, shifting shadows that don't seem to belong to me or anybody.
Anyway, the cold doesn't seem to have as much bite when it touches me. I realize it as the other kids wince and press their ungloved hands to their faces or stare enviously at my hat and scarf. I consider lending it away, but I refuse myself that small act of selflessness since it'd force me to speak to them and break the silence, and - it'd uncover my shoulders and chin, all the hard bones of them, shoving in the faces of the whole world that I am Other.
It seems like the blackness is closing in on us when I look straight forward like everyone else is doing. If I look up, I see the cliff and the trees clinging onto it for dear life, silhouetted against the dark sky. If I look down, I see my feet shuffling forward to keep in line, pushing tiny puffs of dust up that evaporate into the shadows. But if I look forward, I see everybody walking in front of me, and after them, there's a deep void I can't make anything out from. Looking at it, I can understand the cold the other kids must be feeling. The skin on their bodies is thinner than mine, but maybe the same can't be said about their minds. I don't know them, though. I don't know much of anything.
These are the things I think about. I think about the void, and I think about my hands. If anybody were paying any attention to anything other than the journey, they'd notice the glowing of my fingers and the specks of light drifting off them and dissolving. I look down at them, now, and something seems to come back to me, something that kills the sounds of the outdoors and the scraping sounds of young feet on hard ground. Something that makes my hands feel like they aren't mine. Something that . . .
makes me look all around like breath on cold hands it's cold even for this place and I can't breathe it's impossible and she's talking to me in a dialect i understand it was adopted she told me under rippled stone and the thin air of this place and this place is a tomb it's going to fall it's going to crash in on me but she laughs a light sound a wispy sound and tucks me in under the air and nothing and tells me I am afraid for nothing -
I jump, letting out a little gasp, and half a dozen kids turn around to look at me. I peer down, when their eyes turn back to the front of the group, and realize my hands are glowing brighter now. Did they notice? I hope not. I really hope not. There's a sense of fear that suffocates me as I keep putting one foot in front of the other. I'm suddenly hypervigilant to everything that surrounds me. The sound of a lesser monster moving somewhere in the brush, rustling it, calling out for something. The scent of heady broken pine needles wafting up from the ground. The sour taste of my mouth. I taste something metallic and realize I've bitten down on the inside of my cheek. When I open my mouth, the cold touches it like an icy finger.
"Kaius."
I jump again. God. It's embarrassing, jumping around like this each time something happens, but I can't stop. There's something about the setting and the near-silence that makes my heart race for anything.
I look into the face that the voice came from. It's got cheeks that flame red, even though the colour's dulled by the lack of light. A girl, as far as I can tell. She looks vaguely familiar, but I can't seem to recognize her. I focus instead on the concerned look on her face. I get an urge to photograph it, but nothing would show up with lighting like this. I can tell her hair is light, maybe blond or pale brown, and it's nearly the same colour as her face. She isn't the kind of girl the Combat crew would gossip about in the hallways, though. She's plain-looking, with scattered birthmarks that show through the haze of the night. It's for this reason I feel like I can trust her. I don't have any friends at school, or anywhere, really, but there's something about her that makes me feel like she might understand.
"Reina," she says, like she knows what I'm about to ask. I remember her now. Her name was called before mine just a couple of hours ago. I can't be sure about the time, though. "Cold as hell out here, right?"
"Yeah," I manage. I decide not to tell her about the thick-skin thing. She's seen me, and knows what I am, so she's probably got a pretty good idea. "Do you know what's coming next?"
"Well." She gets this hard look on her face, contorting it like she's thinking so intently she can't even see. "I'd guess we need supplies. That backpack." She gestures to my bag, which is partly obscured under the thick scarf I'm wearing. When I step a little ways away from her to let her see, the scarf billows out as the wind starts to pick up again. I can see the whites of her eyes as she scrutinizes it. "Looks pretty small. I'm guessing you haven't got a pickaxe?"
"Pickaxe?" Any anxiety that's ebbed away talking to Reina sweeps back up inside me. "We were supposed to bring - " She interrupts me, but I'm surprised at how quick I am to reply. I rarely talk to the others my age, even if they seem nice like Reina. Maybe it's the night and the fact that I'm near-delirious with sleep deprivation. When I realize that, my arms and legs feel suddenly heavy, and I have to force myself forward to keep up with Reina, who's taking small but determined steps.
"Nah, don't freak out. Nobody's got anything except for the Combats." I look to where her hand points, and notice the paleness of some things hanging off the bags of the kids in the very front. Among them is Solas, I know, but I can't tell which one is him. "That Solas guy? He stood up for you in Naturals, but I honest-to-God don't know why. I mean, look at that swagger." I begin to think Reina's delirious, too, but perhaps she's just talkative. "He's top of the Combats, right?"
I nod. "That's what I heard." I say it noncommittally, but I know it's true. The reason none of these kids are turning back or crying for their parents is because of his presence at the top of the line, and the sword hanging off his pack, not even sheathed. If anything tried to hurt us, he'd kill it. I'm sure everyone is impressed with that knowledge, but I don't know how to feel about it. I've always been a pacifist, as far back as I can remember. There's a reason I took photography instead of Combat. I feel the weight of my camera, an early model that was still the pride of my town, and feel more reassured than I would have if it were a sword even better than Solas's.
"Are you in love with him or something?" She says it loud, and two or three kids just in front of us turn around, scowling. I feel my face heating up again, and a jumble of words pile up behind my tongue. I must have been staring too long.
"No!" I blurt. She just grins, shaking her head so tendrils of her hair fall out of her hood. I shake my head back, but I have a strange urge to laugh. She sticks her tongue at me, and I really do laugh. At this point, I'm so tired that I'm not even embarrassed when the same kids look back. We're blowing quiet raspberries at each other in the freezing night and giggling until the frigid air fills our lungs when Reina stops laughing and looks up.
"Oh, sh - "
There's a scream from the middle of the line, and a lot of heavy footfalls, not at all like the ones I'm used to. A hissing noise slices the air, but it subsides as the scuffling noise picks up. "Sol!" shouts a boy's voice. "Creeper!" I look through my fingers at him, and he's running from a green figure that pulls itself across the ground with four short legs. Its eyes look like black holes from this distance. Reina's not covering her mouth, she's just studying the scene like it's a movie. I'm about to ask her why she's so calm when I see Solas (Sol?) sprinting in our direction, pulling his sword out of its loop and brandishing it in front of him.
The creeper doesn't hesitate. It hisses threateningly, opening its mouth wide, and its eyes narrow. I'm analyzing its face, my whole body alive with concentration, when that face starts to expand. I swear it's about to explode when Solas dodges it, stumbling a little, and swings his sword around to catch the creeper head-on. Oh. It screeches, trembles, and falls to the ground, deflated. Sol pulls out his sword, making a wet sucking sound that's audible even at our distance, and wipes it on his pant leg, leaving a streak of something behind. I have the strange and quick urge to throw up, but nothing comes out except for a low, nearly silent moan. He kicks the creeper into the bushes, then tries to wipe off the tip of his shoe.
Nobody claps, or anything. It's the kind of thing you expect to be more graceful when it is. A couple of kids titter about Sol's talent, or his standing in the group, but all I can see is the limp, sickly green body and the residue on Sol's shoe after he moved it out of sight. It was somehow more fast and brutal than I knew it could be. My head is spinning, and it's not because of the cold or the fact that my eyes won't focus for long enough to see much. I don't want to laugh anymore. The secrecy of the night now seems bleak, so bleak it's a wonder we're even in the world that's real.
Reina coughs, a sound that's the most vulnerable thing I've ever heard from her. She isn't looking at Solas or the place where the creeper was disposed of. She's staring at something else, something more significant.
"There." I follow her gaze to the spot in front of our group, a gaping hole in the ground that seems to yawn open. It seems to be a darker dark than the rest of the night around us. It's a place of nothingness, and yet Solas jumps right down into it once he sees Reina pointing. We hear his voice calling up through the fog, the grins wiped off our faces in the face of what we suspect we'll have to do. I hear her again, her voice clear and sharp-edged beside me. "That's where the supplies come from." The other Combats toss themselves down into the hole, disappearing. Some of them let out halfhearted whoops, sounding like they're trying to sound braver than they are. Others seem too tired to make sounds.
I shift the weight of my pack onto my other shoulder and gaze at it for a second. This, right here, is the moment that decides the rest of everything. I'd thought it was going to be dropping the letter on the teacher's desk, but it's this. It's the stepping of my shadow-feet into a dark so thick I can't even see the bright presence of Sol. I calculate mentally the amount of time it'd take for me to walk back alone in this weather, carrying my pack, but then I remember the town defense team and their weapons just outside the limits. Even if I got that far, I'd never get back to the town. They might shoot me with an arrow while I'm looking the other way. They might dispose of my body like they dispose of the common monsters, never knowing, never understanding my memories or dreams. There's nowhere to go but forward.
I step forward, hesitate, then feel a push at my back and am sent sprawling into the dark. I hear Reina jump down beside me. I know there's no going back.
There's no decision to be made. I follow them into the unknown. This could be the death of me, but it could also be the beginning of the rest of my life.