another Gears forum contest entry. this time i actually finished it in time, and i posted it a few hours ago. i feel sick with nerves but i'm glad i participated, even if i don't win.
the topic was "Forgotten."
some parts feel...half-baked idk, but the first draft was nearly 7000 words long and i had to double post as it was. if i went all the way i could have ended up with three or even four posts so. yeah.
The flood was beneath them, but the world had ceased to exist.
Instead of black, roaring death, screaming white now surrounded Kaise and his men. His ears were closed against the sound but it still filled his head, a different kind of hell from the one below. He tried in vain to find something in the nonexistence before him.
His armor protected him from the worst of the weather. He sat against hard rock. He and his men had crawled into a shallow cave, but it did little to block the wind and snow. Kaise's legs looked like another part of the landscape.
Ari, Zeni, and Zin were on his right, directly in the path of the wind. Kaise could make out the outlines of the littermates clinging to each other, one covering the other, but he couldn't tell who was who. Zin clung to his arm, face pressed between Kaise's shoulder plate and the rock.
To his left were Sleyn and Petris, similarly configured. The men weren't wearing much-nobody expected to leave the Hollow and ascend into a surface winter. Kaise shuddered to think what the world would feel like without his Elite armor.
Whatever slim chance of salvation this rock offered, it was better than sitting prone. They could have climbed straight into a frozen hell for all Kaise knew; maybe they had all perished in the flood and this was their punishment for losing.
His men were fading, and he knew that. He'd worked with most of them for years-Ari and Zeni were new-and, typically, could feel their presences like he felt his legs when he wasn't looking at them. Instead of his flesh going numb, they were. And there was nothing he could do.
Queen Myrrah did this, Kaise thought suddenly. It wasn't delirium; he was nowhere near cold, though the tips of his fingers were beginning to chill. His mind was still sharp and clear from adrenaline.
He cautioned himself against jumping to conclusions. There could have been any number of reasons for the early flooding.
Which made the most sense, though? That there was an accident, or that Myrrah had given the order to the High Priest to sink Jacinto early? Save Nexus and damn whatever else was out there, she may have said.
Would Skorge really do that, though? Kaise asked himself, and chastised himself for thinking so naively. Skorge may have been RAAM's friend, but that didn't mean he cared about any other drone, especially over Queen Myrrah.
Did she think they would lay down and die? Kaise wouldn't allow his men to suffer such a fate because of the cruelty of one person. He would make them survive.
They would find Myrrah. They would show her what the Horde was capable of. But first, they had to live.
Last night's storm left everything looking plush and eerie in the early dawn light. Quen was bundled in the warmest clothes he owned to protect against the deepened chill. Small flakes, remnants of the blizzard's fury, swirled around him.
He stood on the cliffside and watched. There wasn't much to see; the valley was blemish-free save for a thin stream that had turned solid several days ago. The smooth whiteness stretched for miles to join with the mountains on the opposite side. Those peaks looked down like guardians, shielding from Quen a Sera that could have existed or not. On the other side of his village's mountain was an impenetrable section of the range. Nobody was certain what lay beyond either boundary.
In the early days it had been tough, and many had died during the transition to a life without electricity or the city. Now, though, people carried on like nothing was wrong. Even the underlying current of anxiety-that the Locust would find them and ruin their remote lives-had abated.
When the sun cleared the tallest peak, Quen called off his vigil and trekked home. He was one of the few that still lived on the mountain itself, instead of the barely-functioning town in the valley mouth. It was ten cold minutes to warmth.
He looked to his left, down on the village that was beginning to stir from sleep. He woke up earliest and went to bed the latest; he'd heard as much from his friends.
His grandfather built his family's house a long time ago, in the middle of the Pendulum Wars. The nearest neighbor was two miles away and further down the mountain. Quen thought of the entire place as "his." Even though it was rocky, uninteresting, and covered with grass that barely lived.
The house itself was a simple one-story affair. The mix of cobblestone and wood made it look old, but Quen's father had it reworked a couple decades ago. Everything inside was about as new as anyone could get now.
When he stepped through the front door, he had the kitchen to his right, and a short hallway leading to the living room straight ahead. There was another hall on the other side of the kitchen that led to the bedrooms.
Quen didn't cook much, so he didn't keep much in his refrigerator. The few eggs he had were probably about to go rotten, so he fried them. He took his breakfast into the sparsely-decorated living room. When the house became his, he got rid of almost everything that wasn't needed, keeping only his parents' bedroom intact.
When he finished eating, he put the plate on top of the others stacked on the coffee table and grabbed the notebook that was also laying there. In it, he wrote the day's report. Nothing suspicious in the morning. Had a blizzard so it's very snowy. If there was anything it's probably snowed in or dead by now.
The notebook was almost full. He'd have to go into town and buy more paper. He wondered if he had anything good to trade; currency had become meaningless pretty quickly for the villagers.
He probably had an extra pair of socks he didn't want anymore. Someone could use them.
Zeni didn't make it.
Ari was still hunched over the body, shaking it, moaning in abject grief. His last surviving brother wasn't waking up, and he didn't understand why. And Kaise had no idea how to explain.
The Drone may have been a physically-mature adult, but he was still only five-fresh from training and lacking the accrued intellect of a long survivor like Kaise. Ari knew what death was but never in his short life had he ever thought it would happen to him or anyone he knew. It was hard for each Drone to accept. Kaise had had his time, too.
He left Ari to it alone, and turned away from the spectacle to count their rations again. They'd had enough to recuperate their energy after the storm ended, but there was hardly any left. They didn't have it to walk across this frozen hell to somewhere with food.
The world they'd come up to was the surface, but it was solid white above and below, and covered in those huge sharp protrusions called mountains. It gave Kaise the sensation of being closed off; here, he could believe they were not only the last of the Locust race, but the last living things on the entire planet.
But he knew there were humans and animals on the surface. The question was, could anything live in a place like this?
They certainly couldn't. They wouldn't, if they stayed in this spot.
Zin was the worst off. He'd been complaining of a headache in the Hollow, before the flooding, and now lay in a corner of the cave, immobilized with fever. Everyone panicked about Lambency before Kaise took off a section of Zin's armor to show there was nothing glowing under his skin.
Sleyn and Petris were outside, walking around to generate warmth. Sleyn was almost pressing himself against the sniper, his lack of a shirt having become his greatest curse.
Kaise gestured to Petris. "We'll scout," he said. "Your rifle will be useful."
Sleyn moved back to the cave without a word and pulled himself in next to Zin. He didn't seem to have any reservations about infection.
Kaise and Petris started off. Without the sun, it was impossible to tell what direction they were going in, and there were few landmarks in this barren wasteland, so they kept to the curve of the mountain. In a few minutes, Kaise couldn't see the shelter when he glanced back.
It was quiet for a while. Kaise had to watch out for boulders hidden in the snow-he smashed his boot against one once, feeling the shock all the way up his leg.
Besides that, there were no enemies. No animals, nor signs of them. Kaise cautioned himself against panic, telling the knot in his stomach to undo itself this instant.
The path they were walking on was widening. As the nearest mountainside curved away from theirs, they found themselves in a valley. Kaise saw a grey sliver to his right that vanished in the distance. As they approached, he saw it was a stream.
It was mostly frozen, but some patches of ice looked suspect. It was thirty feet across and Kaise couldn't begin to guess how deep.
"Petris, look at that mountain there," he said, pointing to the other end of the valley. It wasn't very far. "Near the base."
Petris peered through his Longshot and within a few seconds, made a noise of recognition. "Human buildings."
Just as Kaise thought. His eyes weren't fooling him. "Any activity?"
"Can't see."
Kaise weighed his options. If they approached during the day, the humans would see them. They might have already been seen.
If they snuck in at night, that meant crossing the river in darkness.
The crossing would be perilous either way. Kaise started back towards camp to tell the others. They would have food tonight.
After being isolated, the village ran out of various supplies fast. They'd relied on the nearest city for products, using a thready road to reach the highway a few miles to the west. The city and the roads had fallen to rubble in the passing years.
No gasoline meant cars became defunct. Their shells lay useless in yards and streets. No shipments to the sole grocery store meant everyone relied completely on farming for food. The grocery store itself had been converted into a storehouse for extra vegetables and meat.
Gas stations, auto shops, and other facilities that required other parts of Sera to survive had also fallen under. Quen passed the empty buildings and remembered when this place had been vibrant. Several hundred people still clung to life here in the valley mouth, toiling in gardens and tending to livestock, but it was a different universe from the one that existed in Quen's memory.
Some people were outside, using shovels to deal with the blizzard's aftermath as well as they could. A few glanced at Quen as he passed, but every head ducked back down without a gesture or word. They must think I'm insane, he thought, keeping to the center of the street.
He knew that already, of course; this wasn't an epiphany moment. But each time he came down here, he remembered. He only interacted with others to do work or to trade. He'd been pretty good for things lately, so he hadn't even been doing that much.
His goal was Pem's house, near the very edge of the village where it began to cross over into "you can't call this civilization" territory. It was one of those weird buildings with the store on the ground floor and a living space on the second story. Pem earned his share by taking care of the buildings around town, since their society had gone back to bartering.
The general store door was always unlocked, so Quen let himself in. Pem cleared it out years ago, but the space felt small. It was worse upstairs, with walls and doors. Huang, Pem's son, his wife An, and Quen himself tried convincing Pem to move, but he refused.
Quen stood by the stairs in the back of the store and rapped on the wall. "Hey, are you there?"
He heard footsteps upstairs. Pem was Quen's father's age and just starting to turn grey. He still looked solid and strong. He was wiping his hands on his shirt as he came down the stairs. He'd probably just got done taking care of his goats, which he kept in the yard behind his store.
"Quen," he said. "What are you here for?" It was his way of saying hi.
"I needed paper," Quen said. "I was wondering if you had any, or knew someone who did."
Pem rubbed his chin for a second. "Sho, maybe. He collected stationery back in the day."
Quen nodded. He knew where Sho's family lived. "Thanks." He started to turn to the door, but stopped. "You don't...ever see anything weird down here, do you? Like in the valley?"
Pem raised a brow. "You asked me that six months ago. My answer hasn't changed."
He fidgeted. "I know, but…"
"Quen, you can't change things no matter how much you watch." Pem put a hand on his shoulder, just for a second. It was long enough to drive the point home.
He balled his fists, but didn't let his anger past there. "I know. I have to get going, Pem." He exited the store without looking back.
Sho's family lived on the hill beneath Quen. He exchanged a pair of his socks for some old stationery with bears on it. They invited him inside for a drink, but he really wanted to be home.
When he got there, he stewed for a while before going to the cliff. Pem was right, but he was also wrong.
Quen had to watch, because if they came back-if he saw them, because somebody had to see them-then he could go meet them with whatever they needed. They'd be hungry, probably, and definitely cold.
They would enter the valley through the mountain pass. That many people couldn't be missed, even at a distance. If he slacked, they'd have to make the last leg of the journey without being noticed, and would cause quite a shock. Quen was best for the job because of where he lived.
What kind of son would he be, if he wasn't there to greet his parents when they returned?
In the Hollow, light was low but constant. Except in places where there was no vegetation, one could expect some form of luminescence. It was not so on the surface.
Kaise had spent plenty of time on the surface, but lived the last few months in the Hollow, dealing with evacuation plans. He felt as disoriented as he did his first night. The world was so uniformly white that the only indication of sunset was a slight shift, a subtle darkening as his eyes failed to compensate perfectly. The moons were glowing behind the clouds by now, and humans would be preparing to sleep.
Nothing moved in the valley, nor the mountain. There was no noise except for the occasional whistle of wind somewhere. It didn't look like there would be another blizzard tonight, at least.
He looked back at the cave. There was a spark of light where Petris used the kindling he kept on hand to make a fire. Kaise walked near and his hearts wrenched at the sight of Ari, draped over Zeni's body. He looked too much like a child.
Sleyn had commandeered Zeni's chest and arm armor, and looked much better for it. He and Petris gazed at Kaise and merely waited.
"Ari, stay here," Kaise said. "I am trusting you to watch over Zin."
The Drone raised his head a fraction and grunted in acknowledgement. At least he wasn't too far gone for that.
Kaise beckoned Sleyn and Petris. "Let's begin."
Quen stood on the cliffside for his evening watch. The wind didn't feel bad, the night was pale with snow and a break in the clouds that let the double moons shine through. It was that kind of ethereal, still beauty only winter could provide.
He felt like he had something to prove, so he stayed longer than usual. He wouldn't sleep soon, he knew.
Tiny, dark shapes appeared from the rocky distance. The valley was small and narrow, but they were too far away for him to tell much other than they were human-shaped.
His heart thumped, but something kept him rooted to the spot. He didn't know where the uncertainty was coming from, but he knew how to dispel it; his father's hunting rifle.
It was a mad dash to and from the house. The rifle was stored in his father's closet, and Quen felt like he was disturbing a tomb as he tore through everything.
Quen hadn't held a gun in years. He tried to hold it as steady as possible while he looked through the scope and moved the rifle in an attempt to find his targets.
The scope didn't bring them too close, but something about the shape unnerved Quen deeply. This wasn't right. There were three human shapes, heading directly for the village. Their arms were all folded like they were carrying things.
Should I go help Pem? Quen thought.
It was one of those decisions he might look back on and think was stupid later. All he knew was that Pem was down there alone and Quen had his own gun.
He didn't have bullets, and didn't know where to get them, so he hoped a bluff would work.
Quen only hoped they were dealing with humans.
There was nearly enough light to see color now. Kaise had second thoughts, but couldn't bring himself to order a retreat. If his men saw him weak and afraid, they, too, would have second thoughts.
General RAAM could have turned around for any reason, and nobody would have criticized him. And it wouldn't have been out of fear of his reaction; everyone trusted RAAM to do what was smartest. Kaise hoped he could inspire those feelings in his troops, but this was no time to test them.
The river was less than three hundred feet away. He told them they'd get food tonight, and that was what they intended to do. He didn't intend to leave Zin and Ari alone, either.
And they were only here for food. Eliminating the humans could come later, if at all. Kaise didn't care at this point.
They were close enough for Kaise to see warm orange and yellow in the general area where the human dwellings would be-the distance made the greys and blacks bleed together, shapes indistinct.
But there were no lights lower on the mountain. If they slipped into this uninhabited area, found something, and left quickly enough, they might not have to have a confrontation at all. Humans would suspect their own before Locust.
There were two buildings coming up. One looked close to collapse, but the other seemed relatively well-cared for. He could smell something on the air as they drew closer, and stuck out his hand to stop the others.
"Animal," Petris said. He'd smelled the same thing.
"Quick and quiet," Kaise reminded them. He was most worried about Sleyn; grenadiers weren't known to be delicate.
They headed for the more delapidated building. They hid behind it, glancing around the side to their target. It was a two-story structure, made of brick, and had a faded sign above the front door. Something smelled alive over there.
Petris was peering at the building through his Longshot. "Nothing," he said after a few moments.
"Stay here and cover us," Kaise said. "If you see a human, make a lot of noise."
Petris nodded.
Kaise and Sleyn set off together. It was twenty feet across a crumbling, snow-covered road to the building. The area smelled vaguely of humans, but he saw no signs of any.
Sleyn continued around the building, pointing towards the back. Kaise kept an eye on the front door and slipped around the corner with him.
There was a large, fenced-in area behind the building. Several goats stood in the darkness, stupidly unaware.
Kaise vaulted over the fence and the animals bleated. He grabbed the nearest one's neck and began throttling it. It kicked with its front hooves, but only for a moment.
Sleyn had both hands around another. The noise stopped.
It hadn't stopped soon enough.
Kaise neglected to take notice of the back door to the building in time. It blew open, and a crack exploded through the air. The quiet shattered like glass and in the muzzle flare of the human's shotgun, Kaise saw the garish red color of Sleyn's blood. The Drone fell to the ground minus a head.
Kaise reacted on instinct. He raised his Hammerburst and fired a burst into the human's midsection. It yelped and fell. It wasn't a Gear. It was probably expecting other humans and fired on reflex when it saw Locust.
It was a good shot for a human under stress.
Kaise looked at Sleyn's body. The human was moaning, but no longer a threat. It had made a godawful amount of noise, though.
He slung the dead goat over his shoulder and picked up the one Sleyn had strangled. Both of them weren't much. At the moment, food was more important than anything else, but as Kaise raced back towards Petris with his "prize" in tow.
He beckoned Petris from his makeshift observation point. The sniper didn't ask questions, just grabbed one of the carcasses from Kaise's shoulder and ran beside him.
They crossed the river without incident. Kaise glanced over his shoulder the entire way, but no humans pursued them. He wondered what they would do with Sleyn's body, if they would do anything.
He had to go back. He slowed and Petris stopped as well.
The sniper looked confused when Kaise handed him the other goat. "Go back to camp. I will follow shortly."
Petris didn't ask. Maybe he understood the same way Kaise did, or he might have been conditioned to accept whatever he was told. Either way, he nodded and set off with both burdens.
Kaise marched back to get Sleyn, alone.
Quen's entire body quivered and his lungs burned. When he heard the shots, he ran like his own life depended on it. His instincts screamed at him to go back home, to hide, but if guns had been fired it meant Pem was involved. If guns were fired, those things probably weren't humans.
Pem's general store looked completely untouched from the front. He felt like yelling, but feared what might answer him.
He pushed the front door open, cringing at the squeak of hinges. He raised the rifle, feeling stupid and weak, but it was the best he could do. There'd been multiple gunshots, so one of them had to be Pem's, right? Maybe he scared them off.
Quen took a calculated risk. "Pem?" he called into the darkness. He might have heard something low and quiet in response, but couldn't tell if it came from a person or the old walls.
The door to the back room was open, and the door to the backyard was too, because some light was coming in. Quen took it slow and careful through the front of the store, glancing into the stairwell as he passed. He didn't know what to look for or how to act. But if Pem was anywhere, it was most likely the backroom.
As Quen moved closer to the open door, the yard became visible. A slanted rectangle of light illuminated a dark heap that lay in the doorway. There was a puddle of dark liquid shining in the moons' light.
"Pem!"
Quen could make out the man's face now, screwed up in pain. He knelt and let the rifle drop to the wood plank floor. "What happened?"
Pem opened his mouth and choked out a noise. Quen felt stupid.
"No, never mind. Don't talk. Don't try to move." He looked over Pem's abdomen and guessed there might have been two or three entry wounds. He glanced around, looking for marks on the walls where the bullets exited, but he couldn't quite tell. They might have still been in Pem's body.
In a way, that could be a good thing. Quen heard that sometimes bullets stopped the bleeding, even if only by a fraction, and that fraction was the difference between survival and death.
"I need to get you to the doctor," Quen said, but realized there was no way to move Pem without making the bleeding worse. Gravity was probably what kept him alive this long. "Or...I need to get the doctor to you."
Pem grunted. He shook his head, his eyes twinkling in pain.
"What do you mean? I can't just-let you-"
Quen looked around, frantic, like he could find something that would fix this situation. Instead his eyes fell on the dead Locust and locked there for many seconds. Was it really dead? It had to be-nothing could live with that much of its head missing.
But he'd seen three in the valley. That meant there were two somewhere, unaccounted for and ready to kill again. Had the war that passed them by finally landed at their doorstep? Was the rest of Sera so bad that the things had to resort to clawing through these isolated and empty lands?
"I have to at least try," Quen said, mostly to himself.
He moved into the front room, then up the stairs. Blood pounded in his head and the rest of the world stopped existing.
He grabbed Pem's first aid kit from the bathroom and pounded down the stairs two at a time. Pem was still there when he got back.
Despite Quen's efforts, he started admitting to himself that he couldn't do anything to stop what was happening. He didn't leave Pem's side until he was certain there was nothing to leave behind.
Kaise stood over Sleyn's body. The human was already dead-one look said it all-and there was nothing in sight to take his frustration out on. Except himself.
They could have been the very last Locust. Each death was a step closer to extinction and a permanent mark against Kaise. He didn't care about being promoted anymore; this was a personal failure, like the world screaming at him. You are not good enough.
He hauled Sleyn up and slung him over the fence. The body thudded against the ground. Some of what remained of his head got on Kaise's armor, and when he saw it, he clawed at himself like it was a heart leech.
A click caught his attention. He whirled to face the open door and saw the human. Disbelief flickered through him before he realized it was a different one-standing over its dead friend, holding the shotgun that took Sleyn's life. The barrel was pointed directly at Kaise's head.
Quen had hidden in the shadows, waiting to see what would happen. Only the armored one showed up, and he felt powerful with the barrel of the shotgun glaring at its ugly face.
He knew there was at least one more, and he didn't know where it was. Did this one return to finish the job?
The Locust was frozen in place, as if it couldn't believe a mere human caught it. Its eyes were strikingly pale, almost moon-colored. It just looked and looked at Quen while his finger trembled on the trigger.
He shouted, "Why?" It didn't answer. "What are you? Why did you attack us? Why did you attack Sera? You-you killed my parents, didn't you? Like you killed Pem! Like you killed everyone else!"
To his utter shock, it spoke-but in a language he didn't speak. The words sounded Tyran, but Quen could have been mistaken.
The Locust's voice was like smoke and shadow. It said something, then shook its head. It was silent for a moment before looking Quen square in the eyes and saying something in a grave, low tone.
Quen quivered. He couldn't understand any of it.
"I can't understand you," he growled.
The Locust spoke again and lifted a claw. Quen glanced down and saw how badly his hands were trembling. He took a backwards step, closer to the shadows. He didn't think he'd miss if he fired, but he wasn't sure.
Then the Locust jumped, disappearing to the side. Quen turned the corner in time to see its boots hitting the ground behind the fence. Damn, it was fast. He took his chance and fired.
Buckshot hit the creature's leg, but it ran on undeterred.
Quen turned and ran through the general store, to the street. He trained the shotgun on the corner where it should have appeared. After a few seconds he thought it might have gotten to a hiding place already.
Then something huge and powerful grabbed him. Before he understood what was happening, he was pinned to the ground. His cheek burned against the freezing snow and he was too shocked to even be afraid.
The Locust's gravelly voice spoke to him. It stood with one boot in his back, and he saw it stoop to pick up the shotgun.
A lump formed in his throat, along with tears in his eyes. He'd failed. Worse; he'd opened the door for this place to be destroyed.
The weight lifted from his back. The thing hauled him to his feet one-handed and placed him in front of itself. His head reached its chest, and he craned his neck to look at its eyes. It smelled terrible, probably even more so under that armor.
"Human," it said. That was one of the few Tyran words Quen knew. It turned him around and shoved his back lightly, but he still almost fell. "Go."
He listened. He expected a shot to the back but it never came. When he glanced back, the Locust had gone, most likely back into the general store.
He ran breakneck, desperate to be among humans.
Kaise placed Sleyn with Zeni in the cave. They had no equipment for a proper burial. He wondered if their souls could find their own ways back underground, then asked himself if the afterlife even existed.
It wasn't a question he wanted to answer with field experience. He sat down at the fire to help Petris take the goats apart.
Ari watched with interest. "I seen that," he said.
"What?" Kaise looked at him.
Ari pointed at the goat's dead face. "Seen it up in the rock."
There were wild ones, then. They didn't have to raid the humans. The brief flash of guilt overrode the pain in his leg. He might as well have been shot in the chest.
"That's very good, Ari," Kaise said, not letting his disappointment show. A literal-minded young Drone would think they'd done something wrong to upset him. "Now we know we can get more food."
Ari looked pleased. He still glanced at Zeni's body every few minutes, as if expecting his brother to wake from sleep, but seemed to be accepting the idea of death on his own terms.
Petris already gave both livers to Zin, knowing he needed it most. These were good men indeed. They were the new hearts of the Locust race, as far as Kaise was concerned, and he was proud to be the leader and defender of those hearts. He wanted to be something they would be proud of in return.
They were making smaller, more manageable packages out of the goats, then cooking the meat. The four of them ate portions of it right then-Zin was well enough to sit up now, and would no doubt be fine for walking by morning. Petris volunteered to carry the rest, always the resource keeper in any team he and Kaise had been part of together.
The sky was clear, and stayed so through the morning. Kaise watched the sun rise and felt much more capable of orienting himself. He'd recognized the language the human spoke; if he was right about which country they were in, then Tyrus was to the west.
Nexus was underneath Tyrus. It was his best bet for finding Myrrah. Even if he didn't want to see her again, they had to leave soon.
Kaise didn't have it in him to carry on a war that wasn't his. It was time to forget about prejudice and direct his energy to the true enemy. The humans in these mountains never hurt Kaise; his own Queen had.
Yet there was also no chance of reconciliation. If that were at all feasible, then it would be achieved by men far greater than Kaise. He couldn't carry the war on his shoulders, but he couldn't stop fighting either. He would make a terrible diplomat.
He looked up from the leg he'd been dismantling and glanced at each of his men in turn. "Drones. Who wants to find our Queen?"
He couldn't see Petris's reaction behind the goggles, but Ari and Zin both brightened significantly. The first step to his plan would be to remove that positive association. He was their Theron, but didn't yet have their loyalty; it would come in time.
By mid-morning, they were ready to move. Westward-bound, their route would take them around the mountain they'd sheltered under. Kaise recalled what looked like the beginnings of a pass that he spotted while scouting yesterday.
There was little time to waste. Tyrus waited with whatever it held.
Three days passed. Quen didn't see the Locust again. He amped up his routine watches and paid particular anxious attention to the gap between the mountains.
He hadn't seen another human being since shortly after the funeral. That day, he traded many of his things for seeds and gardening equipment, including the useless rifle to a man who happened to possess the correct bullets. Most of what he had couldn't be planted until spring, but he make do somehow.
It was irrational, but he thought if he survived his encounter with the Locust, then the people who left years ago to see what had become of Sera might be alive too. He knew it was irrational because he couldn't judge the entire Locust species based on an individual.
But the hope spurred him, and he watched. And the world went on around him, along with whatever existed beyond the mountains.