7
On the sixth day of Rise of Iron, my true love gave to me:
Six ways to survive.
The first close call happened ten days after the battle. He'd stayed with his ship for far too long. He'd ended up holing himself into it as a raging sandstorm ripped and banged outside the broken vessel. For a whole two days, he whittled away at the few supplies he had left. By the time the storm was over, his ship was half-filled with sand. He'd woken with a start, chin-deep in the grainy substance, weak with oxygen deprivation. He'd barely dug himself out in time, collapsing in the sand outside, recovering his breath and going through a brief period of exhaustion-induced unconsciousness.
Then, he'd picked himself up. he'd kicked his ship and screamed; there was no hope of repairing it now, filled with sand, with all his Crows destroyed by the storm. But still; he'd picked himself up, and switched priorities.
His old goal: get home.
His new goal: survive.
The second close call was a foolish, greedy mistake he'd made soon after the first close call. Half-dead with dehydration, he'd drank his fill of the first water he'd found. Too late to correct this mistake, he'd spent the next two days curled up under a rock in agony, until his Awoken immune system destroyed whatever it had been that he'd ingested from the stagnant pool. Lesson learned; to survive, to reach his goal, he must not forget to boil and treat the water he found, no matter how thirsty he was.
The third close call, he'd actually thought he was finally leaving the cursed rock behind. After what may have been an earth month of wondering around, trying to find something that might help him get back to the Reef, he'd come across a Hunter. After a brief and slightly heated discussion, during which he was both agitated and elated, as well as disbelieving of his luck, the slightly confused Guardian had called forth their Ghost to send a message to the Tower; they'd found the missing Prince.
Then Fallen sniper fire had destroyed the little robot. Even now, when the night was at it's most silent, he though he could still hear the Guardian's outcry of anguish and rage. The both of them had run. The both of them had nearly died.
One of them took a shot to the spine and couldn't continue on, and one of them had had to keep running, the screams of tortured agony of the other being ripped apart for fun following him long after the Fallen were far behind. He'd hidden himself in a copse of dry-leaved martian trees for three days, high up in one tree, shaken from the encounter.
The first person he'd interacted with for so long, dead only moments after meeting him.
The first, brightest chance of getting home he'd seen since watching his sister's ship get blasted to pieces, the blast from the weapon rocking his ship, slamming his head into the console and knocking him out cold so that his ship continued on until crashing into this forsaken red rock, the chance gone after only a few moments of blindingly bright and shining hope.
After a while, he'd climbed down. He'd survived. And he would keep surviving.
The fourth close call was the closest. He'd long lost track of time, but it had been a while since the encounter with the Guardian and the Wolves. He'd found an oasis a few days prior, and had an abundance of water with him still.
A good thing, it turned out to be, for that day, he found an old Cabal base. Abandoned. He'd thought it suspicious, but had gone ahead and went inside anyway, as it offered itself at the end of the night, and the old base would offer a great amount of protection from the heat of the coming day.
Abandoned.
Oh, how wrong he'd been. The Psions, likely sent to gather anything recoverable from the base, had come out of nowhere. One of them had sent him flying into a wall with a blast of telekinesis, and the last one, before he could shoot and kill it, had caught him in the side with it's slug rifle. The Cabal, it seemed now, had made several advances in firearms since he'd last fought them. There was something in that bullet that had stopped his blood from clotting.
Rather than stopping or slowing to a trickle, the blood had just kept coming. Realizing that trying to stop it with physical means was a lost cause, and growing dizzy from blood loss, he'd dumped out the contents of the med pack he'd brought from his ship. The very small med pack.
By some miracle, this very small med pack had had a small pack of some sort of clotting agent in it. Quickly losing consciousness, he'd dumped the stuff in his wound messily, and his mind had quickly escaped reality. He wasn't sure how many days he spend laying there, in the drying pool of his own blood, fading in and out of consciousness. He rarely was able to remember the points where he was awake. One of the few he did remember was a brief flash of realization that, at one point, he'd managed to gather enough strength to put an antibiotic on his wound and drink a little water before slipping away again.
But he had survived. There was now a scar in his side to stand testament to the ordeal, but he had survived.
The fifth close call had been, in all honesty, the scariest. And it had cost him more that all the other times put together. He'd found a river; sweet, rushing water, in a shaded ravine or sorts. Plants all around, many of them edible. He'd feasted on cactus fruits and even a roasted lizard that night, sleeping with a full stomach for the first time he could remember since crashing. Even the dirt in the cave he'd found to sleep in had been softer, and much more easy on his still-tender side.
The next day, he'd decided to explore this little mini-paradise he'd found.
A fool he was, too, for leaving his gear behind. For indeed, he'd planned on staying here for quite a while, if circumstances allowed. He'd found a tree on the river bank, leaning out dangerously across the rushing rapids. He'd recognized the fruits hanging from it's branches; safe to eat, a delicacy even. He could survive for weeks on them if and when he set out again. But for that moment, he'd only wanted just one. To take the edge off his hunger for that day, and make sure the fruits were ripe enough to eat.
He never found out. At least, not at that moment. For that was the moment, as he climbed out onto the tree, stretching out a hand to take one of the fruits, that the roots of the tree came loose from the muddy shore, and both the tree and himself had been sent into the water. As a Reefborn Awoken, he wasn't really a fantastic swimmer. And even if he were, the was no way he could have swam in that water, it was going so fast.
The river had toyed with him like a cat playing with it's food, sucking him under until he couldn't hold his breath any longer, then tossing him to the surface for a fraction of a second before slamming him into a boulder and dragging him back under. This process repeated in various orders, until, as water invaded his lungs, he was thrown into open air. He coughed the water up, and was helpless to save himself as he hit the bottom of the waterfall, the scream of pain that left his mouth coming up in a surge of bubbles as his leg broke near the hip from the impact. Unable to swim, drowning, the only reason he was still alive was because his limp, near-dead body had caught on the tree as it floated to the surface after hitting the bottom of the same waterfall.
Coughing and vomiting up river water, he'd shakily pulled himself up to drape himself over the trunk of the tree. He'd taken his knife out, cut a strip of fabric from his cloak, and tied his wrist around one of the tree's branches to keep himself from falling off as he succumbed to unconsciousness. He'd survived. The gear he had left at the cave? He had yet to see of it again.
Because right now, at the bottom of the river, he was enduring the end of close call number six. A raging illness had overtaken him after he'd dragged himself ashore in the freezing cold of the martian night. His leg throbbed, likely infected. The Awoken immune system, when well-fed, could conquer such a task. So, he'd been living off the fruit of the water-logged tree for the past many days, delirious with pain and fever a good majority of the time.
He peeled his eyes open with a groan. Day six after falling. He glared at the tree, which was stuck in the mud on the shore a short distance from the rocky outcropping he'd hidden himself under. He hated that tree. Maybe it was because he now had to drag himself to his feet and endure the pain of making it all the way to the shore for food. Once he got there, he would sit against the trunk, shaking with exhaustion and pain.
He glared at the orange shape in his hand. He hated this fruit as well. Maybe it was because it was the only thing he was living off of at this point; he'd tried to set a trap, but it had yet to catch anything. And still, in the back of his mind, the close-yet-far sixth sense of his sister's possible presence still lingered. It was like torture to him, knowing she might still be out there, out of his reach. He couldn't help her.
How could he, when his every whimper of pain, every delirious dream, every weak outcry, was answered with uncaring silence? Ruefully, he bit into the fruit. He hated it. But he had to eat it. To survive.
Uldren Sov was beginning to tire of survival.
Okay, so this was a far cry from what I've written for this so far. But I just had to get it out, I was feeling emotional from writing that scene with Jolder and Saladin. PUPPIES!
But "What happened to Uldren?" is a question not a lot of people are asking, when it could be the most important one we SHOULD be asking. Especially with Destiny 2 coming just a year from now. We know the MARS social space and area were moved to D2 from TTK, and a lot of flavor text from post-campaign mission in TTK mentioned Uldren.
I think he'll play a role in D2. And really, while we're off collecting SIVA fragments and playing with Iron Gjhallahorns, he's probably having a rough time of it.
Keep reading, folks! The next one won't be depressing, I PORMISE! Two words; "Bobsleds" and "Variks". Enjoy.
Oh, and sorry, dear Jayfeatther; you know I called first turn on the xbox. And I WILL know if you spike my tea with melatonin...
Read and REVIEW!