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Post by Crystal on Feb 6, 2009 20:09:55 GMT -5
“Kit?” Crystal murmured, brushing her hair out of her eyes. Longer than shoulder length and copper brown, it hadn’t been groomed for weeks. Her fingers caught in the mats and snarls, and her body was worn and thin with hard living. She was not pretty anymore, oh no, and a part of her regretted it.
Cold wind caught the girl as she rose from her warm spot, cutting through the thin cloth of her shirt and numbing her bare feet. She shivered, wishing she could wear Kit’s jacket, still tied tight about her waist, but there was always modesty. A semblance of dignity was all she had left.
The wood around them was brown and featureless. Crystal glanced about helplessly, unable to determine where they were. But it was enough, for the moment, to be free. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes, willing herself not to think of the animal terror she had experienced in the past few days. There had been moments; only moments; when she had considered death. So much more dignified, death, than the terrible waiting to be tormented. It had been like a cancer; a patient with advanced cancer, waiting to die, wishing it would happen sooner to spare them the anguish.
She tried not to think about it.
“Kit,” she asked again, “Do you know where we are?”
From far away, she saw a guide they could use. The black towers of the Mythics stretched above the trees, clawing at the sky. Her breath steamed in the air and she hugged herself tight, trying to ignore the cold. It was nearly always cold where rebellion was, because the Mythics liked the warm. Crystal suspected that the extremity of temperature on their home world had tended toward heat.
She tried once more, in a small voice. “Do you know if we can go home?”
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Post by KitClairvoyance on Feb 6, 2009 20:10:06 GMT -5
"We'll get home," Kit groaned as he got up, "I didn't rescue you so that we could starve out here." Following Crystal's gaze, he too looked up to the Mythics tower. He wished he had more faith in what he said though, their hideout was back on the other side of the farm. The way Kit saw it, there were two options. To cut through the farm again, or to give it a wide berth and go around. Neither of which would be easy or safe. Tearing his eyes away from the obstacle that stood so defiantly ahead of them, he decided to concentrate on their first priority: getting food and water.
Getting water was simple enough. Ever since the Mythics had burned the woods, rainfall had been stagnating in the soil. Underneath the powdery layer of soot that covered the forest woods, Kit knew that there was an abundance of wet soil. It wouldn't taste good, probably bitter with all the carbon, but it would be water nonetheless. If they had more time, Kit could have built a simple device to distill the water. As it was, they had to be content with boiling it to make sure it didn't kill them.
Firewood was also in abundance. They were practically surrounded by charcoal. His only worry was that a fire might attract attention, but that was a chance they had to take. Hopefully, it would burn cleanly enough and not produce large volumes of smoke.
That left food, and a dead wood wasn't one that was prone to giving up wildlife for meat. Nor did it carry tasty shrubs. Still, food could be found if one knew where to look. Kit knelt down and brushed away the top layer of soot, scooping a handful of wet dirt in his hands. After allowing the dirt to sift through his hands in big clumps, he was left with an earthworm. Not exactly the most appetising thing around, but it was food nonetheless. He just hoped that Crystal wouldn't object too badly to it.
Standing up, Kit looked at Crystal. He felt a little sad for her, having had to go through the horror of being kept in the farm. Watching as one by one, the people she knew being dragged out. Hearing their tortured screams. He was surprised that she still had the will to go on after all that. Perhaps he'd make a decent fighter out of her yet.
Perhaps some food and drink would do her good.
"Mind breaking some of the branches for charcoal?" he asked her, "try to keep the pieces small, they burn better that way. Less smoke." He preferred that she not know about where they were getting their food from until it was necessary. He didn't want to throw her appetite off. Hopefully, his ancestors weren't lying when they said that worm tastes just like chicken.
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Post by Crystal on Feb 6, 2009 20:10:28 GMT -5
Now that he mentioned it, she was starving. Shivering, she began to root about for branches, breaking off bits and pieces and gathering some of the bits for a fire as Kit turned his back to her. She had the feeling that he didn’t want her to know where he was getting their food from. Stifling the rush of curiousity she felt at his secrecy, she stacked the charcoal in a pile and waited for him to light the fire.
Crystal assumed that it was going to take them at least two days to get back to the shelter; if it was even still there. There was nothing Kit could possibly do that would induce her to set foot near the Mythic camp again. No, if she had anything to say about it, they would go around. The woods were starved and so were the few animals within, but it was worth it to be somewhere where she knew what the creatures were. She shuddered.
There was a weight in her jacket, dragging one side of it down from her waist. She fished in, and pulled out a tiny bag; a purse, it seemed like. Vaguely, in the back of her mind, she remembered looting the female Mythic last night. Had it really only been last night? The bag was made of a large gland, dried and cured. Involuntarily, her eyes fell on the javelin that had come from the same creature, lying on the ground beside where they had lain that night. For creatures that were so skilled with the building of stone, cloth and metal seemed beyond them.
Standing there, lost in her contemplation for a long moment, she could not help but feel pity. It must have been terrible, whatever it was that had changed them so. She would have to explain her theories to Kit some time. For now, they needed to survive.
Squatting, she emptied the gland’s contents carefully onto the ground. It seemed to be a mix of some sort… dried meat, bits of black stone, and some colourful ones that glittered as they moved. Her breath caught and she fingered the latter. These were gems. One was a ring far too small to fit on any Mythic; a few others were definitely carved in the same fashion as the invading aliens, polished and round. It was an odd match, the delicate faceted diamond of an engagement ring and the smooth surfaces of the alien gems. They’re not wholly monsters, she reminded herself with a shudder. Somehow that fact made what they had done worse. It was so much easier to kill them when they were just animals.
Maybe that was the answer, she thought, depressed. If humans convinced Mythics that we were more than animals, too. It might have worked when we’d still had cities and soaring monuments and brave men to fight. Now mankind was far too scattered, and far too few. Much too low on the food chain to count. She dropped the things back into the pouch, ignoring the bits of meat. She might give them to Kit later. Hopefully they wouldn’t be human.
Then, with an unexpectedness that clenched her belly, there was a low, low growl from behind her. She spun about. There was nothing there.
It sounded again.
Pulling the needle gun from her belt, she started off in its direction.
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Post by KitClairvoyance on Feb 6, 2009 20:11:04 GMT -5
As Crystal gathered the burnt branches, Kit set about gathering large clumps of wet soil in his hands, sifting the worms out of the crumbly, dough-like soil. He knotted the worms to each other, pulling their soft bodies taut in simple reef knots. It made them a lot easier to carry around, and ensured that they didn't escape. As for the comfort of the worms, he was past caring for their ethical treatment.
"Thanks," he said to Crystal as she deposited a pile of charcoal next to him, his hand covering the writhing pile of knotted worms. Anything to keep her appetite going. Hopefully, once they were cooked, they wouldn't look too much like worms. He dug a small pit with his hands, leaving Crystal to her musings as he dumped the charcoal into the pit. Lighting the fire was considerably less messier than foraging for food. The charcoal was dry, and the few leaves that could be found served as excellent tinder. With the help of two rough stones as makeshift flint, the air soon hinted of the musky smell of a charcoal fire.
Fire.
There had been many fires ever since the Mythics came down. Nobody told Kit where they were from, he was a soldier, not a scientist. His job was to kill them, and make sure they stayed dead. For the first month, things looked as if they would turn out good for them. News reports came in from all over the world about human victories, the Mythic body count rapidly rising as they beat back the aliens. Kit served on the front lines in Alaska, the heat of battle clashing with the merciless blizzards, as they spilled human and Mythic blood on the rough snow.
Funny how Mythics had the same blood colour as humans.
As the days wore on, victories became harder to come by. In Alaska, they were forced to retreat gradually as battle-fatigue, diminishing rations, and an endless flood of Mythics wore them down. Blisters would form on his hands and feet from constant skirmishes, it was the same all over his squad. Soldiers grew addicted to morphine as they took larger and larger doses to help them ignore the pain, and when their supply of morphine ran out, they mixed opium which was in abundance with liquid from the plasma packs used to supply power to almost all their equipment. Kit was no exception, it was the only way they could survive.
The war soon forced him out of his addiction, as even opium became harder to come by. When he joined the final pockets of resistance, the war had been going on for too long, he had grown disillusioned with the constant talk about a comeback. There would be no comeback. He knew that. The only thing left for him to do now was to keep him and Crystal alive. It was the least he could do.
The low rumble of a growl interrupted the healthy crackling of worms roasting over a fire. Kit kept still, listening intently as he picked out the soft crunch of dirt under light paws. He followed the sound, keeping track of the creature's rough position when Crystal broke the tension in the air, starting off in the direction of the growls. Idiot girl.
"Get back here!" Kit hissed at Crystal as he picked up a long branch and lit it in the fire. Once the branch caught fire, he threw it into the dry bush ahead of Crystal, causing it to flare up violently, the roaring sound of fire accompanied by a painful yelp as a wolf, thin and balding, tumbled out, its eyes fixated on Crystal as drool trailed from its deformed mouth.
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Post by Crystal on Feb 6, 2009 20:11:11 GMT -5
She heard a shriek - a woman’s voice - and realized suddenly that it had come from her own throat. Her gun arm whipped up toward the wolf; it leaped toward her with a howl born of desperation and hunger; and a shot rang through the air.
And just like that, it was over.
The wolf’s body barreled into her, already dead, and she lay there on the ground, hurting all over, and crying weakly with all the pent up terror and exhaustion of the past few days. It was a long time before she could get up again, and even then she still shook. Pushing the wolf off herself, Crystal looked at it with numb eyes.
It was a wretched-looking sort of animal; old, starved, and mangy. No, not old, she thought as she looked closer, touching the fur with her fingers; merely weak and disease-ridden. And why shouldn’t it be? It had lived – no, starved – for weeks in even worse conditions than they had. She felt a sudden wrench of pity for such a beast that had no right to be anything but alive and hale, and accompanying it, a rush of anger at no one and nothing; perhaps at some all powerful God far away in the heavens, watching their struggles and despair with uncaring eyes.
Reaching out, she closed the wolf’s eyes. Her shirt was torn, and she attempted ineffectually to close it, before turning her back to Kit and removing it altogether. So much for modesty. She shrugged his jacket on over her shoulders: it was much warmer at least; and knotted the long shirt sideways over her hips, where the jacket had lately been. But for the rip and the opening over one leg, it covered her near to mid-calf. Her numb toes curled in the chill air of morning… she could barely feel them. But even cold and tired, with her fists clenched under her arms for warmth, she somehow felt more alive than she had ever been before. Alive and angry.
“We’re burying it,” she said flatly to Kit, removing her hands from her armpits and reloading the needle gun with the last of its bullets. “Then we’re going home.”
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Post by KitClairvoyance on Feb 6, 2009 20:12:04 GMT -5
"Burial is pointless symbolism," Kit said, still disapproving of Crystal's decision to blindly step ahead into danger. He gave the carcass a nudge with the toe of his boot; the wolf was thin, with more bones than meat, but it still had a heart and liver. Kneeling down beside it, he took a stone and rolled the wolf on its back, feeling his way up its ribcage for a gap between the bones. "It would have eaten us anyway."
Finding a sizeable gap near the wolf's heart, he pressed the stone hard against the skin and tore it backwards, the hard hide splitting open with a harsh rip. Blood-stained maggots spilled out of the tear, writhing and crawling their way up Kit's arm and spilling onto the ground around him. Grimacing, he forced his hand deeper into the dead animal's body and wrenched its heart out, shaking off the maggots.
Maggots. It had already been dying, eaten from the inside out. Of all the horrors he had seen on the battlefield, inside the Mythic farm, it still hit him hard. Somewhere out there, there would always be something suffering more than he was. Perhaps it was a good thing that they had killed the wolf after all. He could only imagine the pain that it was going through, praying that he would never have to go through what the wolf had.
The wolf's blood was black, diseased and festering. A far cry from the pure red that it once had. That's what they are, a disease. A disease with their blight of black buildings and primal cruelties. The quicker he got what he needed from the carcass, the better.
"Here's your breakfast," he said, tossing the heart to Crystal before plunging his hand back in, prying back skin and bone until he found the creature's liver. It was still warm when he shook it free of maggots as well. It occurred to him that the maggots too were edible, but having no way to store them, he let them quickly burrow back into what remained of the carcass, leaving them to their grotesque feast of black blood and purple flesh.
"We'll eat quick and then head home." Kit said, not wishing to debate the ethical treatment of animals as he pocketed the grilled worm pretzel for later and slapped the liver onto the fire.
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Post by Crystal on Feb 6, 2009 20:12:12 GMT -5
Crystal’s stomach turned as Kit callously ripped the wolf’s body apart, revealing a writhing mass of maggots. In all her years studying the living, she had only heard of something like this a few times before. Maggots fed and proliferated in dead flesh. It was a miracle the animal had still been moving at all. It must have been in agony for at least the past few months.
Nausea turned to disgust as Kit ripped something out of the wolf, tossing it to her. She caught it instinctively and then nearly dropped it as she realized what it was. The wolf’s heart was still beating, dripping diseased blood. It was a pitiful sort of thing, about the size of her fist and mostly muscle, although she knew it was certainly edible. Probably better than whatever it was Kit had been preparing earlier.
“Here’s your breakfast,” he added dismissively, turning back to the body she had wanted to bury… if nothing else, as a gesture of respect for the pain the creature had undergone. Anger boiled up inside her at Kit. So he didn’t care. That didn’t mean she had to stand by and watch his callous disregard. It made them no better than the Mythics who had raped and bred humans for their children. Turning to the wolf’s miserable carcass, Crystal’s hand clenched tight in anger about its heart. There were undoubtedly other edible organs and meat in the body other than the two Kit had extracted, but she couldn’t bring herself to do what he had done.
Turning, she threw the heart into the fire with an angry hiss. It landed on top of Kit’s liver with a wet thump, splattering the pit with blood, and sizzled as flames began to lick at it. “You’re cooking,” she spat at him, snatching a branch from the dying bush fire that Kit had lit earlier, when the wolf had first appeared.
Setting the branch down, she dragged the wolf to the bush and piled dead brush over it, lighting it like a funeral pyre. The flames and smoke rose up like all the rest of their lives and their humanity, burning a body she hoped she would never see the like of again. It was the least she could do for something that had actually belonged here on Earth.
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Post by KitClairvoyance on Feb 6, 2009 20:12:39 GMT -5
Crystal's voice cut bitterly as she threw the wolf's heart down onto the fire, drops of blood striking his arms and face, glistening on top of the dried blood that already covered his arms. He ignored her and set about placing more charcoal into the fire, tending over their two pieces of meat.
It was just a wolf. Why is she so upset?
The morning sun had risen well, the last wisps of mist disappearing. Still, the forest was uncharacteristically quiet. Back before the Mythics came, the morning sun would have brought with it the high-pitched chirping of birds, scampering of squirrels, and the barks of packs of wolves. Now. Now there was nothing left apart from the worms and the diseased survivors.
He couldn't bring himself to stop Crystal from lighting the makeshift pyre, despite his better knowledge that it'd only serve as a smoke beacon for their hunters to follow. She could have her ethical comforts, it was probably the only form of comfort she had left in this world.
The heart and liver both had turned a healthy, brownish-grey colour. They were as cooked as they could get over the weak flame, any longer and they'd be better off eating the charcoal branches of the trees. The flame hissed and spat as he threw a clod of damp dirt on it. Taking the two pieces of meat and skewering them on branches, he walked over to where Crystal was standing.
"That's only going to get their attention, y'know," he said, handing her the cooked heart. His eyes watched as the flames crackled and burnt. The liver was tough and tasted bitter. Onions. It needs onions.
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Post by Crystal on Feb 6, 2009 20:12:48 GMT -5
Crystal hadn’t even thought of it.
“Of course I know,” she mumbled. It was a flat out lie, but Kit’s tone had deflated her. She had been expecting him to be angry, and had readied herself to lash out to him, rehearsing words to scream when the inevitable confrontation took place … and then it hadn’t. She almost felt cheated, in some vague way, as she took the wolf’s heart from him and forced herself to eat it. The heart was burnt in some places and raw in others, but the tears that pricked her eyelids and the numbness in her mind made it easier to chew without remembering where it came from. Kit’s eyes on her, however, did nothing to help.
“Let’s go,” she said finally, unable to force feed herself any longer.
The pyre behind them continued to burn as they covered what they could and left their makeshift camp.
Crystal spoke very little as they walked, content to trail behind Kit and to try to pull her mind back to the pressing question of survival. Here, far out in the woods, it was not so much a question of being found as it was being trailed. With the both of them alert, there was little chance that any passing Mythic would see them first – if there was even an alien who would deign to set foot in this desolate place – but far more pressing was the concern of being hunted. There had been considerable chaos last night, after all, and if they were found by a party as they were, they would stand no chance at all. No, far too few weapons out here, and fewer places to hide, no matter that they were making a respectable loop around the Mythic city, far enough that there were traces of green brush here and there.
Still, her mind wandered. It was hard to concentrate when all around you was nothing but the same charcoal-black trees and their branches, raking at the cloudy gray sky overhead. She could feel the wind pressing in on them. Was winter coming soon? It had always fallen without warning before.
But for now, she needed a bath, and clothes; and above all she needed warmth. Her bare feet were bruised and sore from walking over branches, and no matter how lightly she trod, there were blisters forming. An apology to Kit, too, perhaps. The needle gun she had given to him, and she carried now in both hands the Mythic female’s javelin. It still felt heavy and awkward in her hands, but it was nonetheless rather comforting. Besides, Kit was by far her better with a gun. She wished she’d had thought to learn before.
Crystal pulled her thoughts back grimly to their trek and carried on.
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Post by KitClairvoyance on Feb 6, 2009 20:12:59 GMT -5
The soft dirt made their trail easy to follow, especially with the lack of vegetation to cover it up. The same lack of vegetation made it hard for any hunter to creep up on them, and Kit took security in that. It bore a resemblance to the Alaskan tundra where he fought, a wide open space with hardly any cover. It was a rough place to wage war, soldiers on both sides often lost limbs to frostbite, and the low visibility in the constant blizzard made any skirmish a game of chance. And like the Alaskan tundra, the charcoal woods was an easy place to get lost in. East could very well be west, and north south.
Crystal kept silent throughout their slow trek back, Kit respected that silence. He knew he had offended her by asking her to eat the wolf's heart, after she had asked for it to be buried. But he dealt with survival, not ethics. Ethics were for those who didn't have to stand on the frontline, watching friends die at the hands of hunger and enemy alike. His first task was to make sure Crystal stayed alive, if only because he needed something to do, another mission to accomplish. He just wished she could make that task easier.
Then again, perhaps he shouldn't be so hard on her. All she wanted was to keep what was left of her sensibilities intact. After all, wasn't that why he gave her his jacket, to give her some form of modesty, of self-worth? The human mind was a fragile thing, and he should be thankful that Crystal hadn't broken down completely from her experience in the farm, however horrid they may have been.
The farm.
He still could see Janice's accusing eyes, her anger and disappointment constricting his heart as he fled the scene of her violation. She would be dead now, he knew.. he hoped. She would be better off dead, than to live to see her own child, raised to be killed.
Their trek lightened considerably as the charcoal woods thinned, giving way to a sparse field of grass. The touch of actual vegetation underfoot was refreshing, already he could hear the stream that ran past the entrance to their old hideout. Their hideout was built deep into the hill, a network of corridors and chambers, each with its own ventilation system. Ever since the attack though, most of those chambers and corridors had been sealed off by cave-ins. Still, it was good to be back.
As they came to the stream, Kit pressed his hand against Crystal's shoulder hard, stopping her. Tiny rivulets of blood streaked down the stream, fresh. He inched forward, only to see two Mythics standing guard over the grounds; behind them were three humans, two males and one female, their still-moving bodies lashed tight on wooden stakes, blood streaming down from their abundant wounds.
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Post by Crystal on Feb 6, 2009 20:13:24 GMT -5
Crystal didn’t understand the senseless violence she saw before her. The Mythics were usually nothing if not greedy with their food; it didn’t make sense for them to not eat perfectly good meat. An object lesson? To whom? Who on Earth was there still to make an object lesson to?
One of the males moaned in half-conscious pain, and she felt a sort of jolt in her stomach. She didn’t know him. Now that she thought about it, she didn’t recognize any of the trio. They were dressed in rags completely unlike the camouflage their group had normally worn, and there was a fourth figure sprawled on the green grass.
Her stomach turned once again. That fourth figure was half-eaten. Fresh, too. He must have died only hours before. Barbarians or no, the aliens were particular about their food to an extent, feasting on the soft meat and entrails and leaving the skull and brains. This one was gnawed down to the bone, his wide eye sockets staring in horror at the faces of his companions, hanging on their stakes. Some flesh still remained, but mostly, he was quite clean but for his head.
There was crusty vomit under the girl’s stake. Crystal couldn’t really blame her.
She took it all in in an instant, her mind fitting together pieces and her body frozen in place. Newcomers who had arrived only after their hideout had been taken, and who had been easy prey. It wasn’t unknown for people to move between camps. And now they were tied on stakes for later meals. The two Mythics were lethargic with food and seemingly contented, and there didn’t appear to be any others… at least, not outside.
If she and Kit could take them down fast enough, Crystal thought clinically, they might have a chance. If she and Kit could take them down. If there weren’t any others in their old home, ready to come boiling out at the slightest sound. If his needle gun was strong enough to provide them with two well-aimed, hopefully silent shots.
She glanced at him questioningly and then returned her gaze to the scene before them. They had to get in. There was no question about that. And to do so meant going through the guards… a disheartening and distasteful prospect, but they had surprise on their side.
Besides, she thought grimly as she twisted her hands on the shaft of the Mythic javelin, she wanted her clothes back.
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Post by KitClairvoyance on Feb 6, 2009 20:13:48 GMT -5
The stream ran in a tense silence beside them, water currents tightening, punctuated by the harsh language that the Mythics spoke in. Their language was a puzzle to humans, there were no discernible words to it. Rather, it was a continuous stream of a grating, rasping sound with no pattern to it. A now dead friend called their speech the dialect of the underworld. Looking at the carcass of the human strewn out on the floor with no respect, Kit thought that it was an apt label.
Looking at the mess of tracks that marked the entrance to their hideout, Kit guessed that there had been more than just those four living there when the Mythics came. No doubt it'd have been a quick and messy affair, just like the time their hideout was first stormed. The Mythics were efficient in their raids. Most of the men and children were slaughtered on the spot and eaten, those that survived the slaughter were stripped and herded to the farm in closely guarded convoys. They didn't stay long, leaving one or two behind to salvage whatever they wanted, which wasn't much. After having so easily defeated the human armies, they held very little respect for human technology and resources.
The two Mythics that held guard over the hideout were armed with their traditional javelins, nothing more. Not that they needed anything more sophisticated than that to overrun a small human group. They're not warriors. The Mythics Kit was used to facing on in battle were armed with more decorative armour and weapons. These were salvagers, a small fact that gave Kit more confidence. Perhaps it wouldn't be too bad after all.
One of the Mythics turned towards the closest human male, speaking towards him in its harsh language as it jabbed at the man's flesh with the tip of its javelin. A taunt. The man only rolled his head in response, spitting on the javelin, an act that earned him a sure stab into his right kidney. With the Mythics' back turned, and its javelin occupied, Kit took aim and fired three shots. The needle gun wasn't as loud as an explosive firearm, but the sharp crack that it produced was loud enough to alert the Mythics. The first one fell, three needles slicing cleanly through its spinal cord. Taking aim at the second, Kit fired another round of three needles, two deflecting off its armour, the third piercing its shoulder. Another round of three, and the Mythic slumped to its knees.
Relieved, Kit motioned to Crystal.
"Let's get those people down before they die. And keep an eye out, Mythics have a tendency to travel in packs of three."
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Post by Crystal on Feb 6, 2009 20:13:56 GMT -5
It was awkward to cut the first prisoner’s bonds with the serrated edge of her javelin, and Crystal almost wished Kit had not mentioned that third Mythic. Forced to turn her back to the mouth of the hideout and her only weapon engaged, her nerves felt strung taut and quivering.
The tough hide ropes fell free at last, and she made an instinctive move to try and catch the bleeding man as he fell. His eyes were shut in the darkness of unconsciousness, and his dead weight bore her to the ground. She let out a muffled grunt against his body. It took some effort to squirm out from under him and to turn him tenderly that his wounds would not touch the ground. A futile effort; she could already see infection setting into them. He would be lucky to survive the night.
Crystal turned to the girl then. She was young, very young; perhaps fourteen, with the same mousy brown hair as the first man’s. A daughter? The child’s eyes shone with tears, and Crystal’s heart went out in compassion for her. Without a word, she began sawing at her bonds, and when the girl fell to the ground, she crawled over to the unconscious man and began to stroke his hair, crying very softly and trembling in every limb.
She hurried on to the third. An old man. He watched her suspiciously, and when he, too, fell from the stake, he raised his head proudly and glared at her and Kit both. Crystal tossed him the fallen Mythic’s javelin, still stained with human blood. “Can you stand?” she asked him. “We’re going in.”
The old man did not speak. He was thin, brittle almost, with thinning white hair and bones that stood out against his body and showed through his wounds, but he grasped the javelin and slowly, arduously dragged himself up to a standing position. Blood dripped on the coarse grass, speckled sand and mud. Crystal bit her lip and turned to Kit questioningly, neither of them voicing the question. “I could stay,” she said hesitantly. “If you found any medicine… iodine, bandages…?” She glanced down at Kit’s jacket, now stained with several layers of blood. They were all hurt, all injured. They’d all be lucky to survive that night.
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Post by KitClairvoyance on Feb 6, 2009 20:14:44 GMT -5
There was a bittersweet hint in the air as Crystal lowered the three prisoners from their stakes. By all counts, the three humans should have been considered lucky for having survived in the hands of the Mythics for as long as they did, yet there was that seed at the back of Kit's mind that wished they were dead. As much as he admired their tenacity, they were still broken bodies with broken souls. At least death would have provided them with some rest.
Maybe when night fell and they all slept, Kit could at least put the young man out of his misery.
"I'll be quick," Kit assured Crystal and the others.
The entrance to their hideout welcomed Kit into its damp corridors. Rain had lashed its way into the flooring, bloating it up in uneven bumps and swells. There was a thickness to the black that enfolded Kit, thicker than the darkness that was in the Mythic farm. At least there, the stones were reflective.
Smoke hissed from broken hydraulic pumps, ejecting a geyser of gas through the dark, brushing Kit's face. One hand kept itself securely on the hilt of the needle gun, the other pressed palm-open against the nearest wall tightly.
Right is the research labs. Straight is the medical bay. Right is the research labs. Straight is the..
Kit chanted the directions in his mind, working from his memory of the place. Despite the cold, sweat choked his thoughts, disrupting the rhythm he fought to maintain. His small steps stumbled against the rubble, his mind involuntarily populating the darkness with the bodies of the people who lived together in the hideout with him, their corpses soggy and peeling.
"No," he said aloud to himself, "they're all in the farm. They have to be."
Moving further into the hideout, he kept his path straight. The corridor straightened, like the mental map, strengthening his confidence. At the end of the corridor, a faint flicker of light came through, breaking his small steps into a frantic run to what he recognised as the medical bay.
A gentle hum from the bay's reserve generator reassured him as he closed the door behind him. No clicking of Mythic footsteps. No guttural sounds. His hand grasped his shirt, clenching it tightly, dreading the trip back out.
Medicine.
Bottles lay broken on the floor, spilling their coloured contents into a cocktailed rainbow of drugs. Kit ignored the shards of glass and reached for the one unopened first aid kit, its weight a reassurance of its contents. A doctor's pen light made for a makeshift torchlight, and with it in one hand, the first aid kit in the other, and the needle gun holstered, he started his way back out, his worry now on the others. Kit had the only firearm.
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Post by Crystal on Feb 6, 2009 20:15:00 GMT -5
Crystal bit her lip as she gently pushed the sobbing girl aside, and ripped her father's shirt along the side. "Stand guard," she said sharply to the old man. "They come in groups of three."
Putting her bone javelin down, she busied herself with the wounded. His head lolled about, muscles slack in unconsciousness, and altogether he was a grimy, pathetic sight. She hoped Kit would come back soon. Crystal was a scientist, not a doctor, and it was beyond even doctors to work without instruments. Forcing herself to her feet, she stepped cautiously to the stream close by, dipping her hands into the still clear water. It was cold, and relatively clean, and had been the reason the shelter had been built here. At least the Mythics had not defiled it. Perhaps they, too, needed clean water.
She filed that thought away for future reference. Her hands and forearms washed off clean in the chill, fast-moving waters of the little brook, and shaking them to dry them, she rose cautiously. There had been no sound yet, so Kit must not have encountered any resistance, but they were both tired, sore and mentally exhausted. None of them were in any shape for a fight, but Crystal sensed – with an intuition that sampled the atmosphere and just knew – that they would fight at least one more time, before the hideout was theirs.
Cupping water in her hands, she picked her way back to the other ex-prisoners. There was some sparse vegetation about the area; bushes and vines and some scraggly trees that might come in handy if they had to hide. The hillside itself was steep in places and rocky in others, but for what it was worth, it was a good place. For a little while, at least. They would have to run now; run as fast as they could, now that the aliens had found this place.
Crystal regretted that. It had been her home for many years.
It took two trips to the stream to completely wash the wounds of the unconscious man, and she was both exhausted with the tension and frustrated with the others. The girl had recovered enough to stand watch alongside the old man, but she was skittish, terribly so, and she kept hovering in concern behind Crystal, which she found tremendously annoying. Like a fly, she thought, rather uncharitably. Crystal did not like being watched, least of all when her life was at stake and she had no idea what she was doing.
It was on her third trip to the stream when that last Mythic struck, and the tension had grown such that it was almost a relief. It seized upon her first, probably having determined her as the greatest danger to itself, and she had no time to scream as a weight threw her face-first to the ground. Her overwrought nerves shattered like glass, and she flailed the contents of her hand at the Mythic – cold water, as it happened to be.
The Mythic screamed in anger, bucked backward like it had been burnt. Cold gray spikes on its elbows and black stone armor clattered together, and it's stringy muscles and hardened skin convulsed. The water seemed to madden it… no, not the water, but the cold. She barely had time to register it before a bone javelin swung, catching the humanoid by the throat and flinging it behind, back into the clearing where the stakes were, where she had left the others.
It was the old man. Face clenched, teeth set, he stepped between her and the alien, javelin grasped in his hands. From behind, Crystal watched in helpless horror.
It was a very young Mythic, she saw. Like it's comrades, it had pale, pale skin, huge deep-set silver eyes and just enough of a human touch about its countenance for her to be able to read it's expression. It was young, and afraid, and mad with grief for its' comrades. The spines protruding from its elbows and ridging their way down it's back still looked soft, and obsidian black armor plates were not nearly as complete as those Crystal had seen on other Mythics.
It looked straight at her, and she knew – and it knew – that it was going to die.
They had, after all, been human.
The old man stalked it, like a hunter, and it took one step backward, flexing its claws and huge hands, its' attention wholly fixed on him. And as it stepped, it trod on the man lying wounded and unconscious on the ground.
A scream rang out. The tiny, tiny girl, whom Crystal had dismissed as being too weak, too skittish to do anything, flew at the Mythic, pounding on its head and chest plates, screaming incoherently like someone gone mad. "Get away from my daddy!" she screamed. "Don't you touch him! Get away from him! Get away!"
The alien turned in a flash, sunk it's claws deep into her body. And the old man moved. Raising his javelin high, he bounded across the small, grassy clearing and sunk the javelin into the base of the alien's neck, and through it, and impaled the girl below it as well, to the ground.
Crystal stood, shakily.
The old man pushed the Mythic's body gently off the child, and dropped the javelin to one side, as Crystal stumbled to their side. The girl turned her head just a little, her glassy blue eyes struggling to take in his face, and her mouth already filling with blood.
"sorry," she managed to mumble, "reverend father."
The old man, tears in his eyes, made the sign of the cross on her forehead as she died.
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