We must share the fruits we have grown. If they will not eat what we provide, we will starve them until they eat or die.
- Sermon of the Void
The Voice droned in his mind, each word floating and ringing, as the words always did, the crescendo building. The thoughts of the sermon echoed around his head, fighting to take the place of his own. Someday he would believe the words. For now, Fiher argued with the Voice in his mind. They want to survive and live just like we do. They have never intended the harm they have caused.
The warm air was wet in his throat as he leaned down close to the muddy ground at the bottom of the ravine, waiting to feel the movements of the patrol he knew was nearby. He glanced up at the western mountain front, admiring the white wall of clouds and mist descending the mountain. It would turn from a warm day to a snowstorm by nightfall. He sensed the movements through the ground, just over the ridge. He smiled, closing his eyes and conjuring up a few carefully selected memories and turning to move to the next ridge when he felt another series of movements from the opposite direction.
Shit.
He froze, still crouched near the ground, and he listened with more caution until he confirmed what he already knew and the weight of what he had caused came down on him. The second patrol and the first would be in clear sight of each other at the top of the ridge behind him. Any attempt to divert one or the other would expose him to both. He dug a hand into the roots of the long grass and mud beside him as he felt a wave of dizziness.
The footfalls of the two patrols changed into erratic patterns. Moments later, he heard shouts and the familiar crack of rifles, followed by the clang of swords. He pushed himself up to his feet as he was running up the hill, using his hands to gain his footing and move him up the steep incline. He grabbed at a branch attached to a fallen tree that was half buried, using it to propel himself up and to the side to get a foothold on a rock. He pushed back on the branch and felt the tree shift beneath the force of his weight, but he had to keep moving. Near the top, he had to move more horizontally to make any headway up towards the sounds of the battle above him. He knelt down and skirted the edge until he found a solid spot of a rocky outcropping to swing up onto.
He came around behind and slightly above the fighting patrols. A single Xenai and a single Terran Pact patrol member remained on each side of the fight. The Xenai had his back to Fiher, for the moment, but the Terran and Xenai were circling each other, looking for an opportunity to strike. Fiher could not wait. He ran across the rocks, launching himself off the edge into the air above the two remaining fighters. He pulled his daggers out of their sheaths in the air. The Terran registered the movement too late to do anything but watch as Fiher arced down through the air. Fiher saw the Terran’s round eyes, and he felt the fear and a flash of loss and regret. Fiher could not see what it was, but he had sensed the feeling from other Terrans before. It was a child. The Terran had a child and their last thoughts were of letting that child down.
The Intuition faded from him as Fiher finished his arc, and his daggers lanced into his target. The Xenai crumpled beneath his weight barreling down into its back from above. One of his daggers stabbed firmly in the back of its neck and the other in its flank. Fiher’s Intuition came back to him as the Terran’s feelings shifted to surprise. He got up off the Xenai’s back, wiping his blades off in the long grass beside the body. The Terran moved back away from him, raising his sword and dropping into a guarded stance, but did not press forward.
“Why would you kill your own?”
Fiher stood silent, dropping his hands to his side, still holding his daggers. He looked over the Terran and ignored his question. “What is your name?”
“Rashad. What’s your name?”
Fiher hesitated, then provided the easy version of his name, “My name is Fur. How old is your child?”
Rashad’s grip on his sword tightened, and he twisted his hand around the hilt as if to show a readiness to swing, “How do you know about Inda?”
Fiher did his best to lean back in a casual stance and tapped his head with two fingers, “Intuition. How old?”
Rashad looked Fiher over carefully, “Seven.”
Fiher smiled, “Six is a good age. Full of curiosity and trouble.”
Rashad was still stuck in a haze, “Yes, yes, they are. How—how do you—?”
“Not my own, but one I have known most of her life. Do you and your child live in Prin?”
Rashad nodded. “Yes, with her grandparents. Her mother died during birth.”
Fiher tilted his head, “Does that happen a lot?”
“More than it used to, before—” he waved his arms around, “—all this. Do Xenai not have that problem?”
“Xenai do not give birth.”
Rashad just looked at Fiher in silence for a moment. Fiher let him and just felt the series of emotions as Rashad processed the information.
“Wow, you guys really are aliens.” Rashad said after a minute. He looked down and reached up to the strap to sling his bag off his shoulder. Fiher felt the shock of panic pulse from him and watched him jerk his head back up to look at Fiher.
Fiher put his daggers back into their sheaths, backed up to the outcropping of rock he had jumped off of. He unbuckled his belt for his daggers, and tossed them down by his feet and sat on the rocks, lifting his hands as a sign of surrender. “Get whatever you need.”
The man slung the bag off his shoulders. He took a step over to one of his fallen patrol mates and scooped up his rifle before stepping back over to his bag. He didn’t take his eyes off Fiher any longer than he needed to, but he was comfortable enough to open his bag and get out a ration of dried meat. He paused a second and looked up at Fiher after retrieving it. He threw it at Fiher and reached into his bag, and pulled out a second one. He sat in front of his bag on the grass and pulled the rifle next to him before leaning back on the pack like a pillow, while keeping Fiher in close view as he chewed his own meat.
Fiher ate the dried meat and waited to see if Rashad would say anything else.
“So, why not kill me?”
Fiher shrugged and looked away and ignored his own discomfort and the discomfort from the Intuition. Neither of them said anything else as they ate. Rashad climbed to his feet after finishing, rifle in hand.
“I need to get back. Thanks for not killing me and all.”
Fiher shrugged again, “Until next time.” He leaned down and picked up his belt, strapped it on, then climbed onto the rocks and down over the ridge, feeling Rashad’s relief at him leaving first. Fiher frowned to himself as he felt the man’s presence grow smaller. He thought of when he had first met Shara, at six years old.
Inda.
He stood and leapt over the edge and onto the top of the rocks again. Rashad didn’t hear or feel anything as the dagger flew out of Fiher’s hand and landed in the back of his skull.
And so we come to our purpose. A grand and glorious purpose. It is us alone who can recreate and reform what lies broken in the depths. The corpses of gods. We are the new Gods of this existence.
In a few weeks, the girl’s city would be dead and Fiher's discarded mission would be complete. Years alone had gone by too quickly. The time neared to return to his kind.
So soon.
He leaned forward from his crouched position until he was balanced on all four limbs, peering over the edge of the broken floor where there might have been a building front in the past. The sharp winds threatened to push him off balance. They were colder now—an omen of the winter to come. It would be bitter. Still, he waited on his perch. She would appear.
Turning his eyes to the skyline of Prin, he sighed to himself. The silhouette of Prin was broken, as it had been for the past 82 years—since the moment that Fiher's former life had ended and the new world came into being. The dead city had found a new life, brought by a ship and all the Gates. The clusters of buildings, repaired as much as Prin's resources could afford, expanded from the hulking ship. A tall white wall enclosed the city just behind where he perched. Even in the dark, the ship loomed, reflecting the dots of small fires that were lit in the city back to him. The source trees could only power the new city during the day.
Fiher liked the view this way. The sharp spires of metal and stone came to broken points, filling the sky until the giant corpse of the generation ship rose behind them and reflecting the lives of Prin's citizens. It spoke to the current inhabitants' resilience as much as it spoke of the tragedy of the millions they replaced. But their time of resilience was coming to an end. They would all be replaced by his kind. He guessed it was a fitting end. All these years stalking through the shadows unseen made him feel as though this place was a second home. Now, it would no longer be a second home, but the primary one for his kind, where they could grow and have families for the first time.
Without lowering his gaze, he looked through the streets for her. Felt through them for her presence. Most of his surveillance was done by Intuition. It was so called because any other word for it made the Terrans uncomfortable. The fact of it was that everyone except the Terrans had it and they could all sense each other and the Terrans. Shara would sense him, too, if he wasn’t careful, even though she was just a half-breed who had never cared to practice the skill.
Finally, he felt her moving quickly and close to the edges of the streets. She came into his view, darting from a dark alley and entering the building that led into the Underground. He smiled at her cautious movements and awareness of everything around her, except for him. He almost pitied her inability to sense the size of the Xenai army, sweeping east towards them as she skirted her way through the shadows.
The city knew it was coming, but they had no idea how many came. The sheer volume of the force that would roll over their fortifications was unknown to them—to her. As they worked day and night to armor and arm as many of their citizens as they could, his kind swarmed toward them. A smoky blot across the land. An inky lake of death.
My kind.
He shuddered.
We cannot question our place. We must forge it and let nothing stop us.