Chapter Text
The tram-train rounded the city, for the fifteenth time.
He had counted each full rotation, trying to imagine his body wasting away with every count.
Far below the automated tracks, the crystal-clear water shone a brilliant cerulean.
Every rotation, he contented himself with the idea the tides were reaching higher -
Ready to caress abandoned rooms, fled by their prior occupants, who'd moved perhaps five storeys above.
The attaché case by his side was stuffed to the bursting.
And they'd always said he was a slob, but they'd get theirs. They'd get theirs.
Most of the readouts were for show, being nothing more than blank synthetic paper.
By the sixteenth rotation of the automated tramway, he had a horrible realisation:
Perhaps nobody, not a soul, had cared.
It might have cut through the bitter hatred in his heart, but it was the tensile tracks collapsing that did the rest.
He had no time to scream or call out; the water swam over him and engulfed every part of who he had been.
Waves impacted flesh, tore through metal, and ate through skin, and he knew nothing more.
Bolqitop scratched at his respirator, faded green fingers tapping pallidscrap.
"Kch-hh... I don't want to say we can't keep moving forward, but I don't think we can.
As decider, I'm making my decision. What it'll be is, those who've eaten in the last four days, carry the smallest.
Us old-timers should stay back, buy some time."
Normally, he would've wanted to hear what the rest of the unrooted would say.
But the badlands had made tired fools of all of the unrooted, and their pursuers had given them no time for rest.
He could make out haggard eyes behind even the mostly crudely prepared fabric masks, let alone goodscrap respirators.
Ivgarg was staring at the ground, and his long teeth would be drawn, if they would only but bare themselves.
Molloro had already moved to take a spawn onto her shoulders, treating them like they were her own.
Little Bolqitop, who'd taken the same name as a show of respect, was shivering - though not from the cold.
Scorching heat killed the empty night, and even if none of the unrooted could see in darkness, it would've been clear as day.
Tough green hides bore the heat well, sure, but when the sun returned, what would follow next?
Everyone was looking at him, too. Everyone, of course, excepting the Lady.
"Kch-hh... My reasoning is as follows. You'll find it sound.
We're moving too slowly, way too slowly. I was wrong, we - we should have abandoned the injured."
It would've been worthy of praise to the Tyrant, if - at that exact moment!
Each and everyone who was unrooted had roared that it wasn't so. That he'd been right.
Bolqitop nursed his hand against reinforced and armoured clothes, whose colour had all but faded away.
Maybe it was a sign of their pursuers' ultimate victory, a sign of his own unfitness to be the decider.
No protest came, nor even tears. Elrieri scratched her almost-flat head, but that was all she could manage.
The enemy'd clubbed and stabbed at her a few times, and she needed to rest - more than most did, at least.
He didn't want to condemn a single person to death, but by failing to do that, he'd condemned them all to death.
It was his failure; failure as decider, and proof he'd never been more than a sootgob, swaddled in indecision.
Little Bolqitop was adjusting his scarf-muzzle, since he refused to use a full respirator.
"What do we do, then? Those who stay?"
Bolqitop glanced from pure-black eyes to the horizon, and what in the abyss was there?
Red and orange sand flecked out beneath their feet, carved from gorge and canyonsides that surrounded them.
The awful stony outcroppings went on as far as his eyes could see, and his eyes were still pretty good -
From his own reckoning, it was a fair guess to say that the young, the fast, and the healthy'd get maybe a day further.
And there they'd find a magical paradise, full of glittering good fruits and unfathomable wealth.
"Yeah, I won't pretend we're doing much. Kch-hh, this thing is falling apart, too.
I think we can hold off the humans for a good couple of hours, though. Right? Isn't that right?"
Everyone knew he wasn't asking any of the unrooted warriors.
The Lady hadn't been staring at him since he began speaking, or - indeed -
Since they'd abandoned the last camp.
Her gaze had always remained over their backs, into the horizon.
Waiting for the slowly-advancing forces behind them, never needing pause.
Like so many of them, the signs were all there - not that she starved like they did, but she still could starve, all the same.
"I will just fight harder."
Bolqitop slowly shut his eyes and exhaled at her terse response.
Normally, in a perfect world, even this many human beings couldn't hope to win against her.
And just as normally, the symbiotic relationship the unrooted had formed with her would have been enough.
Their enemies had realised that if the unrooted grew too weak, so would the Lady.
It was all a stupid, mad dream. He should've buried himself in the soil, and lay his own body to rot.
"Well, I suppose, kch-hh, it's finally time to show the rest of you stragglers what I can do.
Everyone staying, we have a single goal, and that is to buy the Lady time.
Offer what you can, and if you want to excavate a prayer to the Tyrant, I won't stop you.
For all the rest of you... Kch-hh..."
But the words wouldn't come.
I'm sorry you've been failed by a washed-up fool, who couldn't be the one to lead you.
I'm sorry that I have betrayed the trust you put in me, when we needed one voice.
I'm sorry that the hated enemy has won, and will take one step closer to their ultimate goal.
"Kch, I... Uh... I, everyone - "
He noticed the Lady's rapid movement before he noticed the anomaly, before Molloro's adopted spawn's screaming.
The Lady's oblivion-grey mask and crimson hood had jolted to the sky, before sound rang out.
A sound like thunder being killed, hammered and stretched out to be eaten alive.
From a crack in the same orange-flooded night sky, something was disgorged to the ground around them.
It struck the soil, and it struck hard.
Bolqitop had seen winged quarry felled, and they usually perished instantly from much lower heights -
Even if not brought down by stones or other projectiles, first.
Yet, the trembling form buried into the displaced soil, trying to scream or cry out and failing, was very much alive.
A few of the bravest had gathered, which was Little Bolqitop and Elrirei and, of course, the Lady.
The latter was hunched over with her arms crossed to her chest, and he would've given anything to see her expression -
Well, not really of course, but in a metaphorical sense.
Bolqitop knew he hadn't joined them, and took a few more seconds to force the courage up through himself.
He took a hesitant step forward, than another - his footwraps leaving trails in the red and umber sands.
"... What do you want me to do?"
Rarely did the Lady ask for advice, or permission.
Her voice, so much less gravelly than any of their own, had no hesitation.
Just as he knew he wasn't very brave, Bolqitop knew - or at least, strongly wagered -
That she was fishing for something, permission to make use of whatever this strange thing was.
"Maybe it's a sign. You can carry it, right? I guess - I guess we keep going.
Carry it, and we move forward. It's all we can do."