He had thought he was following her words, until she suddenly bolted off away from him, screaming like a howler. Her words might have been a little disjointed, but he got the impression that she was thinking of a way to help the people, who were so innocently about to be swallowed by a voider. Until she suddenly bolted, screaming for help.
That wasn't the part that surprised him, though. What really surprised him was that she was begging for their help. Why would she do that, when they were the ones in danger, and when he was right there? Why wouldn't she think to ask him first?
Suddenly desperately concerned, Eli bolted off after her. The surprise of her action had given her a couple extra seconds head start, but without her weight slowing him down, Eli was able to exhibit his full speed. It took him three and a half strides to catch up with her, scooping her back up into his arms.
"Kaya?" he asked, even as first Thomas, then Alessa, the woman from the inn, straightened, confusion quickly morphing into alarm on their faces. "Kaya!"
Kaya, for her part, shut up just as soon as she had their attention, watching intently from the familiar haven of his arms. Thomas, still trembling with fatigue, reached for his gun. Amos and the female guard followed suit, all trying to train their weapons on him. He tensed in turn, waiting for the feel of a bullet colliding with him.
In his arms, Kaya stiffened as well, swearing under her breath. "Don't put me down until you have to," she hissed. "They're going to shoot you. We need to get the guns away from them before the voider catches up."
Thomas yelped, his gun hand trembling. "P-put her…down!" he gasped. "Put her down…or…or I'll shoot."
"Don't stop moving," Kaya murmured. "Back them into it, if you can." He wanted to interrupt, to make her stop and explain. Back them into what? The only thing that was nearby was the voider, and it was getting slowly closer with every passing second. He knew she had to feel it too, even if it wasn't in the same physical, twisting way he did. Edges of voiders had always done funny things to her. However, before he could speak, Kaya was yelling again. "Don't! Don't shoot yet, I…I can talk to him, I can make him let me go."
Thomas didn't lower his gun, though he turned uncertainly to Amos behind him, who was still huffing and red in the face. Something passed between them and they both appeared to stand their ground, pistols raised.
He had always felt out of his depth around Kaya. It had been easy enough to ignore when it was just the two of them in the desert, and it didn't matter what she did, as long as it didn't compromise either of their safety. Other than the voiders there wasn't much danger in the desert, and he could always carry her away from those. Now, though, there were so many people, so many dangers he had never seen before, and couldn't even begin to understand. He knew Kaya understood them, and he knew that she knew a way to keep him safe. The problem was, he didn't understand what she wanted from him. He was worried, if he didn't understand, that he was going to do something that would end up getting someone killed. And, even more than he worried about getting someone killed, he feared that someone would be Kaya.
But he also knew she was relying on him now. She needed him to do something, he just didn't know what. She told him not to put her down, and then told them that she was going to persuade them to put him down. She told him to back them into the voider, but he didn't want that to happen. He couldn't let that happen. Kaya might have said, if anyone was going in, they were going after them, but he couldn't allow that to happen. Anyone who went into that voider wouldn't be coming back out. Behind him he heard the ground stir, as the root of some giant, carnivorous flower wiggled expectantly, in anticipation of a meal it could not yet see.
He didn't know what to do.
A moment later, Kaya turned to look up at him. Something unfamiliar passed over her face. She furrowed her brow, and then exhaled and said, calmly, gently: "They won't be close enough to fall in. Just…close enough to survive. It will be alright. I promise."
Her words were slow and purposeful, as though she knew he was flustered and wouldn't understand anything complex. He still wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but he knew he trusted Kaya, and she expected this from him. He didn't have a choice. If it went wrong, well, then it went wrong. At least he and Kaya would be alive and free.
On the other side of the voider's outer edge, Thomas was growing visibly impatient. His gun hand trembled while his other tried to mop sweat from his brow. Behind him, the dark-haired woman stared intently at something in the sand.
"Put her down!" the boy bellowed again. "I mean it, when...when I -- we shoot, when we shoot, we shoot to kill."
"Don't!" yelped Kaya again, though her voice seemed a bit more strained now, her gaze slightly unfocused. "He...he...it won't work. When...if you shoot him. He only...he only gets mad. L-let me talk to him, he...he'll put me down and...we can...go back...back to the...the..."
He knew what was happening. It was the same thing that happened to Kaya whenever she got too close to the edge of a voider. Every instinct in him told him it was time to turn around, to take her away from this place, but he couldn't leave these people behind, either. Not when they would die because of it.
"We've come too far from the gates," the female guard said suddenly, looking back to Meeros's imposing shadow as if for the first time realizing how far they had come. "It's...it's not safe out here. Amos, we ought to take the girl and run."
"What's that?" said the other woman at the same time Kaya mumbled, "It's...it's close. We're almost...make sure they see it. Then we...all of them see it, and...back...back to the city..."
Indeed, the little group of four was indeed "seeing it". This close to the edge even a chid should have been able to spot the signs. In front of the group a flower was writhing out of the ground, leering toothily.
There was a moment of still silence, when no one moved. And then the woman from the inn screamed. Thomas was only a second behind her as she suddenly whirled around, and began to bolt back to the safety of the gate. Completely unaware that she was about to run into the middle of the voider.
There was no time for him to think, to suppose, to wonder what might result from the action he was about to take. No, he did what he did best when something bad was about to happen. He acted.
He dropped Kaya, knowing she wouldn't be able to catch herself, but also knowing there was no time to set her down proper. Instead he lunged forward over her, covering the distance in between him and the little group faster than even he had dreamed was possible.
It wasn't fast enough, though, to beat Amos' reaction time. As soon as Kaya was out of the way the guard's gun was leveled, and he pulled the trigger. But it didn't have the intended effect. Even as the bullet sped across the intervening distance faster than a blink and collided with the middle of his forehead, he didn't slow. He couldn't, even as pain bloomed, and his left eye suddenly went blind from a slow seepage of thick black blood. He didn't slow one bit, and Amos didn't have the courage to take another shot in the face of that. The female guard, though, did. Her bullet hit his chest, right over his heart. That one fazed him even less than the first shot. In that moment he was numb to the pain, numb to everything but the realization that the woman from the inn was running to her death, with Thomas right behind her.
He made it just in time. He was dancing right on the inner edge, the edge he had learned to flirt with after so long in the desert, the edge he had taken Kaya to, and nearly dragged her over, when he had wanted to make his point about the dangers of the wastes. But Thomas and the woman from the inn, they had crossed that edge, and they suddenly realized their mistake and tried to grind to a halt, tried to turn around from the cruel, leering faces of the giant, carnivorous flowers that were suddenly right in front of them.
They didn't even have a chance to scream before his arms wrapped around them, one hand looping around each chest, and pulling them backwards, away from certain death, back across the inside edge. He flung himself violently backwards as another several shots hit his exposed back. When he landed he let out a muffled noise of pain, as the grit of the sand dug its way viciously into his new wounds.
"Amos," the woman from the inn gasped. "Thank god. You saved u..." It was at that moment that she looked up to see the face of her rescuer. Instead of the rugged face of Amos, a bandaged mask greeted her.
She screamed, cringed away on instinct, and beside her, Thomas reached for the gun he had dropped in the sand when he'd bolted. Finding nothing, he gaped, looking first at him, then searching frantically until his eyes fell on a pale Amos.
"G-g-g-get – " he started weakly, but the woman from the inn interrupted, appearing to have come to her sense somewhat, though she still trembled.
"You…saved us," she said slowly, equal parts stunned shock and gratitude. She looked over his shoulder, saw Amos and the female guard staring, wide-eyed, and well beyond them, Kaya lying vacant in the sand, before looking back to him. He nodded slightly.
"You saved us," she said again. "How did you know -- ?"
Eli, however, didn't give her time to finish that statement. He hoisted both people in his arms to their feet as he stood up himself, desperately trying to ignore the flashes of pain that flickered like lightning across his back, and the desperate pounding of his skull. Even as he stood, though, someone else began to speak.
"We…we have to go," said the female guard again. "We need to get back to the gates. Now."
Thomas still looked shaken, but as soon as he had his own two feet under him he pushed away aggressively from the arm that held him. "But he – it – Kaya – ," he stumbled slightly back towards the voider, before he reached out and grabbed onto the young guard again, tugging him back away from the edge.
"Shut up, boy," growled the guard, before turning back to him. Briefly her eyes flicked to the dark spots on his bandages, which had been torn and dirtied by the gunshot wounds. Wounds which should have, in all right, killed him. She seemed to physically shake the thought out of her head. "The thing. The voider. You know where it's going? Where it's…safe to walk?" She glanced between Amos and Thomas and Kaya and back again. "If we get the girl, if we promise no more harm will come to either of you, will you guide us back to the gate?"
In that moment it wouldn't have mattered if the guard had said she'd kill him just as soon as they got back to the gate. All he wanted was to get these people away from the rapidly approaching edge, and the leering faces of the flowers that seemed to be popping up all around them. He desperately beckoned them away from the gate, even as he took a few paces backwards himself. If they didn't follow, he was fully prepared to grab them and physically throw them away from the voider.
Luckily, that proved pretty much completely unnecessary. When he took a few more paces backwards, only Thomas stayed put, and when he made a move to reach forward and grab the boy, the guard twisted away from his fingers, and put the rest of the group in between them.
Satisfied that everyone was following him, he quickly moved back over to Kaya, ignoring the lightning shots of pain that arced through him with every step. He bent down next to her, prepared to pick her up again, when a rather accusatory voice spoke behind him. "What happened to her?" He flinched away, and Alessa in turn jumped back at his sudden motion. She cleared her throat awkwardly, before pointing to Kaya, tone slightly more polite. "Why is she like that?"
He pointed in the direction of the city, although it was obvious he wasn't trying to indicate the gate. "Voider," he said, shortly.
"Yes, I know there's a voider there. But why is she like that?"
"Because of voider," he said, his voice raising slightly in pitch out of frustration. "She'll be fine. Follow!"
When Thomas and Amos came forward to pick up Kaya, he quickly scooped her into his arms, growling them away. The female guard might have said that no harm would come to Kaya, but after what they had all said and done previously, he wasn't going to let her into their arms. Amos hand dropped to his gun in response to his snarl, but the sight of the sticky black blood on his bandages seemed to stop him. Perhaps it had just occurred to him that there probably weren't enough bullets in his gun to bring down the behemoth in front of him.
A flower snapped suddenly at Thomas, catching the edge of his leg. He yelped in surprise as a hole was torn in his pants, and a small dribble of blood ran down his leg. The flower spat out the fabric, before going after Thomas' leg again. He quickly moved after the rest of the group, who had already started walking.
Normally, he would have run away from the voider, using that to quickly escape from its outskirts, which would in turn allow the voider to return to its normal paths. But between his injuries, the weight of Kaya in his arms, and the tiny group behind him that was far too winded to keep running, it was almost impossible to escape the voider.
With it heading right towards them, it was equally impossible to move in any direction that would get them back to the voider-free zone around the city. While voiders never normally ventured into that territory, which was why a city could be built there in the first place, there was also no telling that this group wouldn't end up leading the voider right into the city if they didn't find a way to escape it first. That meant he was leading the group pretty much straight away from the city, out into the desert.
"Why are we going this way?" Alessa asked, panting heavily. He didn't answer.
They walked in silence at a relatively quick pace for a few more moments before Thomas broke in. "Where are you taking us? The city is back that way." He still didn't answer.
The next time, the silence didn't last for longer than a couple of seconds. "What are you trying to do with us, freak? I won't let you just walk us into your lair."
"Shut up, boy," the female guard snapped again.
"I won't. We have no idea what he's going to do with us. Why are we suddenly assuming he's going to lead us back to safety? Maybe he just didn't want to let his prey get eaten by the flowers, and we are now walking willingly to our death."
"So, what are you going to do? Risk walking right back to those flowers?"
"We'd probably have a better cha...."
It was at that moment that he finally whirled around, and the motion cut Thomas off mid sentence. "Follow, or don't," he snapped. "Your choice. But shut up."
They followed. And the next time Thomas tried to interrupt, half a minute later, the woman from the inn cuffed him into moody and he dropped behind to sulk on his own...though no more than a few paces behind everyone else.
For several minutes, there was only the sound of their labored breathing as they wandered further and further into the desert. Between their silence, Kaya's despondence, and his still flowing blood, the tension was growing thick.
It was Alessa who finally spoke, her voice quiet, cautious, almost courteous.
"I...thank you," she said awkwardly. "For what...before. Even after they..." She trailed off, gesturing to the slow-growing black mass on his back. "Are you...alright?"
"There're bandages," put in the female guard. "Er...more bandages. Back at the guard post. Back at the city gates. If...if we head back that way, someone can..."
"I'll watch her," Alessa offered, nodding at Kaya. "While you..." she gestured at his back again. "Liana and I grew up together," she added, as if proving the verity of her offer.
He shook his head poignantly, pulling Kaya in closer to his chest, despite the dark ring of blood on his chest. He had no intention of letting her go until she was awake again, and he had even less intention of allowing anyone to so much as look at his wounds, let alone try and tend them. Not only would that have involved taking off his bandages, which would certainly undo any goodwill his latest actions may have earned, but he still didn't trust the good intentions of these people. Not after everything else. Behind him, Alessa started to speak again, only to be silenced by the female guard, who shook her head once. Alessa glared for a moment, the shrugged and continued on through the sand.
If there was one good thing, though, it was that the city suddenly came into view in front of them. Anyone else might have lost their sense of direction in the dark of the night, surrounded by nothing but sand and rolling hills, but not him. He had slowly circled out into the desert, guiding the voider farther and farther away from its normal path, until he had felt it give up the chase. From that point, he had started curving back towards the city.
"What?" Alessa asked, when the walls of the city were suddenly visible over a ridge in the dune. "Is that..." she gestured back behind them, and slightly off to the left. "Shouldn't Meeros be... over there?"
"Maybe it's not Meeros," Thomas muttered sullenly, thought it was obvious to all the city somewhere rose from the dark ahead of them. "We still don't know he hasn't -- "
"Best not to look a gift horse in the mouth," said the female guard, picking up her pace slightly. Amos and Alessa quickly followed suit.
Though the city now seemed closer than it had been, the journey back felt as though it took half an eternity. Alessa and the guards from the city dragged their feet behind their silent leader, and Kaya still had yet to so much as stir by the time they reached the city gates. A small crowd had gathered with expressions of mingled horror and curiosity.
He shrunk slightly away from the hostility in their eyes, and didn't follow after the eager little group that darted ahead of him, waving and smiling at the people who had gahtered. Said people immediately broke out into conversation themselves, some of them even beginning a bout of spontaneous applause at their safe return.
He had no particularly desire to stick around any longer than was absolutely necessary. He and Kaya had been escaping, and now that these people were safely tucked away back in the city where there were no voiders, he had every intention of resuming that interrupted effort. His wounds were starting to heal, and there was food, water, and shelter waiting for him in the buried wagon, which was everything he needed. Kaya would wake back up, and she would decide what they were going to do. That would be just fine.
But as he turned to go there was a sudden shout from behind him.
"Wait!"
He hesitated momentarily as Alessa broke from the stunned, yet congratulatory group and followed, however cautiously, after him. She stopped a good four feet away, but she seemed earnest as she spoke.
"They've said they sent a search party...well, a guide after us. Bruce did. Where we left from, the northernmost gate. They said she found a voider, and..." Alessa trailed off sorrowfully, then broke into a relieved smile. "I'm going to go let him know we're alright." She cleared her throat. "You should come. You should...he should know what you did for us."
"I'll vouch," added the female guard, and Amos nodded beside her. Thomas, who looked somewhere between irritated and relieved, said nothing.
"If nothing else, just stay the night," Alessa continued. "You already know that...thing is out there, and if it's going to do whatever it's done to her again, maybe it would be best to wait til morning," she wheedled, nodding at Kaya. "Anna still ought to have her room there. And they would leave you alone after this. They'd have to."
He didn't want to stay. He wanted to turn away and race out into the desert. He knew no one would follow him and Kaya this time. Not after what had happened the last time. Every piece of him craved to get away from these people, and return to the freedom and peace of the wastes.
Instead of turning and fleeing, however, he glanced down at the small figure cradled in his arms. He knew Kaya hadn't been ready to leave this city. She'd had dreams and ambitions she'd been planning to fill here, and while she'd promised him that they would be leaving soon she hadn't wanted to leave yet.
He knew, if she woke up in the desert and he told her that the people were alive and he'd left, she'd forgive him. But he knew with equal certainty that she'd be disappointed. Maybe she wouldn't see his action as cowardice, but she probably would have wished that he could have been a little braver and stuck around, even though she had left him alone to face all these people by himself.
No, he did not want to return to the city. But, more than that, he wanted Kaya to be satisfied, and Kaya's satisfaction waited in a city. It might not be this city, but it was a city. If it had to be a city, it might as well be one where they had earned even a fragment of goodwill.
So, instead of fleeing, he nodded.