Chapter Thirteen
Oron
I made myself busy at the farm, helping out with their spring crops and living like simpletons. It wasn’t like the grand Bolmore city I was used to: no restaurants or bars or tournaments to occupy my time. Just time spent with Reina, living like humans.
It wasn’t much, but it was home. It was my home with Reina—the girl I’d left everything for.
We stayed on the farm for weeks in safety: harmony. And then one day Lele spotted fire in the forests that surrounded the farmlands, and I knew the Vithohn had come for us—for my chosen one.
They were looking for me: to punish or kill.
Jareth gathered our things, and I felt a familiar scramble to run. Always running.
Lele, Jareth, and I all waited by the door for Reina and the others, ready to run at any moment. We had to get out: get back to Reina’s village before the Vithohn caught up to us.
“We have to get out of here,” I said, grabbing Reina by the shoulder after finding her in the kitchen talking with the elder woman of the house. “All of us,” I said, looking between the two of them.
“We’re not leaving,” Laura said.
“What?” came Reina’s outcry as she fiercely shook her head.
“No,” Laura continued, grabbing the back of a chair to support her. “We’re not leaving.”
“You have to come! This is all our fault, and if you don’t come with us…” Reina’s eyes flooded with tears: a familiar guilt. She looked to me for some sort of backup, but I shook my head. I knew the woman was right. They were old, she and her husband. They wouldn’t make the journey. “I just don’t know how I could live with myself…” Reina finished.
“Remember, I told you—” the old woman began, interrupted by the loud crack of the door slamming.
I peered out at Jareth and Lele, and the robot gave me a look that said it was time to go. Now. I looked back at Reina with a ‘hurry up’ expression, and we both turned out attention back to Laura.
“Do you remember I told you that the Vithohn came one more after they first attacked us?” Laura said, looking right in my eyes.
“I remember,” I said.
“A Vithohn named Atriel came in and took our daughter. It was the trade for us keeping our land,” she said slowly.
Reina looked stunned and then disgusted. “You gave up your daughter to keep your fa—”
Laura put up a hand in protest and interrupted, “She loved him. I don’t know how. I don’t know if she planned it. But he came here, and the two of them knew one another. She wanted to leave.”
“Okay…” Reina breathed.
“They went to a base called Rowan.”
Reina nodded again. “Okay.”
“There are hundreds of mixed couples there,” Laura continued, looking back and forth from myself and Reina. “Breeding. Living. They hide it as a Vithohn base to fool other creatures, but they’re planning a takeover. They are starting over, together.”
“Where is it?” I asked desperately.
“I don’t know,” she said sadly. “But… something tells me you’ll need to find out. This could be it, Reina. This could be your future together. No more hiding. Just peace, for all of us.”
I swallowed hard and turned my profile back to the doorway: Lele standing tall with a laser musket leaning against her shoulder. She jerked her head to the right as if to say ‘come on,’ and I grabbed Reina’s hand.
“Time to go,” I said.
“Thank you,” Reina said, hugging Laura in a tight embrace before returning her hand to me.
I nodded to her as well but couldn’t find the words to express our thanks. We headed toward Reina’s mountain with the help of two Ixu’s that the farmers gave us.
Another town ruined in the wake of us.
The guilt rushed through me, familiar and haunting. More humans who would be destroyed because of something that I’d done. Something I failed to do. Protect them.
It was the last thing I wanted for Reina—for her to be fearful or to get hurt because I was too cowardly to protect her.
The heat of the flames the Vithohn lit in the forests caused the whole mountainous valley to stink of smoke. Reina coughed excessively while we rode the Ixu and I wanted to turn around and hold her.
“When they come looking for me, they won’t stop,” I said to her when we finally abandoned our Ixu’s at the base of her mountain some days later.
“They won’t find us,” she offered with a shrug. “So it doesn’t matter. I just… feel bad that those poor people got involved.”
“Maybe they’ll bypass the farmland,” Lele offered, walking up beside us.
Jareth opened up his mouth to give another piece of sage advice, likely about to spout off how it was scientifically impossible that the Vithohn would leave them alone again, but I put my finger up to my lip to shush him, and to my great surprise—it worked.
“Maybe,” I said in agreement.
Reina didn’t look convinced, but we soon had a new problem to worry about as we approached what used to be the barren, rocky land at the base of her mountain. Now it was a firing zone.
Turrets and mech surrounded the mountain, already taking aim at us. There were spotlights and warning gunfire in the distance. The whole area had become military.
I cocked a brow to Reina, and she looked just as surprised.
“This… this isn’t how I left it,” she said, her honey-like voice dripping with worry.
“How’s that?” Lele asked, her eyes flicking wildly around the base of the camp, her robotics kicking in and likely assessing the potential damage they could do.
“The turrets,” Reina said, pointing to them in the distance.
“You weren’t protected before?” I asked but already knew the answer.
She shrugged. “No! I mean, I used to build them with my dad but we never actually used them. We didn’t have a reason to.”
“Looks like you do now,” I said flatly.
“Look at all this artillery,” she gasped, a hand now covering her mouth. “Something must have happened.”
Jareth looked up at Reina and tilted his head to the side. “You happened,” he pointed to her.
“What do you mean?” the girl asked.
“You went missing. Your father is the village leader, right? They want protection from the ravenous Vithohn.”
“Hey!” I protested.
Jareth shrugged, unapologetic.
“I brought her back, didn’t I?” I mocked.
“What do we do now?” Lele said, crossing her arms and clearly unimpressed with our unhelpful conversation.
“I’ll… go first,” Reina offered, and nobody stepped in to take her place.
There were cameras around the base of the camp: whether they were hooked up to anything, I didn’t know, but Reina volunteered to go try and communicate with her people.
“Humans… are not so trusting,” Jareth said to me, turning completely away from Reina, as though she weren’t going to risk her life for all of us.
“Why’s that?” I said, crouching down to meet his height.
“The murder…” Jareth said, practically toneless. “Yes. They are very opposed to murder.”
“Are you trying to say the humans won’t let us in? Or that Reina doesn’t trust me?” I asked, pre-annoyed.
To this, Jareth merely blinked his overly large red eyes and said, “Yes.”
“To which?”
The blue Yaclion offered a disinterested shrug but kept eye-contact with me as he said, “It doesn’t truly matter.”
“Gee, thanks,” I scoffed.
“I think what Jareth is trying to say is that once we hit the barrier, Reina’s as good as gone.”
“It’s not like they can stop me,” I argued, glancing over at Reina, who was now deeply invested in a conversation with an older man on the video screen. “Reina said her people never even left the mountain!” I finished.
“Do you want a life of ‘but they can’t stop me’ as a basis for where your home is?” Lele asked firmly.
“Reina loves me,” I said.
“Reina wants to go home,” she argued.
“Acceptance by her people is going to be important and you, my friend, do not make a good impression,” Jareth threw in, kicking me while I was down.
“Hey!” I said, unsure whether to laugh or cry.
“My apologies,” Jareth said in a tone that read just the opposite.
“Let’s tally your resume thus far, shall we?” Lele said, beginning to count on her tan fingertips.
“I’m good,” I said, raising a hand.
She ignored me. “You kidnapped her, tried to pair her off with the Voth against her will, got some farmers killed, and demanded we be taken back to her village. Oh yes. And you slaughtered the human race to steal their land.”
I grit my teeth, “I said I don’t need the list.”
“We need to come up with a plan,” Lele said, mostly to herself.
“So, you’re just ignoring me now?” I threaded through my clenched jaw.
“We?” Jareth said. “Lele. They will accept you. You can pass as human. There should be no problem getting you to safety with Reina.”
“No,” she shook her head, kneeling down. “My home is with you, Jareth.”
“I am touched,” the blue creature said, wiping his eye. “Your friendship has meant more to me than my many guns.”
I stared at the two of them, utterly confused. I was sure Jareth meant that as a genuine compliment, but I wasn’t sure how comforting I would feel if someone said that to me.
“Well, that’s great for you guys,” I quipped. “But what about me?”
“I believe you were included in our plans?” Jareth offered and began to prattle on about a mixed stronghold they could access. A base made up of Vithohn and humans, just as the old woman had told us of.
“And we’ll bring Reina,” I said, interjecting between the two as they went back and forth talking about how Jareth knew someone in the stronghold and how Lele had been trying to get there all along. “Right?”
“Let it go,” Lele said quietly. “She wants to go home, Oron.”
“Then I’ll go with her,” I protested.
“You aren’t the first stubborn Vithohn to be proven wrong,” Lele said.
“Hey,” I said, taking a step toward the beautiful, robotic woman. “I helped save you, don’t forget.”
Lele stared at me: her blue eyeshadow shimmering under the sunlight. Then she laughed, loudly. “Do what you will, then.”
“I just… don’t believe you,” I said with a shrug. “I love her, and she feels the same for me. I left for her and if we are not accepted into her camp then… she’ll leave with me. Simple.”
Lele looked and me for a long while and then smiled a perfect, toothy grin. “Right,” she said. “Right.”