The Hunter's Song

5: White Lake (Mourning Crow)

Once again, I found myself treading water in an endless white lake, staring up into an empty white sky. The pale pink liquid sloshed in my mouth as I struggled to keep my head above the surface.

I fucking hate this!

Every time, over and over.

Wet slippery lumps bumped into my legs below and bobbed to the surface all around me. But it was the pressure I hated the most. The weight of milky liquid pressing against my skin was maddening.

I tried to scream but that only gave the liquid access to flood my airway. I kicked and paddled, unable to see any nearby surface to take refuge on. Only bloated pale blobs swayed on the surface, hovering and converging all around me.

Bodies. Razkur bodies. All dead and mutilated. Just them and me floating in a lake of pure razkur blood.

We were all that remained of Thorngate.

It was the same every time. The familiar refrain 'will I always be here?' slithered through my mind.

I did my best to repel the terror creeping in, but I couldn't stand swimming in deep water. The warm slippery feel of it and the nothing for my feet to stand on in the endless abyss below. I knew I wasn't on Menthla and I doubted this gunk was radioactive but my instincts still equated water with dying a slow, painful death.

A pallid face rolled upward in front of me. Like all the bodies surrounding me, I recognized her. Her name was Two Clouds, she was my friend, my teacher, and she died because of me.

This always happens. Some long-forgotten acquaintance literally pops up in front of me and fills my thoughts with memories I haven't delved through in centuries.

I met her shortly after the city's abduction, back when I was legitimately thirteen and we were all fresh to the gauntlet. I was running from a pack of rabid male razkurs, intent on performing who knows what atrocities on me, and she hid me. Beat them up and scared them off with a big electrified stick.

Together, we were trapped in Thorngate, forced to toil in an endless death game orchestrated by the Graven. She was older, an adult, but still young enough to commiserate in our shared loss of a future stolen before it had even started. While I was just this kid, alone, terrified, and perpetually thirteen.

Before the chaos, Two Clouds was a big city electrical engineer. She was fierce and clever and trained me on the fundamentals of her craft. We looked out for one another, took turns eating and sleeping while the other stood lookout, made traps, kept moving, and most importantly, stayed alive.

At least that's what I liked to tell myself.

I don't know if I was a good friend.

Two Clouds was the grown-up and fully present in her actions when she took me in. I was a scrawny tween, selfish, self-centered, and my priorities revolved around refuge and security. As I got older, or more accurately since no one aged, time passed and we eventually split up and crossed paths now and again.

We were never enemies and in many ways, I was grateful she died long before seeing what I became.

A flattened, floppy body burped up beside me and bumped into my shoulder. I didn't need to rotate my ears to identify the boneless mass.

It was my first encounter with Red Spider. The sniper was hunting me, and exactly as she had done before in our first meeting, Two Clouds intervened. She took an arrow in the back that was intended for me.

Two Clouds' lifeless face floated by, her lips coated in blood and that silver arrow tip protruding from her chest.

I leaned my head back and let my ears drift under the surface. Finally, there was silence.

Maybe this time it would stop. Maybe this was when I would stop drowning.

Then I gave into the quiet and let myself sink to the bottom.

.

.

.

...

Author's Note:

It's all uphill from here, right? Right? RIGHT?!?!

This one is short, no worries, keep scrolling to see what happens in Chapter 6.

Things are about to get juicy, or tangy...

OMG! I can't wait to tell you!

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