Breaking Utopia

Chapter Seven | Wildfire

The forest chirped and croaked lively. Tucken could hear the flutter of wings and wind rustling the trees gently. The sun flickered through the moving branches across Tucken's eyelids waking him from a restless slumber. "Nessa!" He heard a squeal so familiar to him. The cry of a child to a mother. "Nessa!" It grew louder.

"Yes Savry, quit your yelling!" An older women's voice called out "By Lord Rowvick, you'll wake the corpse with that kinda squawking!"

"He's not dead, Nes." Said another women's voice walking closer to him. "Sav, this better not be about your brother again."

"It's not! Can't you hear the sleeper's heart is beating faster?" the younger girl's voice questioned. Before anyone could answer Tucken jumped to his feet in a flight of fear, yet his legs seemed to not be up for it as one gave out as soon as his foot touched the leaf and twig ridden ground. His knee slammed to the ground as he tried to put on a Soren-like intimidating face. The one with purple eyes came closer to the struggling thin man as he tried to pick himself up, falling backwards into the bark of a dying tree.

"Keep your hands away from me!" He said putting on his most gravely and serious voice as Kei moved closer to him with a bowl of a slimy green concoction in hand. Nessa and Sav held embers of purple and red twirling along their fingertips ready to fire from them bolts of energy toward lanky, weak man.

"Stop this! You are sick, do you remember? Tucken right?" Kei asked with irritation swirling every word. "You were stabbed by creature."

"Shi'vor." The older women interjected.

"A powerful creature. Your friend Soren, he saved you, told me to take care of you until he catches up." Tucken took the concoction that stuck to the rim of the bowl like glue and looked up at her with eyes that felt to Kei as if they began to gain that emptiness, she saw in the rebels some days ago.

"Where is he?" He asked, tipping the bowl and watching the dough-like goo barely move to the rim.

"On his way." She answered as she watched the whistleblower's empty eyes follow the stillness of her concoction as if it was just something to rest his eyes on while he swam through his own thoughts.

"Where is the folder?" His head snapped up from the concoction with a look in his eye as if the innocent man she saw in Dunton came back for a moment.

"What folder?" she asked curiously.

"The folder! Folder twenty-three!" He tried to stand up from the tree, yet the Rels watched as he plummeted back to the ground as a shock of pain came over his leg. "Give me that god damn folder!" He wailed from the ground. "It took everything from me!" He said as she watched the tears that had been held back for days rinse his dirtied face. "I need that folder!"

"Savry go look in the motor cart." Nessa said as Kei stared down at the pitiful man from the city fall apart in front of her. She didn't know how to react. A human, the beast that she witnessed torture and use as cattle was weeping...to her of all people. She didn't like it. She watched slavers weep for their lives, but this man, this beast called human wept for a different reason. Something in the air around him tasted different. She reached a handout to him and touched the back of his neck with a shimmering glow of purple ember.

She felt every emotion, every painful thought that rushed through his head like lightning barraging the same memories over and over again.

Death, my fault, death, my fault, death, my fault.

It was enough to destroy anyone.

I'm lost, I'm lost, I'm lost.

The grief and despair circling, surrounding one singular purpose now.