Revolutions

175 - Legido

Just before the body registers the pain, there's a moment where the mind suspends itself between impact and oblivion. A breath held in the lungs, the flicker of recognition—you are falling—and then the sensation rips through your body like a thousand iron-tipped arrows.

The world spins as a storm of dust and jagged rock blur past. You feel the air leave your chest in a sudden rush when your ribs slam against a craggy outcrop. A rock catches your shoulder, spinning you midair. Your hands scrape against stone while trying desperately to grab ahold of something.

Then, impact.

To no one's surprise, the ground does not welcome you. The sharp bite of stone carves into your back, into your hip, into the side of your skull where it cracks against the dry, baked terrain. The taste of dust and dirt fills your mouth, iron-tinged from where your teeth have caught the inside of your cheek.

For a moment, all you can do is exist in the wreckage of yourself. The pain arrives in stages—first, a dull roar in your ribs, then a bright and searing throb where your left arm caught the worst of it. Your lungs struggle against the impact, causing your breath to come shallow... when it comes at all.

The wind moans through the cliffs above, dry and laced with the scent of the brittle and sun-bleached iron-rich stone. Above, the sky is a heavy slate of colorless light. The edges of the jagged cliffs bite against it like the broken teeth of some decrepit beast.

Slowly, your mind claws toward coherence. Where?

The last thing you remember flashes in your memory—the fight, the scrambling escape, the ground crumbling beneath you. Iker. Landera. The others.

Your shifting movement is slow and agonizing. Grit and gravel grind against your skin as you heave yourself onto your side, fingers digging into the dirt for something—anything—solid. You can't feel the weight of your body correctly. The ground tilts. Or maybe your limbs aren't where you left them.

There's ringing in your ears—or maybe it's whispering. A high, keening noise that doesn't come from the wind. Something slick slides down the side of your face. You touch it with trembling fingers. Blood. Probably.

There's movement in the corner of your eye. A rustle. A hush. Something more felt than heard. You blink toward the sound, but the world responds in delay, like a poorly drawn map turning too slowly to match your compass.

It's not the wind. Not the sound of loose debris tumbling down from the cliffs.

What is that?

A shadow lingers beyond the rocks, half-caught in the hollow of something long dead—a structure? A wall? The memory of architecture. It folds in on itself like fabric, slumped into the terrain like it's trying to hide.

Something pale flickers near it, and then nothing. You blink again. Maybe it was just the blood in your eyes. Maybe it was light, or your mind fraying at the edges.

And near the ruin, like the ribs of something picked clean long ago, you see the remains of a passage. A trail, half-swallowed by stone.

Your eyes move slowly across the wreckage, tracking the fragments. The burnt-out skeleton of a campfire. Blackened ends of torches strewn like fallen teeth. A discarded satchel with the straps torn off. Footprints pressed sharp and certain into the dirt. Fresh. Too fresh.

Someone has been here.

Someone might still be.

The light bends wrong. The shadows stretch too long, then snap back like taut cords. You blink again. Or maybe the blink happened before the thought. You can't tell anymore.