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Part II ~ Tuck

I held daylight once. I thought somehow if I clenched my hand tight enough the rays could never escape me. Its warmth would be mine forever, and I would never know darkness again. I learned the hard way that light, however, like me, yearns for freedom and can never truly be contained. As I awake, to see through blurry eyes soft daylight filtering behind a screen of forest leaves and foliage above me, I gasp for air, and try to remember why I’m here. I dreamt I was chasing the sun. Because no one can ever catch the sun, and as long as I run toward it, then they can’t catch me either.

“Pyro!”

I tilt my head slightly over my bed of dried leaves toward the voice of Tuck who calls to me from within the forest. He is cutting like wind and trampling brush to reach me. I feel the ground rumbling, and watch the bark of a thousand trees splinter and rupture as if a flood is chasing him. A shrilling cry pierces the air, alarming a flock of terradoves into fleeting overhead. That’s when I realize that I am lying on my back in the forest of Euphoria. An army of Gracklemen were chasing me. At least that’s the name I gave them. They are shadowy abominations, ghastly forms that mimic grackle birds but with the stature and four-limbed appearance of a man. They are agents of Calligra made to hunt Derelicts—those who rebel against Calligra. I found something in the Temple of Truth, something I was not supposed to find. I was fleeing through the woods to escape. I must have collapsed. I need to follow the terradoves. I need to leave—now.

“Pyro!”

A strong hand grabs my wrist and raises me up into a running stride. My arm locks tight around Tuck’s, and though I am stumbling through a panicked world that I have barely awoken to, I feel safe now in his arms. My small feet try to match the speed of his own as we race toward the daylight together. The rumbling is greater now, and I can feel the coarse breathing of the grotesque horde ravaging our trail. The feet of Tuck are trained, lifting his broad stature expertly over logs and brush as though he were gliding. I follow his movements the best I can, yielding to his guidance, and letting his voice drown out the tidal wave crashing behind us.

“There is a drop-off at the edge of the forest coming up. We are going to have to jump.”

He turns his head to me, without slowing down, facing me just long enough to allow me a glimpse into his deep, earthy brown eyes that reminded me of Oranirock’s richer soils.

“We will be okay. You will have to trust me.”

I don’t nod or speak a reply, I simply stare at him blankly and accept my heart’s foreordainment to trust whatever he said next. The trees thin out, and full sunlight blooms in. I see a watery horizon, nestled under a blue-stained sky speckled with orange. We are fast approaching a cliff, and the Gracklemen are close enough to reach. There is nowhere else to go but down. We run clear over the ledge of the cliff and surrender ourselves to gravity’s pull.

The army of creatures roar bitterly after their claws grasp at where our ankles were but find only air—and we are plummeting down, rapidly descending parallel to the cliff’s vertical peak toward a growing splash of blue. Though the force pulling us is twisting in my stomach, I am not afraid, not of dying. Even if I were, I wouldn’t be anywhere else. I would be doing what I always do—facing my fears. So the fall, to me, was exhilarating. The rush toward a watery grave filled my lungs with cold air that made me feel fully alive.

Tuck rolls around to my back and wraps his muscular form around me, swiftly releasing the spear from its sheath on his back and deflecting away a poisonous arrow fired from one of the howling Gracklemen archers we left behind. Tuck returns his spear and whistles.

“Valkyrie!” he calls out.

An emphatic note sounded by a great bird rings the air in reply. I hear the thrust of heavy wings beating against the wind toward us, and watch as a great shadow wanes over the rock wall scrolling past us. Tuck turns my petite body, guiding me through the rushing air as if we were dancing, and rolls around so that I am now on his back. He pulls my hands tight around his abdomen.