Quickburned

Scored

Five years ago...

Caleb was in the desert.

He'd no notion of when he got there, nor of making any conscious decision to go, but there he was.

How long had he been walking? He'd lost a spell in there, somewhere—he remembered laying Sainen and Hana in the temple, remembered fleeing into predawn light... and now it was a late evening.

"Best.... not be makin'... a habit of that," he said, through a dry throat and crackled lips. Thirst gnawed at him, slow at first, and then more insistently, but it was an ache of the body he could ignore for awhile. He couldn't decide if he was talking to himself, the dark of the sky, the sand at his feet, or the ghosts in between.

There didn't seem anything better to do but keep walking, so he did, deeper into the evening. His shadow stretched long before him so he had a rough idea of where he was headed—east, and a little south. His skin of his face and arms felt tight enough he reckoned he'd been walking out in the sun all day and whipped by sandy winds beside.

Good. Deserve it, said the biting-fly voices in his head. No matter how he shook they wouldn't dislodge. Smoke must have followed him from the town; he could smell it on his clothes, the bitter scent of tar choking on him. He fancied he could even see it, curling away from his shadow as the sun set and it melted into the dimming light, billows and veils as though he was smoldering, not home somewhere behind him.

The land began to change from the rocky plains nearest Clearstone and into dunes and mountains of loose sand.

The fifth time he stumbled and went to his knees, halfway down the wind-side of a dune, he almost didn't get back up. What was the use? Where was he going, anyways? He ought to be looking for the Rattlers.

Questions like that made the biting-fly thoughts come back. They stung him with answers he couldn't deny, venomed words that seemed wrong but he could never quite place why or work up the energy to dispute. They drove him back to his feet and deeper into the dunes.

He kept walking. The night passed without him much noticing, putting one foot in front of the other. Moving kept him from freezing in the cool desert night, but did nothing once the Sun rose.

He kept going.

One foot in front of the other.

The day passed. Thirst clawed at his throat until it finally tired of him ignoring it, settling into a dangerous dull throb between his temples.

He started remembering.

There had been light around him, pouring from him in brilliant white-gold streamers tinged with red and violet. He had been furious, and loud in it.

The memory of rage is so strong it sends him to one knee in the sand. People had been running from that rage, screaming about demons, about the forsaken, anathema. He hadn't cared, so long as they ran, ran and never came back. There was something about them, something that might have been a uniform, or a symbol. Mezir's army.

Funny how the anger which was strong enough to send him to his knees is also strong enough to get him up and moving again.

There were other pieces. He stumbled over something in the sand, caught himself with a hand on a curved piece of some hapless beast's bones.

But it was a flame-piece's grip in his hand—hands—and it was less fire than spears of light coming from the barrels as he aimed and shot again and again and again. There was thunder, a ripple of it from each shot, roaring in his ears.