The Traveler in Red: Warlords of the Withered Land

Part Six

When he’d awakened an hour after the intrusion of the first streams of pale, stale light had heralded daybreak, the usual ritual of sudden piercing headaches and nausea to assault his mind and body quickly faded.  Too quickly.   That meant he was adapting, getting used to being a part of the broken cosmos into which he’d been marooned.

That was not a good thing.  As long as regaining waking consciousness in this dire place meant pain and discomfort, it meant he didn’t yet belong here.  The discomfort marked him as an alien to this universe and it was his “humanness” which marked him as alien.  He didn’t want to lose that.  To lose that meant to become part of The Withered Land…

And this was definitely not a place to which he wanted to belong.

Staring out past the pewter-gray gloom, he squinted against the wild winds that lashed the upper atmosphere into which the nineteen story minaret towered and he swore bitterly.  They were here, down on the beach.  They'd actually come back, following the trail left in the ruined mind of the lone survivor of that last tragic, charnel event that had stirred up the dwindling populace of the Withered Land.  There had been so much death..., so many innocents had died and perished violently, not knowing why.  And it had only served to reawaken the most vile, most bloodthirsty devils from within the depths of the Withered Land, beings of ambition and power who had slept in endless torpor, content to leave the unraveling of the foul history they'd created alone, now aroused into murderous action once more.   From his perch atop one of the least-ruined minarets in The City, the Traveler in Red had, courtesy of his inhumanly enhanced vision, seen Morpheus Team wink into existence out on the seaside edges of the Forever Plain.

Fools.  Idiots.  

Damn.

Didn't they know enough to stay away?   Didn't they know that just being here would be cause enough to start the killing all over again?

Or did they even care?

The Traveler in Red shook his hooded head, the tousled head of braided auburn hair underneath the coarse-woven cloth was long and shaggy, and he lowered his red visor down across his bleak purple-irised eyes.  He reached down to the stony floor of the balcony on the minaret’s peak and hefted his backpack, slipping his arms, long and whip-like with lean ropey muscle and banded in segmented, deep ruby-colored armor, through the chain-reinforced carrying loops.  He adjusted the bandolier of razor-sharp metal throwing stars across his chest so that the backpack's straps weren't caught on the stars, flipped the edges of his knee-length serape down across his chest where it hung to cover the dual-holstered gun belt he wore around his waist, and then he slowly rose to his full height of two and a third meters.

They were going to need his help.   Again.   And, dammit all, he really did not want to have to help them.  They were stupid and they were greedy and self-centered and they didn't belong in this damned place, in his universe.  Once, he, too, did not belong here, in this place, but circumstance changed his Fate and changed him, as well.  He was no longer who he was.  He was both Less and More.  He no longer felt any real connection with them, with these arrogant Upworlders.  He shouldn't have to risk his life for them.  He'd warned them the last time they'd come here, warned them as they, his former brethren, left, taking their one chance at freedom.  He alone had stayed behind, a lone guardian who protected the doorway out from the Withered Land.  He held the Line, keeping them safe as they had escaped.  He had stayed, dooming himself for an eternity.  How much more could be expected from him?

It had been like that all his life… even back when he, himself, had lived among the Upworlds.  Always the responsible one, always the “Go-To” guy, always the protector and the rescuer, he had grown increasingly soul-weary of that role over the years.  It wasn’t him.  It wasn’t who he was.  He was a thinker, a scientist.  All he’d ever wanted to do was to investigate the cosmos in which he lived, look into the many mysteries of Creation that had tantalized his intellect, but instead, more often than not, he’d had to play the role of warrior.