Displaced

Chapter 30

"How much longer until we're there?" Rudra asked Eztli Silverwater, one of the people guarding him at the moment.

"If we make good time, we should be there before nightfall," the man replied cordially. Rudra sighed with relief at the news. After weeks and weeks of pushing through brush, sleeping on the ground, and not taking baths, Rudra was desperate for whatever counted as civilization for these people. His whole body felt like one giant rash.

Rudra had lost count of how many days he'd been in this accursed wilderness. At first he'd thought that the trip would take a few days, maybe a week. He'd been wrong. Each day seemed tougher than the last. What started as annoying and impeding foliage grew thicker and thicker until half of the group had to constantly cut a path through the plant life just so they could proceed forward. There were days where they had to stop and hunt to replenish their food supplies. There were days where it rained so hard that the forest floor became a treacherous swamp, where each step felt like walking through quicksand and one unlucky move was all it took to trip over a hidden root and fall face-first into the mud. And then there were the migrations.

Initially, Rudra had not understood why the Stragmans cared about migrations so much that they seemed to have encyclopedic knowledge of each and every mass movement that happened in the forest. Then they'd had to stop for one. Hiding with everybody in a modest cave that they'd blocked off with some small boulders, Rudra had watched as a veritable tide of venomous lizards swept over the surrounding area and didn't stop. Hundreds of thousands, nay, millions, of the meter-long creatures passed by the cave. Only three days later did the last of them pass and the group resume their journey.

Still, everything could have been even worse. Things had changed rather dramatically since the incident in the Weald of Lords. The group as a whole seemed to have decided that he wasn't as bad as they'd initially believed, and his treatment had changed for the better because of it. People actually talked to him now and he got to learn their names. The group leader, Votan Stonefist, only assigned two people to guard him these days, and they didn't seem ready to jump him if he so much as sneezed like they had before. Rudra wasn't sure if it was because they trusted him more for saving the Shell or because his feat of strength had impressed them, though he somewhat doubted it was the former. Perhaps they'd just decided that if he wanted to make a break for it, they had no chance of stopping him. They were wrong, but Rudra had no hope of convincing them of that. You can't have a superpower and expect people to treat you normally.

Then again, it wasn't like he was alone. Every person in the group had displayed some level of superhumanity during the preceding weeks. He'd seen spontaneous fire and wind appear from nowhere. He'd watched several of the Stragmans, as he'd learned they were called, run and jump many times faster and farther than what should be possible for even the greatest Olympic athlete. What made his feats any more special than theirs? Even the Shells seemed capable of some fairly impressive deeds. Why didn't the others give them any of the respect he was suddenly receiving? He wanted to just ask somebody outright, but it seemed like a touchy subject and he could never seem to find the right opportunity for it.

Eztli's prediction came true as their group began to encounter patrols that afternoon. Rudra's enhanced hearing picked up several puzzling phrases in the overheard conversations, none more puzzling than "the city arrived less than two days ago". How could a city move?

"So if we're almost at the city, why are the trees here so large like in the Weald of Lords?" Rudra asked the talkative guard. "Won't there be huge monsters here too?"

"Oh no, the reason the Lords live there is because of how close it is to Ruresni." Ruresni. He'd heard that word before. If his guess was correct, it was their name for the impossible tree that stood at the center of the forest. The one that rivaled the mountains of Earth. "If a Lord were ever to come out here, it wouldn't be too bad anyway. The Hono would take care of it, or the Chos if it's really strong. The real threats to the city aren't the solitary big ones, it's all the little ones. A lot harder to stop a swarm than a giant."