Chapter Two: Evils and Omens
Written by Ethan
Ja and Kaia ran clumsily along the gnarled, overgrown trail that led away from the compound, legs pumping furiously as they tried to put as much distance as possible between themselves and their captors. The young man struggled to keep up with his new companion, as a lifetime of incarceration had left him with a low threshold for physical activity. Ja’s lungs burned with every breath, but Kaia was unfazed, her eyes focused straight ahead as the two plunged headlong into the unknown.
As he ran, Ja’s mind raced: Where do I go, what do I do? The ground hurts, the air hurts. We’re lost…we’re dead. I should go back. I don’t belong here. I belong to the Blood Summoner…to the community. No! I deserve to be free! I belong to no one. I am free! Free to die? The jungle killed everyone back there…it will kill me too…kill both of us. I don’t know what to do! Follow her? Yes…follow her…she knows…does she? Should I trust Kaia? She’s a friend…right? Stop thinking…just…RUN!
A million disconnected thoughts rumbled through the young man’s mind, unrelenting streams of doubt and hope waging a never-ending battle that would have frozen him in place if not for the survival instinct that forced him to move forward. He’d assumed that his first taste of freedom would be exhilarating, but as the two delved deeper and deeper into the jungle, Ja couldn’t shake the sense of dread that hung over him.
He’d arrived at the compound when he was very young, so his memory of the outside world was marred with dreamlike details that he struggled to accept as reality. The compound may have been horrible, but it was tangible, and consistent. Any past he thought he remembered from before was a trick.
Still, Ja recalled a certain pleasantness from his childhood, sweet tastes and aromatic smells coupled with a warmth that came from being near his parents. The wild lands outside of civilization were so much less oppressive in his memories; the creatures and plants that inhabited the jungle sustaining life, not destroying it. He remembered many hardships, his family’s quest for community consistently falling short, but they were together, and in those moments, that was enough.
He’d seen the scars across the bodies of his fellow prisoners, scars that existed long before those men and women had been captured for the blood sacrifice. Horrific cries from strange beasts were constant in the jungle that surrounded the compound. Terror was the apex predator amongst the fronds and vines that blotted out the sky. Ja didn’t know if things had changed while he was inside the compound, or if the jungle had somehow gotten more terrible since he was a child, but it didn’t matter. The jungle was simply not safe for their kind, especially for two people who had spent the majority of their lives tucked away safely behind stone walls.
Still, even being sheltered and fed, neither he nor Kaia had truly been safe amongst other humans, in the community or the compound. They merely toiled in periods of dull existence while awaiting their next torturous interaction with a society whose motivations were shrouded in secrets. Their betters wanted them to believe the needs of the many merited their treatment. The fear Ja felt as he ran away from everything he knew nearly drowned him, but at least it was a new sensation. Seeing Kaia chugging ahead, not once looking back, Ja finally accepted that anything was better than the places they were leaving behind.
The path began to dip into a sharp, craggy decline the further from the compound they moved. Jagged rocks and thick roots jutted up from the ground, finally forcing them to slow their pace and step carefully as they made their way deeper into the jungle. Before long, the path all but disappeared, a sliver of sunlight snaking its way through a break in the thick canopy above them the only indication that it had ever existed.
Ja and Kaia continued to move forward, pushing through jagged tree branches on all sides that snagged at their coverings and scraped at their flesh. Before long, the jungle consumed the trail completely, with low-hanging vines and bushy undergrowth merging with trees to create a wall of foliage they’d be forced to cut through.
“Let’s stop,” Ja said through labored gasps. He placed his hands on his knees, grimacing as he sucked in stinging lungfuls of heavy, humid air.
“We shouldn’t,” Kaia said sternly.
“Why? I don't think the guards will awaken soon…if at all.”
“Guards?” Kaia said as she turned to face him. “I am not worried about the guards.”
She pointed up towards the sky, alerting Ja to the light growing dimmer above; the sun had already dipped beneath the canopy. Kaia knew that they were woefully unequipped to navigate the jungle in full light, let alone when darkness fell. Neither of them had any idea how to stay safe in the open jungle at night.
Before Kaia had been assigned her role in Orn and moved into the life givers’ hut, she and a few other younglings would follow the hunting parties around when they returned from their multi-day treks, basking in the hunters’ stories and dreaming of one day joining their ranks. Most who lived in Orn never left its walls, and Kaia yearned to see what the world was like outside. She imagined sleeping around the fire, surrounded by dense trees, protected from the dangers of the jungle and the night by her fellow hunters. That life seemed so exhilarating, and made the safety of Orn’s underground caves feel dreadfully dull by comparison.
Even as a small child, Kaia was inherently headstrong, and despite having her role in Orn defined for her early in life, she was vocal that she wanted to hunt, not procreate. The elders politely reminded Kaia of her place, explaining the importance of their traditions and how their roles were determined by the gods. Still, her defiance could not be quashed, so more direct methods were soon implemented.
One of the elder life givers, a woman named Tylu who’d birthed ten younglings, was tasked with reforming and educating Kaia. Stern and somewhat cold, Tylu didn’t waste any time on her mission, and on their first day together she dragged Kaia by the hands to the gates of Orn to await a returning hunting party.
Kaia was confused at first. Had Tylu had a change of heart? She searched the older woman’s face for a clue to her motivations, but her expression was locked as tightly as the stone statues that dotted the streets of Orn.
Before long, three haggard-looking hunters returned dragging a wooden sled heaped with bundles wrapped in the massive leaves of the vecra tree. Despite their best efforts, blood flowed through the coverings of the bundles, leaking off the back of the sled and leaving a dotted and smeared crimson trail behind them.
Kaia assumed they were relatively new hunters, as proper field dressings would have prevented the bloody mess they’d drug back. She knew this was important not only for the preservation of the meat, but also to prevent predators from following the party. And if they were new hunters, why weren’t they accompanied by a shikari - an elder with exceptional skills who could guide and train the fledglings? There was something off about the whole scene.
As the hunters neared, Tylu held up a hand to stop them and motioned to a middle-aged woman with a fresh claw-shaped wound across her abdomen. Tylu whispered something into the hunter’s ear and then pointed in Kaia’s direction. The hunter nodded, then hung her head as she waved Kaia over.
Kaia walked to her with clear trepidation. The return of a hunting party was usually a time of celebration; this was anything but.
As Kaia approached, the female hunter walked over to the stack of bundles, quickly working the edge of one of them loose and revealing its contents.
Kaia gasped when she saw the lifeless face of an Orn hunter staring back at her, eyes rolled inward, jaw agape. The hunter pulled back the canvas a bit further, revealing that the corpse's head was detached from its body.
“We were ten when we departed,” the woman said solemnly as she reclosed the bundle. The three hunters laboriously dragged the sled into Orn and towards the pyre where their comrades would be set aflame and released back amongst the spirits. Kaia never questioned her place in the community after that. The idea of spending days and nights unprotected in the jungle didn’t seem quite so enticing anymore.
Kaia and Ja had no choice now but to sleep in the wilderness, and though neither possessed particularly strong survival skills, they both had the common sense to know that they would need to find some sort of covering or shelter for safety. There was nothing of the sort where they currently stood, only dense jungle obstructing their way forward. Ja pulled the knife from his skirt and began to saw through stems and vines while Kaia hacked at them with her spear. Fueled by desperation, they haphazardly cut their way deeper into the jungle, but no clear exit or stopping point revealed itself. The further they got, the thicker the jungle grew, until eventually their blades had no effect.
“What now?” asked Ja, drained and frustrated.
“We have to keep going.”
“The path is gone and the jungle is too thick. We should turn back and find a different way.”
“There is no different way,” said Kaia, shaking her head. “If we had followed the path the other direction from the compound it would have led us to Orn. We cannot go there. We are exiles now; we will surely be killed if we go back, and I fear our deaths would not be quick.”
She looked back behind her, eyes scanning from the far distance to the dead end in front of them.
“This was a path,” she continued. “The path led here at some point. There should be something beyond.”
Kaia walked up to the obstruction, forcing her arms through vines and branches until her hands came out on the other side. She pressed her arms out with a grunt and it opened an area just wide enough to peer further down the trail. On the other side of the vine wall, she could barely make out the shape of an opening in a vast tree trunk, the entryway almost completely overgrown by the surrounding jungle but still barely visible in the dimming light.
“There,” she said pointing. “There is a shelter ahead. I remember the hunters speaking of them. Orn workmen carved out sleeping spaces in huge vecra trees to mark the trail and give travelers a place to sleep in areas that were otherwise unsafe to spend the night. We can rest there.”
“But there is no way to move forward,” said Ja, pushing against the wall.
“No,” Kaia replied, looking at the canopy above. “But we can climb up.”
Above the obstruction was a small break in the branches of the trees, just large enough for the two of them to crawl through. Not wanting to waste any more time, Kaia marched ahead and began ascending the vines that blocked their path. Ja followed hesitantly behind.
Once they were above the obstruction, they could see through the bottom of the canopy that there was a small clearing about twenty paces ahead, and in that clearing stood the hollowed-out tree. Kaia and Ja hurriedly drug themselves forward, ignoring the bark and finger-like twigs of the trees that scratched and drew blood from their skin.
Kaia crawled forward with renewed energy, but the feeling of Ja’s hand on her foot suddenly halted her progress.
“What?” she hissed, turning back to him.
Ja put his finger to his lips and pointed just above her head. She followed his gesture, realizing she was moments away from placing her hand directly into some kind of bulbous nest.
Kaia froze and tried to move her body as far away from the thing as possible, but there was barely enough room to navigate around it. As she inched away, the exterior of the nest began to pulse rhythmically as if something inside was trying to free itself. A muffled yelp came from within, but Kaia did not recognize the noise.
Suddenly, the nest pulled apart and a small, rat-like creature emerged, shrieking loudly as it struggled to pull itself free from the slimy material that coated the inside of the nest. The creature was a terrifying sight to behold, with fur and flesh sloughing off a partially-digested frame. It locked eyes with Kaia and suddenly drove towards her with all of its remaining strength, but the nest’s slimy tendrils held tight and the bottom half of the rat was pulled apart from its torso, spilling innards out onto the ground right next to where Kaia was hunched.
Kaia hushed a scream as the creature’s top half hung lifeless from the nest before slowly being dragged back inside by a force she could not see. She felt a desperate tug at her foot as Ja urged her to move forward. Kaia obliged, pulling herself away from the gruesome scene just as something out of her view pulled the open sides of the nest together and sealed it closed again.
After a bit more labored wriggling, the two made it down past the obstruction and into the clearing where the carved-out tree stood. Though the entrance was also covered with vines, this barrier parted with a firm push, allowing the two to crawl inside. Exhausted and bleeding from hundreds of tiny scrapes, Ja and Kaia collapsed into a pile on the floor.
Ja’s body shook as he pushed himself up to a sitting position but Kaia was silent and unmoving, staring off into the distance.
“Kaia,” Ja said softly as he placed a hand on her shoulder, “Are you ok?”
“I’m fine,” she said shortly, pushing his hand away.
Kaia stood up and took stock of the area. This tree was enormous, so big that carving out a space for twenty to sit comfortably had not killed it. The inside was barren, and any extra supplies, tools, or furniture that may have been stored here had long since been stripped away. The ground was covered in a thick, braided fibrous material that bulged in certain places, most likely where roots had begun to grow up from the dirt below. The material was soft and dry and offered a comfortable sleeping space, which neither had expected.
Along the back edge of the room in near darkness, they could barely make out a set of three statues formed from red clay, about the size and shape of humans in a cross-legged position. The statues were roughly formed - nothing like the intricate stone carvings in the streets of Orn - but still defined enough to see the outlines of limbs and muted facial features. A necklace of thick, veiny leaves adorned each of their necks and small, black stones were placed vertically down their chests.
“Buru,” Kaia said softly.
“What is buru?”
“Protection. Orn medicine women would cover the bodies of the dead in clay and place them like this. It prevents their souls from being taken by evil spirits.”
“Is this how all of the dead are treated in Orn?” Ja asked.
“No. It is not common practice, only used in times of bad omens.”
“Are we safe here?” Ja asked nervously. He knew little of the customs and superstitions of the community. His parents never spoke of evils or omens when he was young, so he only learned of them during his time at the compound from Pall and through the guards' hushed chatter. Ja wasn’t sure if the savage men even understood the concept, but he did recall certain sounds in the dark that would send them cowering into the corners, most often on full moons after the blood sacrifice or when the green mist settled atop the peaks of the distant mountains.
“We are safer in here than out there,” Kaia said pointing to the entryway. “Omens are Orn’s way of explaining things they do not understand, but we’ve seen what the jungle can do.”
Ja nodded silently in agreement, and though he was unsure of how he felt sleeping in the same room as the dead, it wouldn’t be the first time. He recalled when two of the men in the compound had ganged up on the largest, most dominant man in the dead of night, strangling him and then leaving his lifeless body in the area where they all slept. Ja knew that something terrible had happened in the dark, and woke with the others to find the cold, purple body motionless on its palm leaves. These red statues couldn’t be any worse than that.
Ja pulled out two pieces of tamfruit from the basket and handed them to Kaia as he settled down next to her. The two tore into the food with a gasping desperation before their hunger gave way to fatigue and they fell fast asleep in the middle of the room.
While Ja slept soundly, Kaia found herself waking up repeatedly throughout the night, her last few weeks in the compound leaving her with the constant feeling of being stalked. The darkness inside the tree was impenetrable, with no moonlight filtering through the vines to illuminate danger before it could strike. In their urgent escape from the compound, neither had thought to grab flint to make fire, which in that moment would have been far more useful to their survival than a knife or spear. She hoped the overgrowth covering was enough to keep them safely hidden away from the countless creatures echoing in the jungle outside.
Kaia brought her knees up to her chin and rocked back and forth, humming a lullaby she used to sing to the children she birthed before they were taken away to be raised by the community. In that moment, she recalled her first pregnancy, the feeling of intense connection to the child growing inside of her, knowing that she’d need to rid her mind of such emotions so as not to frustrate the elders.
“These are tricks of the underworld spirits,” Tylu had told her. “We have learned them over countless births. The children are of Orn; not of you. The desperation to hold on to that which you create is the spirits preying on your weakness. We must all be strong together for Orn to survive.”
But no “wisdom” from an elder could mend Kaia’s broken heart after her first birth, a girl with big brown eyes and a tuft of light, curly hair on the top of her head. They’d allowed her to hold the child, but not for long enough, then took her away forcefully, only returning for Kaia to feed her. She knew her desire to keep the child all to herself was wrong, but for some reason, the advice from Tylu and the elders seemed unnatural despite their wealth of knowledge. Still, like most things during her time in Orn, Kaia did not question, and the process never got easier.
A sound of soft scraping suddenly pulled Kaia away from the painful memory, her heartbeat quickening in turn. She turned to the entrance of the shelter, assuming an animal was trying to make its way through the vines, but the sound did not come from outside. It came from the dark corner where the buru sat.
Kaia squinted hard, hoping that her eyes would adjust to the darkness, but it was of no use. Her ears would be her only guide until dawn.
She reached down, feeling along the ground for Ja, fingers dancing across the strange braided material that covered the floor. Before long, she felt his outstretched hand and quickly grabbed at it, pulling gently so as not to awaken him too suddenly.
“Ja,” she whispered. “Get up.”
Ja grumbled but did not immediately wake. She shook him by the shoulder, gingerly at first but then harder when he didn’t stir. Finally, he responded, slapping at her hand before realizing what was happening.
“What?” he said groggily.
“There’s something in here with us...”
He started to protest his sudden awakening but the scratching sound repeated again, catching his attention and forcing his tired body up into a sitting position.
The two listened silently in the dark as the sound of dead leaves crunching began to follow the scraping, then a low groan like an old man tossing in the night, though it was hollow and echoed strangely throughout the shelter. Neither Ja nor Kaia had ever heard such a terrible noise, and in that moment, were relieved that they could not see what was making it.
Terrified, Kaia and Ja huddled their bodies together and slowly scooted to the corner farthest from the buru. Ja reached into his grass skirt and pulled out the knife, and though it was dull and small, holding it made him feel a little more secure. Kaia silently berated herself for having left the spears against the wall where the buru sat.
Making themselves as small as possible, the two pressed their bodies into the corner, praying that whatever had gotten inside the tree hadn’t noticed their presence. Kaia feared that the occupant of the terrible, slimy nest had followed them here and was building a new home in the darkness. Was this sound coming from something trapped inside of its nest, like the creature in the trees from before?
Despite the floor muffling much of the noise, Kaia and Ja could tell that something was moving away from the back of the shelter, as the fibrous material sunk in slightly with every bit of motion. When whatever was approaching was practically on top of them, Ja and Kaia held their breaths in suspense, but the entity seemed to languidly pass them by. They breathed in sharply, and the scent of earth and dead plants overwhelmed their senses.
The sound of snapping branches and tugging vines came from the shelter’s opening as a struggle between the entity and the overgrowth barrier began, but it didn’t last long before the sound of footsteps stomping away could be heard outside. Then, all was silent again.
Ja and Kaia sat huddled until dawn, not daring to speak as they watched the interior of the shelter slowly take on a dim pink hue as sunlight leeched through the jungle canopy. Despite the vine covering having been torn away, no creatures had attempted to come inside in the night. In fact, an eerie calmness had settled as soon as the entity made its way out of the tree. The jungle surrounding them had ceased all activity, with only the call of distant birds signaling that the new day had begun.
Kaia pulled herself to her feet and reached out a hand to Ja, who still sat shaking and bewildered. Only one night of freedom and they had already faced a terror comparable to the Blood Summoner’s ritual. He couldn’t help but wonder if the compound was actually the safest place for them.
But before he could follow that thought to completion, a gasp from Kaia grabbed Ja’s attention. He turned to look in the direction she was pointing and realized that one of the three buru was gone, and in its place a heap of broken clay pieces.
“We need to go,” Kaia said, grabbing the spears and making her way to the front of the shelter.
“Was someone alive in the buru?” Ja asked, not daring to say the alternative scenario out loud.
“I don’t want to find out.”
Kaia stepped out into the jungle, startled by the unnatural stillness that had overtaken it. Her heart sank as soon as she took stock of their surroundings. Now that she could see it properly in the light, she found that the jungle on this side of the overgrown barrier was starkly different from what they had run through the day before. Like the tree they had camped inside, all of the trees on this side were enormous and thick, their canopies blotting out the sun with wide, wing-like leaves. Their bark resembled scaled reptilian skin, with branches that moved subtly despite there being no wind, swaying like the limbs of a water-dwelling creature. The vines that ran along the ground were slimy and covered in tiny growths like barnacles, with translucent outer coverings that revealed pulsating objects moving about inside. Instead of growing around the trees, the vines here grew directly from large, yellow bulbs that covered the base of the tree trunks.
Looking back at the shelter, Kaia could make out a distinct line where the normal jungle stopped and the bizarre jungle began. The wall of trees and foliage they had climbed over to get to this side was a literal wall, seemingly created on purpose to hamper the encroachment of the horrifying plant life on this side.
“These trees are sick,” Kaia said as Ja came out of the tree to join her. “We must turn back.”
“We can’t,” said Ja, looking up the way they had come. “It’s impossible...the whole area we climbed through has closed up.”
“This can’t be,” said Kaia, jogging back to the living wall. But Ja was right, there was no way to get up into the canopy anymore, no room at all to move between the branches. The opening they’d made their way through was now completely swollen shut with fresh vines and slimy growth.
“We have to keep moving,” said Ja, pointing to the path that led forward from the shelter in the tree. Compared to the other side, the trail here was far less rugged, almost even maintained. In spite of this, the absence of obstruction through this monstrous jungle left them more unsettled than relieved. It appeared as though something had cleared the way recently, with freshly hewn branches and snapped vines littering either side of the soft ground.
With no other option, the two began to follow the trail again, still so shaken from the terror of the night before that it dulled the fact that they were surrounded by monstrous, diseased trees. The further they walked, the closer the trees grew together, making the path feel smaller and smaller in its surroundings. But a way forward always remained: a sickly corridor of corrupted wood and detached vines that seemed to consistently part and let them through.
Eventually, they could make out an opening into a clearing, where sunlight reflecting off the unnatural bark created a glowing effect that gave Ja and Kaia equal parts relief and trepidation. As they neared the opening, a warm breeze blew through, filling their nostrils with an acrid odor that almost doubled them over. It was similar to what they smelled in the shelter when the entity passed by, but even more potent and sickly, like a perfume of rotting flesh sprayed over flowers.
Plugging their noses, they plunged through the opening, but stopped again in shock as the scene on the other side unfolded.
They stood at the entrance of an expansive city, far larger than Orn, but this city had undergone a gruesome transformation long ago. Outlines of stacked-stone buildings could be seen amongst groves of the sickly trees, with branches growing in through windows and breaking apart walls and thatched roofs as they expanded through abandoned streets.
A carefully-cleared promenade leading to the center of the town cut through the apocalyptic scene, seemingly impervious to the overgrowth that had destroyed everything around it. Upon this road stood a lone figure with a body caked in a familiar red clay. It turned glacially to face Kaia and Ja, revealing a skeletal face with a jaw that hung loosely from its skull. Its body was draped in tattered garments that were instantly recognizable to Kaia: the outfit of an Orn guard.
The figure hobbled towards them, beckoning with an outstretched hand that was missing all but two of its fingers. As it approached, the body seemed to disintegrate, dry pieces of flesh and bone drifting off into the aether. By the time it reached them, it was nothing more than half a skull perched upon a spine and rib cage, a single arm pointing down the road, deeper into the city.
“This world is lost,” whispered the empty skull. “The time for migration is upon us…”
With that, what remained of the figure blew away into the warm breeze, leaving Ja and Kaia alone and silent in the hellish ruins.
FATE INDEX:
1. Nothing happens when something is supposed to happen
2. Character loses one of their senses
3. Extended stream of consciousness
4. Protagonist’s identity is thrown into question
5. People begin to question their belief system
6. Charismatic megafauna
7. A great artifact of the past is found, calling to a new owner
8. Social faux pas has serious consequences
9. The inevitable end is actually a rebirth
10. A member of the community who was heavily relied upon disappears
11. Spirits of the dead begin to spill their secrets
12. Monotony is broken
13. Religious indoctrination
14. Body swap
15. Too many cooks in the kitchen
16. Bodily functions begin to cause eerie physical changes
17. A tenuous bond is formed
18. Life is too good
19. Something is awakened
20. A new adventure begins
Outcomes Used:
3. Extended stream of consciousness
11. Spirits of the dead begin to spill their secrets
Added outcomes:
Protagonist finds a source of healing/resurrection
(thanks to Shep)
Discovery of higher technology
(thanks to Matt)
