IrateRapScallion
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Chapter 105
🕑 Added 2021-01-27 03:13:41 +0000 UTC[We had kidney stones, power outages, civil unrest, my water running out, and all other sorts of obstacles this month, but 105 is finally ready. Hope you enjoy it.]
Rain pelted down, the torrent of water pouring over Sofie even with the cover of the trees. She welcomed it. The water left her feeling cleansed in more ways than just physically. The softened dirt didn’t hurt either; between the rocks, the roots, and the fact she hadn’t been able to find anything better to use in the bandits’ storage room than a single-hand wooden spade the size of a gardening trowel, she found digging to be hard enough without the ground also being as hard as a brick. Letting the mindless monotony take her away from the events of the past few days, she plunged her trowel into the earth, over and over.
She’d woken up to daylight and a cave hideout covered with blood and corpses. Apparently, her body’s weakness, brought on by malnutrition, insomnia, and torture, had combined with the intense emotional stresses of that night to cause her to faint at the end of the slaughter. The sleep helped. Higo’s knife, dropped by her side when Snake first attacked him, had helped even more. Freeing herself had taken some time, but the celebratory Liberation Crackers had made everything better.
Not really.
Her scabbed fingers and toes throbbed constantly, pain flaring up with every step she took. Her body still felt weak and lethargic, even after gorging herself on crackers and other assorted food in the storage room. Granted, she hadn’t felt anything close to “good” since Pari’s death, but even compared to just two weeks ago, she felt like utter shit.
Still, she did it anyway, because it needed to be done.
She thought as she dug. The Sofie of the past, the one sitting in a library, would never have been able to do this, she knew. That version of herself would have crumpled into a weeping heap and accomplished nothing. And yet, she found herself wishing that she could be that person again. She couldn’t help but feel that she’d lost just as much as she’d gained—if not more—since coming here.
She could feel Scyria pushing her every day to become somebody she didn’t want to be. She didn’t know what was worse: that it was working, or that everybody else seemed to view her resistance to it as some sort of obstinate, selfish, naive folly. Who you were as a person was perhaps the last true choice a person could have, the one thing anyone had near-total power over, but this goddamned hellhole of a world seemed intent on twisting everyone she knew into some cruel mockery of the person they had been.
Blake had probably been a jerk back on Earth, but surely not a murderous one. It was Scyria that had broken him so, both mentally and physically, and set him on his spite-fueled quest. The quest had no end; Blake was chasing the ghosts of acknowledgment and vengeance, but no matter what he did, they would always be a step out of reach. Sofie believed that even Blake understood this by now, but he was far too stubborn to stop. Or perhaps, he feared what would happen to him without his drive to prove an entire country incorrect.
Sofie wanted to believe that Gabby had been a nice person before the transfer; she could see the motherly nature the older woman still held within her. Still, the Eterians had taken to calling her a monster for a reason. When faced with the choice between two lives integral to her existence and the lives of thousands upon thousands of others, she’d chosen the two. Blake, Arlette, and the rest probably thought that the Ubrans had tricked Gabby into her actions. Sofie had thought the same, once. Now, she wondered if Gabriela had equally used the Ubrans, letting them build her a permission structure for her actions, a justification to soften guilt of her crimes.
And then there was Arlette. What would she be like if she had been allowed a normal, warm childhood? What would she be like if she’d just been allowed to be happy? What would a truly happy Arlette even look like? Sofie tried to imagine it and came up blank. She didn’t think she’d ever once seen the Scyrian in a state that could qualify as true happiness.
All these people and more, twisted by the horrors and vagaries of this accursed world. Tehlmar, Samanta, General Astalaria, even Pari... all of them warped by something terrible. And they looked at her and lectured her just because she didn’t want that to happen to her. Well, maybe it didn’t matter anymore.
She hadn’t even been able to uphold her vow for even two weeks. Yes, the last few days had been intensely trying, but Sofie viewed that almost as Scyria itself slapping her down for the hubris of thinking she had the power to decide anything in her life. Vows, promises... they meant nothing here.
Slowly the dirt receded until eventually, she stepped out of a shallow depression deep and wide enough to hold several bodies.
That task finally complete, Sofie took several deep breaths and let the rain wash off the mud before walking a good ten meters away. There, she gingerly lowered herself to her knees and began to dig once more. This time, she would dig a hole far more narrow than the last, but deeper as well.
The rain had faded to a fine drizzle by the time she finally finished digging the second grave. Sofie carefully climbed out of the hole, wary of the slick muddy sides—so much rain had fallen that both graves had partially filled with water by this point—and shook herself off. Judging by what she could make of the sun’s position in the overcast sky, twilight was only minutes away. It had taken her literally all day, and she still needed to finish the job. With a sigh, she staggered back to the nearby hideout.
The man-made cave stank of blood and worse. Sofie had done what she could to clean up the dried pools of blood—not to mention the dried urine and feces the corpses had released after death—but there was a limit to what she could accomplish without proper supplies.
“See how long this is taking?” a voice asked as she trudged inside. “I told you, just dump them out in the forest.”
Sofie ignored the voice with its feigned concern and continued her trudge over to Weasel’s nearby corpse. Letting out a loud grunt, she barely managed to heave his limp corpse up over her shoulder and carry him out to the grave, where she unceremoniously dumped him with a gasp of pain. Walking on her own hurt bad enough, but walking with the extra weight of a dead body made her toes want to riot.
Hawk came next; though larger than average for a female Otharian, her body posed a bit less trouble due to her thin build. Snake was a pain—she half-carried, half-dragged him. As for Bull... she had to put thick sticks under his body and drag him along the ground until they made it to the slick forest floor. Without the sticks to roll under the giant and reduce the friction, she doubted her strength would have been enough to move him at all.
Once the corpses all laid where they belonged, Sofie quickly pushed the pile of dirt on top of them, pulling out her trowel to finish the job. The rain had died down by now, thank goodness; the dirt pile was muddy enough as it was. One of the three moons—she forgot which was which—poked through the cloud cover, giving her enough light to finish her work. She felt hungry, but she pushed through it. She could eat in a bit, once she’d finished the task.
Once a layer of dirt separated the bandits from the open air, Sofie slowly made her way back inside for one last body. It smelled a little better already.
“It’s so cute that you care so much more for the boy than the others,” the voice remarked. “Young love, perhaps?”
“Shut up,” she growled.
She dragged Higo’s corpse to the smaller and deeper separate grave and dumped his body like she had the others. The hole filed slowly under the sky’s muted silver shine until the job was finally done.
Casting the tiny shovel aside, Sofie sank down against a nearby tree, worn to the bone. By this point, the screaming of her fingers and toes had mixed with the aches of her muscles and the emptiness of her stomach, but she didn’t have it in her to move for a little while. Or, perhaps more accurately, she didn’t have it in her to face what lurked inside the cave.
The quiet of the forest echoed the silence of the void within her. Life felt... hopeless? Pointless? Some combination of both? Despite what she’d told Higo, the odds of her ever seeing Pari again looked slim and got slimmer by the day. A life without her sister was a life without meaning.
Like the others, Sofie had never wanted to be sucked into Scyria in the first place. She had no role here because this world was not meant for her. She’d been too scared during the beginning, between being enslaved and being hunted, to even notice or care. Then she’d found Pari. That little imp, combined with the ruggedness of survival in this world, kept her constantly busied to the point that she’d never had the need to really ponder her purpose.
Pari’s death had opened up the door to said pondering for the first time since the transfer. Without the giggling feline distraction running around, she’d had time to begin to realize just how empty her life was. She’d locked those thoughts away as best she could, but now, alone in the quiet forest, she could no longer hide from the truth.
She didn’t belong here. None of them did.
She felt empty. Was this hollowness what filled Gabby all day every day?
Sofie thought that maybe she understood the mother’s malaise better now. Gabriela had known from the start that they belonged back on Earth, and she’d done everything in her power to try to return. It was no wonder that she seemed to sleepwalk through each day now. She knew that her life was meaningless here.
Now, Sofie knew it too. Or rather, she couldn’t avoid the realization anymore. But what could she do about it?
She could try to find something else to plug the hole, but she doubted anything out there could change the fundamental truth. Her efforts towards an Otharian education system was a great example of this. Looking back, she could see that it was something she’d taken up to try to fill the hole she hadn’t even admitted was there at the time.
What made her qualified for anything like the creation of a school system throughout an entire nation? Nothing, if she were to be honest. It wasn’t like she’d been taking education classes in university. Nor was she especially skilled in administration. It had simply been a need she’d recognized and tried to fill, but it wasn’t her purpose here. She didn’t even especially enjoy it.
There was one activity she did enjoy: translating ancient books. That wasn’t a purpose either. It was just a hobby, one that accomplished nothing more than filling time.
Speaking of filling time, the convulsions of her gut told her that she’d filled too much out here at this point. Pushing herself to her feet, she made her way back inside to face the cave’s newest denizen and get some well-earned food and water.
Darkness filled the cave interior; she’d been outside so long that the torch had burned to nothing. Still, she could visualize the hideout’s simple, two-chamber layout with ease, so walking through it to the storeroom didn’t pose much difficulty. It helped that the obstacles had been cleared, as well. The last thing she needed was to be tripping over bodies in the dark, or worse, stubbing her brutalized toes.
Once she’d reached her destination, Sofie fumbled in the darkness for the pile of torches that she remembered to be in the close left corner. Before long, her fingers found the pile and she returned to the main chamber with one in each hand.
“Could you make a flame for me, please?” she asked into the shadow.
“Can you not even manage something so simple on your own?” the voice asked with mock concern. “You poor thing. You must be truly exhausted.”
“Can you just can it with the comments for once?!” Sofie snapped. “You spent months with Gabby! You should know full well by now that Earthlings can’t do the same magic as your people! Just do it, already!”
“Well, since you asked so nicely.”
A bright white flame the size of Sofie’s fist materialized in the middle of the hideout, the light illuminating the stiff, blood-soaked form of Chitra Batranala against the side wall. The Scyrian’s polite smile, the kind retail employees made while thoughts of murder raged behind their eyes, made Sofie want to scream.
She had not expected to find the Resistance killer still alive when she woke up that morning. Even more, she did not expect to find that the woman was not actually a member of the Resistance, but rather Gabby’s Ubran friend and confidant, Chitra Batranala.
Chitra’s state revealed a very important discovery about Sofie’s powers: geasa weren’t necessarily literal. The Ubran couldn’t move her limbs, head, or neck, nor could she bend or twist her torso in any way. She was locked out of nearly every voluntary function of her body, her limbs stiff as boards—though, thankfully, Sofie could reposition them with a hearty tug if she needed to. And yet, Chitra could breathe and speak without issue.
One would think that breathing counted as movement. Perhaps heartbeats and peristalsis counted as well. Speaking, emoting, and moving one’s eyes would definitely count by almost any sense of the word. And yet, here she was, breathing, speaking, emoting, moving her eyes, and blinking, all while neither screaming nor bleeding out of her eye sockets.
Sofie could only conclude that her subconscious desires affected the rules of her geasa. She’d wanted Chitra to stop, and so Chitra had, but she hadn’t wanted her to die, and so she had not. Though at this point, the woman’s attitude was starting to make Sofie consider changing her mind.
Chitra Batranala did not like Sofie one bit, and seemingly had no compunction with making sure Sofie knew it. The whole day had been filled with comment after passive-aggressive comment like a chronically disappointed mother. Sofie could do nothing right in her eyes, and it was driving Sofie up the wall. She almost wanted to forbid the woman from speaking.
Almost.
Pushing her feelings aside for the moment, Sofie reached out and touched the torch to the flame. The white fire vanished, replaced by the orange gleam of the burning stick. Sofie walked over to the nearby stone sconce, placed the torch inside. Then she lit the second one using the flame of the first, walked to the other side of the cave, and placed it in the other sconce. The dual light sources cast competing half-shadows across the hideout.
Wait, she still needed to eat. With a sigh, she pulled the torch back down and tromped into the storeroom again to raid their dwindling food supplies. Unwilling to go digging for the moment, she seized on the remaining crackers. The stale carbs lacked taste and appeal, but at least she knew what she was getting into with them. She wasn’t in the mood for taking chances right now.
The crackers were... not as dry as ever; she’d forgotten to store them properly, and the day’s ample moisture meant damp crackers that were somehow even less appetizing than the dry ones. Thinking of all that water, she realized now that she should have figured out some way of harnessing the rain to replenish the water supply. A shame, she’d been too caught up in her own feelings earlier to think about stuff like that when it mattered.
She waddled back out—waddling flatfooted took a while but also hurt noticeably less than normal walking—and sat down beside the near-motionless Scyrian. She offered a cracker towards Chitra.
“I prefer meat,” the Ubran sniffed.
“Fine, starve all you want, then,” Sofie replied. She’d had enough of the immobile woman’s attitude.
“There is surely some in their supplies if you look hard enough.”
“Well, I’m tired, so take it or leave it,” Sofie harrumphed.
“Treating your savior so terribly,” Chitra sighed melodramatically. “You’re nothing like the girl Gabby described.”
“And you’re nothing like the supportive, caring friend she told me about, either!” Sofie shot back. “Can you stop with all this condescending, passive-aggressive bullshit and give me a little respect?!”
The woman laughed, her voice like a bell. Somehow, even while ‘paralyzed’, she managed to seem elegant. “Respect is not given so freely, child, and you’ve shown me little reason to give you any whatsoever.”
“And what would give you reason?” Sofie wondered through clenched teeth.
“To begin, you could stop mourning the death of the very people who tortured you,” the Ubran told her with no small amount of derision.
“I’m not!”
“You buried them, did you not? You should have left them for the scavengers, though even that would be a gift.”
“A shallow, waterlogged grave is not a gift. It’s the bare minimum any person deserves.”
“And what of the boy bandit?”
“Higo wasn’t a bandit,” Sofie argued. “Not like the others, at least.”
“That is perhaps the most laughable thing you have said so far. Being an ineffectual bandit does not absolve one of banditry.”
“He was just a confused kid swept up in the tide of events far bigger than he could handle. He did not deserve what happened to him—what you did to him. I’ll never forgive you for that.”
Chitra rolled her eyes. “Life cares not for what anyone ‘deserves’, child, and I need your forgiveness even less. My goal was to ensure your safety, and I accomplished that as I saw fit. The boy was lucky to get as quick and painless a death as I gave him.”
“He was trying to save me! You didn’t have to kill him at all!”
“My task was to rescue you, not to perfectly deescalate the unknown situation I discovered you in when I arrived,” Chitra shot back. “I lacked the luxury of time to fully understand the dynamics, but I could see that you were in danger. I acted in the way that best assured your survival.”
“That’s a load of bull, and you know it!” Sofie snarled. “I’m not blind! You were enjoying every moment of that butchery!”
“I enjoy cleaning up trash, yes; I will make no apologies for that. But make no mistake, I cleaned up your mess, child.”
“Fuck you!” Sofie spat, almost leaping to her feet in indignation. “You can’t make your actions my fault!”
“Then whose fault is it, child?” the Scyrian asked with a calm smile as Sofie marched across the cave.
“Yours! It sure wasn’t my knife stabbing into their bodies!” Sofie hollered as she paced back and forth. “And stop calling me a child!”
“Then stop behaving like one!” came Chitra’s harsh reply. “I only was forced to act because you refused to. You could have resolved your predicament yourself with ridiculous ease—my current state is more than enough to attest to that—but instead, you stayed your hand.”
“It’s not that simple!” Sofie protested.
“What could be more simple than a single command? With a few words, you could have been on your way without a single drop of blood spilled. And they wouldn’t even have to remember you if you didn’t want them to! But you didn’t, and for what?”
“Because it hurts people, you... you...!” Sofie screamed, her frustration boiling over to the point that she momentarily lost her ability to speak. Instead, she let out a roar and hurled the remaining crackers into the nearest wall before stomping them into crumbs.
“You and Tehlmar and the rest this goddamned world, you’re all the fucking same!” she snarled as she huffed with fury and indignation. “Just because my first answer to every fucking problem isn’t to start stabbing, I’m ‘too soft’, ‘too weak’! It’s like it’s never once occurred to you fucking troglodytes that maybe, just maybe, the fact that you’re all violent psychopaths is the reason your whole world fucking blows! All this pain and suffering didn’t just randomly happen!
“But noooo! I’m the stupid one for not wanting to add more agony and bloodshed to this godforsaken place! I’m the stupid one for thinking a better world would be possible if you all weren’t so busy with the might makes right bullshit! Well, you know what? This pathetic thing you ignorant brutes call living? You fucking deserve all of it! Every last fucking drop!
“And what if I held off? So what if I didn’t want to tamper with other peoples’ minds? The only person getting hurt was me! That’s my choice, so you have no fucking right to judge me! And I was going to stop them, just so you know! Nobody was going to get killed! But then you went on your little stabbing spree and murdered them all before I could do anything! So fuck you, and fuck Tehlmar, and fuck this whole fucking dimension!”
“Enough.”
The single phrase, disdain practically dripping from each syllable, froze Sofie in her tracks.
“I will not be lectured by an infant throwing a fit,” the Scyrian woman hissed.
“Listen, you-” Sofie began.
“No, you listen, you pathetic whelp,” Chitra snapped. “I do not call you a child because you are ‘weak’ or ‘soft’ or anything of the sort. There is nothing wrong with looking for non-violent solutions; in the palace, a well-placed word was often far more effective than any blade could ever be. I call you what you are because you are so terrified of the consequences of your actions that you choose not to act at all.
“Every step, no matter how small, creates a tremor that spreads through the world. Adults understand this, and they accept it and carry on regardless. They accept it because to live in the world requires it. Only children get the benefit of cowering in a corner, waiting for another to act on their behalf. Adults get no such luxuries.
“You possess a power so grand that it would make kings weep, and yet the thought of using it to even the smallest degree paralyzes you. Someone with your powers could single-handedly change this world if they so decided, but not you. You run from everything like the child you are—the child you choose to be. All actions carry a risk, Sofie. Such is the way of the world, as it always has been. I will not coddle you and your naive delusions. If you wish to be taken seriously, then look within. Until then, do not waste my time with your infantile tantrums.”
“Oh, give me a fucking break!” Sofie snapped back. “That’s so easy for you to say. You’re not the one who has to pay the price in the future when something goes wrong.”
“Neither are you,” Chitra replied.
“All the more reason to avoid it, then! Look at what it’s done so far. Pari died, just because of three stupid words I told her a year ago.”
“But you only discovered the truth of your abilities recently, is that not so? Mistakes of the past have little bearing upon your choices from this point onward.”
Sofie shook her head. “It’s still wrong,” she stated. “I don’t have the right to saddle people with burdens that could destroy them in the future just to get things I want.”
Chitra looked at her like she’d grown two heads. “What folly are you spouting now? Of course you do. Power is meant to be wielded. That is the point of it.”
“Even if it’s evil?”
“Power has no morality, child.”
“Mine does! It reaches inside the most sacred part of a person and defiles it! Why don’t you get that?! Why aren’t you angry about what I did to you? I reached inside of you and messed with your very being! It’s... it’s mind rape! I violated you!”
Though she could not move, the Batranala somehow seemed to shrug. “All power is violation in some form. The exact method matters little.”
“What in the world are you talking about?!” Sofie cried out.
“You see a man beating another man in the street,” the Scyrian began as if explaining something to a five-year-old. “You tell the man to stop and he tells you to mind your own business. So you use your power and he stops. Lord Ferros comes across the same scene and tells the man to stop or his death machines will kill him. The man stops. What is the difference?”
“What’s the difference?! Isn’t that obvious?!” Sofie hotly asserted. “He didn’t mind rape the man!”
“I say again: the method matters little. You believe that by affecting another through your ability, you are violating their soul, yes? Have you not considered that Lord Ferros pointing a gun to the man’s head is just as much a violation, merely physical and emotional rather than spiritual? Instead of defiling the man’s self, as you claim to do, he defiles the man’s self-worth, his agency, his reputation, and more. The soul is a part of one’s self, but it is no more special than one’s body or mind. To tamper with it is no worse than cutting off a finger or filling a man’s head with lies. It is simply more direct. Why, one could argue that it is, in fact, cleaner and preferable to the other, less-direct methods.”
“But what I do is permanent,” Sofie contended. “Like, if I made the man unable to attack others, he might end up dying from an attack that he otherwise would have been able to escape.”
Chitra snorted. “The man Lord Ferros threatened stops the beating and quickly runs away. That night, feeling angry and powerless, he gets drunk and terribly beats his child to regain a feeling of superiority. Do you not see? All power has repercussions. The difference you cling to exists only in your mind.
“Imposing your will onto others, forcing people to do as you desire... it can be accomplished in a thousand ways, but in the end, the specific details matter little. Power is power. Yours might be a bit more direct than most, but that does not make it worse or better. The power of Lord Ferros, the Chos, or even the great Emperor whom I once served are no different than yours in any meaningful way. The only question is if you are willing to embrace what power entails, as they did.”
Sofie didn’t know how to reply, so she just sat and said nothing for a long while.
“I don’t know if I am,” she finally admitted as she got up several minutes later. Slowly, she made her way to the storeroom, grabbing two bedrolls and some dirty blankets before returning to the main chamber.
“I’ve had enough of talking today,” she told the frozen woman as she set out one bedroll. Chitra didn’t complain as Sofie slid her onto the fabric, rearranged her position so that she rested flat on the floor, and threw a blanket over her. Sofie walked all the way to the other end of the cave and set up her own bedroll. The fabric was not very soft and did little to cushion the hard stone below, but she could tell a bit of a difference. Even with the lingering stench, it didn’t take long before she was out like a light.
* * *
Sofie watched as the Ubran chewed eagerly on the tough dried meat. For somebody effectively paralyzed from the head down, the woman looked as pleased as punch for the meal. Sofie had never met anybody who liked meat as much as Chitra, though she had to admit that the protein tasted leaps and bounds better than the crackers from yesterday.
“All done?” Sofie asked as Chitra swallowed the last of the piece.
“Indeed,” came the reply. “I thank you for assisting me with the meal.”
“Well, far be it for me to mistreat my ‘savior’, after all. Especially since I did this to you.”
“Quite.”
Sofie took a deep breath and steeled herself. “Don’t breathe through your nose.”
For the first time when using her powers, Sofie concentrated on her inner self, searching for some sort of indication that something was happening within her... and almost to her surprise, she did actually notice something. The sensation barely registered, like a tiny thread being pulled from a shirt she wore and tied nearby to hang almost imperceptibly between her and something else. Then, in a heartbeat, the sensation vanished. She could no longer feel the presence of anything “off” inside her.
Meanwhile, back in external reality, Chitra blinked in shock, her chest halting mid-inhale for a moment before she opened her mouth and finished her breath. “Is this some sort of punishment for my words last night?” the Ubran asked, mildly irritated. “Because I will not apologize for honesty.”
“No, it’s not,” Sofie answered. “Pari died because of me. It hurts to know that she could still be alive if it wasn’t for my words. But I realize, now, that I also could have saved her if had known about my powers then. I could have stopped everything.
“You were right, in a way, when you said I was running away. I’ve been running away from myself, and I can’t do that anymore. I don’t want to be like Blake. I don’t want to stomp all over others and throw my weight around like that. But I can’t let something like Pari’s death happen again just because I’m afraid to use my powers, as terrible as they are. But to do that, I need to understand everything about how they work.”
“And you intend to use me to find out.”
“I already hit you with my power once. What’s one more on top of it? And I hear that you don’t care for my forgiveness, so why should I care for yours?” Sofie sneered. “Besides, the sooner we figure this out, the sooner we can leave this stupid cave.”
“Why add more restrictions at all? You already turned me into a statue.”
“Because I still don’t trust you to not kill me the minute you can move again,” Sofie retorted. “If you weren’t Gabby’s friend, I probably wouldn’t trust you enough to talk with you. I probably would have just dumped you by a nearby village.”
“Hmph,” the Batranala replied. “Then let us get this over with.”
“You may breathe through your nose,” Sofie said.
The Scyrian seemed to try to sniff for a moment, but nothing happened.
“Hmm. I allow you to breathe through your nose.”
Once again, nothing happened. Sofie sat down beside the other woman.
“I release you from not being able to breathe through your nose.”
Still nothing.
“Don’t don’t, perhaps?” Chitra suggested.
“Don’t don’t-” Sofie’s sentence ground to a halt. “Wait, what if that did the opposite? Instead of releasing you, it added a second geas where you couldn’t not breathe through your nose?”
“...good point,” Chitra admitted. “That would be a problem.”
“Let’s leave that for another time, then,” Sofie sighed. “This might be harder than I had hoped.”
More than an hour later, Sofie let out a groan of frustration as she leaned all the way back, her back coming to rest on the cold, hard cave floor.
“I can’t think of any other ways to say it!” she sighed in defeat.
Nothing either of them had thought of had worked. Every permutation, every alternate wording, all of them seemed entirely without effect. They’d even branched into more tangential, related phrases to no avail.
Sofie rolled her tired body over and pushed herself to her feet. “I think we should try something else for a while,” she muttered as she headed into the storeroom. There, she searched about until she found a few pieces of clean cloth—clean enough in comparison to everything else, at least—in a bag in the back corner.
“What are you up to now?” Chitra wondered as Sofie wandered back into the main room.
“Let’s try something else. Experimenting,” Sofie replied before stuffing her mouth full with the cloth to the point that her jaw hurt.
“Don’t blink with both eyes at the same time,” she said to the Ubran, though in reality, her voice sounded like little more than muffled moaning and groaning.
Chitra blinked... with both eyes, unamused. Sofie tried again, but still, nothing seemed to occur.
“I don’t understand,” she admitted, once her mouth was once more empty of cloth. “I said it, why didn’t it work?”
“Perhaps you need to speak it fully,” Chitra conjectured.
“Huh?”
“Perhaps the actual act of speaking is required for you to actualize your ability. Some people find saying certain mantras or performing certain physical movements can help them set their minds properly for a task,” Chitra explained. “For example, some Observer schools teach children with both mantras and gestures. A rare few that learn this way end up unable to Observe without performing those mantras and gestures, even when they grow older. Perhaps actually fully speaking the words aloud is your version of this.”
“So... the whole time I was being tortured... I would never have been able to stop them, anyway!” Sofie gasped. She rubbed her tired eyes and groaned. All that time, when she’d been fighting not just the pain but her own urges to make it all stop, her powers would have been useless in the first place. Water under the bridge, she told herself as she moved on to the next aspect she wanted to test.
“Don’t blink with both eyes at the same time,” Sofie said again, only in French.
Once again, Chitra continued to blink unimpeded.
“Don’t blink with both eyes at the same time,” Sofie finally said in Dutch.
The Ubran blinked her left eye, then her right, and sighed. “Was that truly necessary?”
“I needed to confirm,” Sofie replied, telling herself that this was all for a worthy cause. The rationalization lightened the weight on her conscience, but not by much.
* * *
The sun approached the horizon as Sofie stretched tall, letting her weary joints feel a moment of relief. The bandits had built their hideout into the side of a hill, which meant that there was a hilltop upon which she could stand, as she did now. The view wasn’t anything amazing, but it felt good to be able to look around and see more than just a cave wall or a tree trunk five meters away.
At least the sunset could help keep her sorrow at bay for a little while. A full day of experimentation had revealed little, other than that she could be neutralized with little more than a ball gag or by not speaking Dutch. Despite trying all sorts of different ideas, they had not found the one thing she needed to find: a way to unbind somebody. Until she knew how to release people from her power—if it was even possible—she could never face Arlette and the others ever again.
At this rate, she would never go back. The question then would be what to do with the paralyzed woman in the cave below. Sofie couldn’t bring herself to consider abandoning her, especially not since the woman’s predicament was Sofie’s doing.
Chitra Batranala bothered Sofie, no matter how Sofie tried to get over it. For some reason, Sofie found that she wanted the Ubran’s approval, or at least understanding. Maybe it was just because there was nobody else around to give Sofie the validation she needed right now, or maybe it was that Chitra felt almost like a personification of Scyria and Sofie was arguing not with a single person but with the world itself.
Chitra Batranala was a woman born and raised here—a world where people died needlessly all the time and this sort of daily tragedy counted as a normal day. Death, violence, and suffering were just standard features of existence for her. Growing up in such a place, it was no wonder that she seemed completely unfettered by anything approaching the morality she knew on Earth. Chitra knew what she wanted and she had the skills and smarts to get it. And if that required killing, then she would kill without hesitation.
In the eyes of Chitra and the rest of the world, if you died, it was your fault. It meant you were too weak to keep living, simple as that. Sofie still couldn’t fully accept such a reductive argument; that argument was made by the strong survivors, after all. Of course they would frame the world to justify their deeds as righteous.
But in that light, perhaps something could be said for Chitra’s actions. Sofie knew how weak she seemed to the Scyrians—the other Earthlings as well, to be honest—and by Chitra’s outlook on life, Sofie probably deserved the death of a weakling. Other than her connection with Gabby, there was absolutely no reason for Chitra to intercede in Sofie’s fate. In her eyes, Sofie was not just someone deserving of scorn, but somebody who deserved whatever happened to them. And yet, she had interceded with dramatic decisiveness. Yes, Sofie wasn’t entirely thrilled with the results of said decisiveness, but could she fault Chitra for trying to save her life?
Sofie rubbed her face and let out a small groan. The Ubran’s arguments were getting to her a little after this long day.
As the sun began to duck behind the earth, Sofie made her way back down to the hideout below. Stepping into the storeroom, she grabbed more of the dried meat—not much left of that, she noted—and went to feed her immobile companion.
Chitra didn’t seem as tired as Sofie felt, instead appearing more bored out of her skull than anything else. Her eyes did brighten, however, when she noticed what Sofie held in her hands.
“What was it like, living in the Imperial Palace?” Sofie asked.
“It was much like this,” Chitra replied. “Completely at the mercy of another’s whims.”
Sofie rolled her eyes.
“If you wished to kill me here and now, could I stop you?” the Ubran pointed out.
“But I wouldn’t do that,” Sofie protested.
“Irrelevant. The possibility exists all the same,” Chitra told her as she began chewing on a large bite of meat. “To live in the Palace was to live beneath the constant threat of death. The Emperor’s power was absolute, and one wrong word could spell your end. I witnessed many a fool perish for the slightest of reasons.”
“That sounds horrible.”
“It was not for the faint of heart, but everyone there chose to be there for a reason.”
“And what reason would you have to go there?”
Chitra swallowed her meat and opened wide for another piece. “Revenge.”
“Revenge? Against who?”
The Batranala only smiled, causing Sofie to roll her eyes again.
“Fine don’t tell me.”
Sofie sat back and sighed, munching down on the last of the crackers she’d been able to find in the storeroom. She didn’t know if she should feel anxious or delighted that no more of the tasteless floor tiles in grain form existed. For the moment, she decided to feel both at the same time.
“So...” she began, “I wanted to say I’m sorry.”
“You’ve already apologized for what you did four times today,” Chitra pointed out.
“Not for that, for... I mean, you had never even met me, and yet you came all the way here searching for me. I wasn’t appreciating that like I should. It says a lot that you would be willing to do something like that for anybody. And I was thinking earlier, putting myself in your shoes, and I’m still not happy with what you chose to do, but I guess I can see why you chose to do it.”
“This is quite an about-face from your declarations last night,” the Ubran remarked.
“I was a little... heated then. I think I’ve just realized that I don’t want to keep going in this cycle anymore. It’s not fair to anybody for me to judge this world and its people by the standards of my world, and all it does it lead to anger and disappointment for everybody involved. You did your best as you saw it, and I don’t want to condemn you for trying, even if I wish Higo were still alive. I know you said you didn’t care for my forgiveness, but I just wanted to say it to you anyway and get it off my chest: I forgive you.”
Sofie froze as she felt something inside her shift, something far more noticeable than the fleeting blip she felt when creating a geas. For a moment, she felt fuller, more whole, as if something she didn’t know she had lost had returned to her.
“Your sentiments are noted,” Chitra replied, “but I do what I do for my own-”
“Did you feel that?!” Sofie butted in.
Chitra blinked. With both eyes.
“You blinked!” Sofie gasped.
She watched in delight as the Ubran took a trial sniff, which quickly turning into a full-blown inhale through her nostrils. Almost gingerly, the Batranala tilted her head down to look at her hands as she squeezed and released them several times. With a breath of satisfaction, she slowly moved them against the wall and began to pull herself up until, at last, she stood tall for the first time in two days.
“No way!” Sofie giggled in disbelief. “The geasa are gone! All of them!”
She had a way to make things right, and that way might remove even the geasa she couldn’t remember making in the first place! It felt like a dream come true. At least, the effect sure did. She wasn’t exactly sure what to think about the nature of the phrase involved, but she’d care about that later.
Sofie backed away and watched as the formerly lithe and graceful woman took an uneasy, halting step. Chitra swayed, and only the presence of the wall kept her from falling. Sofie almost went to help, but her past statement remained true: she still didn’t trust Chitra entirely not to do something now that she had her body back.
“I’ve been sitting motionless for so long, it’s like I’ve never moved my body before,” Chitra eventually said aloud. “Everything feels stiff.”
“Are you alright?” Sofie inquired, a little concerned for the other woman.
“I will be back to myself shortly,” came the confident reply.
“Good!” Sofie let out a breath of relief. She already felt bad over what she was about to do; she didn’t need extra guilt added on top. “Don’t move.”
“What are you-” the Ubran protested as she went stiff and toppled over once more.
“Who said we were finished? We have so much more to do,” Sofie reminded the still form lying in front of her. “I’m not stopping until I understand everything about how this works. Didn’t you say it yourself? Power is meant to be wielded?”
Chitra let out a burst of laughter, the first laughs from the Ubran that Sofie had ever heard which didn’t sound like mockery. “Well, well,” she chortled. “Perhaps there is hope for you after all.”
Comments
Chad B. Sonnen
Hmm, I wonder if Blake could'nt afford to wait for news of Sofie and went north to meet grandpa already. Them making a deal of him bringing sofie to him for his biomods. Blake being a paranoid shit probably just snatches the girl without talking it out and then Chitra saves the day. Blake is going latch a explosive collar on Sofie that blows if she as much utter the word "don't" in his presence as a compromise for sure Lol But I don't see her being welcomed in Blakes, Arettes, and Gabbys presence anymore when all is said and done. For sure Grandpa would demonize Sofie in front of Pari and Sofies inner guilt would be so much that she would never put up a good defence and just leave.
IrateRapScallion
just short of what?
Caanbo
Just short
