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As the entrance to Cobblestone came nearer, El began to pick up the pace. Erik barely had time to call out for him to wait up before the Luminary was dashing straight through a small pond, soaking his boots in his hurry. Erik chased after him, running through the pond too if only to reach out and grab ahold of the boy’s sleeve to slow him down, but he kept slipping away from him. He followed El underneath some crag that had been hollowed out, and from how his shadow moved through a dark tunnel with such ease, dodging the stalagmites and the broken pieces of the rocky floor that Erik kept stumbling on, Erik had no doubt that this must be a familiar path to him.
At first, Erik thought that maybe it was just the luck of the Luminary that kept the boy from getting hurt despite how reckless he was, but that thought was quickly slashed to pieces when the sound of tearing fabric reverberated through the stillness of the cave. El continued on, but Erik stopped and stared at the small scrap of a familiar purple fabric that was pierced upon the rocks, the loose threads of it waving in the wind that swept through the cave. Erik watched the ends of it curl and dance for a moment, the sound of El’s footsteps and hurried breath fading, until a drop of water fell from above onto the back of Erik’s neck, and he was reanimated again. Cursing to himself, he pocketed the scrap of fabric- there didn’t seem to be any traces of blood on it- and then ran off after El.
(Erik briefly wondered if they ever crossed paths with his place of origin, if his legs would carry him the same way El’s were now. He wondered if even if they didn’t, would it still be considered his home.) .
The rock cleared and the hill rose up to greet them as El only got faster and faster in his desperation to climb up, to break the horizon line and see his home, no matter the state. The light broke in and suddenly his shadow was colorful again, and Erik was fearfully chasing his back now, dread building as the hill rolled over and El slowed to a stop suddenly at the top. The skyline fell down into a line of trees and the rocky cliffs that surrounded the small village, and Erik almost fell backwards with how hard he stopped in his tracks.
Shit.
They had known it would be bad, but this-
The place had been torched, crumbled and pulled apart brick by brick. There was still fresh smoke, wafting off the buildings, the homes Erik reminded himself, and patches of grass that were once a part of the green rolling meadows that surrounded the rest of the town had been scorched and crunched down so that they bowed and blended in with the brown of the dirt path, trampled by Jasper and his men’s hooves.
The burning scent was mostly ashy though, which sent a wave of relief flooding through Erik. That had to mean that, at the very least, the Heliodor army wasn’t barbaric enough to burn the people, although Erik would be deluding himself if he thought for even a second that what they had done to these people’s homes wasn’t barbaric in the slightest. From their vantage point too, Erik didn’t see any real human victims amongst the wreckage, but there was still a lot buried behind the rest of the meadow that rolled up to the cliffs and down towards the water. As his shock slowly lifted, he looked towards El.
Any sort of reassuring words died on his tongue, for El suddenly stepped forward, one slow step suddenly becoming a march as he quickly moved down the hill. Erik reached out after him, but he slipped away again. Then, El suddenly stopped, staring down at some purple flowers that had been spared in the attack. Erik moved after him then, but just as he got close, he found himself freezing up again. The wind brushed El’s hair, swishing it back and then forward, the ends dancing just in front of his eyes, obscuring his face as he stared down at the flowers. It was like someone had torn a hole in space and there was an empty, black void where El’s eyes should be, and everything felt off and wrong because the rest of El’s expression didn’t match what emotion Erik knew his eyes should be.
El smiled down at the flowers. Erik felt a chill down his spine.
Just then, the boy whipped around and marched away again, moving on to another patch of flowers that had survived the attack. This time, Erik stood back and watched, observing as El’s hand made a slight gesture and his lips mouthed something towards the plant. It was like watching the stars blink out of the sky one by one. Something was wrong but it was so wrong and unsettling that Erik thought he was going crazy. Pieces of information were missing. The smoke of the leftover burns rose high in the sky as a backdrop to his new friend’s strange motions and ease, but before Erik could process it again, El was off again.
Erik struggled to find the resolve to follow after him, still trying to process everything, but he saw some figures down at the bottom of the hill, and El was heading straight for them, so Erik followed. El wasn’t even looking at the wreckage, he was just rushing past it all, ducking his head down to stare at something always just a ways off from the remains of a building. There were some priests and travelers milling around, but El didn’t ever stop and talk to them, even if they were standing nearby to one of the spots of flowers or plant life that seemed to be keeping El under this mysterious trance.
Eventually, when Erik saw one of the folks start to approach, he swooped in, stopping the man before he could tap El.
“Please, he’s from here. He’s just trying to process it all. Leave him be.”
The man gave Erik a stunned look before his expression wilted into pity, but he nodded and walked away, moving back towards what remained of the church. By the time Erik turned around again, El had already moved on. Erik quickly located him “listening” to another unharmed plant, and followed after.
He kept his distance and himself entertained, wringing his hands the longer El kept silent. The Luminary was never talkative, as Erik had learned, but what was bothering him was the way El seemed to react to these spots. He would move his lips almost in speaking, sometimes his hands too in a few signs that Erik had been taught to recognize. It was as if he was trying to argue with something. His smile was gone now, and his hands were panicked and sweat dripped down his face as his mouth moved silently and slightly but desperately. Erik saw him gesture for “here”, “home”, and “please believe me.” Each time it was nothing more than a patch of flowers, but Erik started to wonder if maybe it was less of something but more of someone there.
He still didn’t smell anything that was like burning meat, but he didn’t put it past the Luminary to see spirits. Perhaps all of the burned wildlife was just overpowering his senses, but then again, Erik really didn’t have any experience with what burned humans might smell like.
Eventually, El did make his way up to a pile of rubble, going inside without tripping over the bricks, even though he barely picked his feet up to avoid them. It was like he was phasing through them, walking into what remained of what was likely an archway or a doorway into a home. While it was peculiar that this was the house that El had decided to scramble towards and not any of the others, it quickly dawned on Erik that it must mean this was his home.
No wonder it was torched more than the others.
Might as well give him some privacy, Erik reasoned.
El came stumbling back out of it all too quickly, and Erik immediately jumped up from where he had sat down against one of the rocks. El continued to not stop though, and leapt down from the ledge the house was built on and went on running towards a large tree before stopping again to “talk”. Erik stood back and observed as El climbed into the branches before coming back down, handing something invisible to the wind as it ruffled the grass and his hair once more. Erik squinted from where he was on the ledge by the burned down homes, and knew that El’s movements were too fluid and purposeful for him to be simplifying miming or pretending.
For a moment, as El held out his hands to the wind, Erik thought he saw that smear again, tearing across space like a thick shadow, right across his vision where El’s hands should be. The edges of the tear pulsated, and Erik was too far away again, but it reminded him of the purple fabric upon the rock in the cave.
But he blinked, and suddenly El’s hands were empty again. The tear was gone.
There must be something there that I just can’t see.
El ran off again suddenly, and a traveler charged after shouting at him in alarm. Erik waved from atop the ledge, smiling as he tried to reassure the priest.
“Please, don’t worry! We’re not here to pilfer anything. My friend used to live here, ‘is all.”
The man nodded, and Erik noticed the holy book in his hands. The man waved back up and called out something like, “Give him time. Give him peace.”
“Thank you. I will.”
El had run between the cliffs and was following the waterways towards the back outskirts of the town, but Erik could still see him from where he was. Sighing to himself, he resigned himself to the knowledge that there wasn’t anything he could do until El came out of his stupor, or stopped being entranced by whatever he was seeing, and so, he sat cross-legged on the ground. Erik tried to ignore the unease prickling at him from the broken bricks laying in heaps behind him and the smoke from the skyline, and instead pulled out his coin purse, and began to count. He wasn’t sure where they were going next, but they were going to have to go somewhere, far, far away from here. Staying near the wreckage of this place wouldn’t be good for El, especially if he stayed in this daze for much longer.
Erik went through his belongings and eventually started to clean his sword as the craggy grass poked through the fabric of his pants, scratching his legs, and tried to ignore the billowing smoke that turned the skyline to a musty orange. If he had only looked up, he might have seen more black smears across the sky, more breaks in time and space, and might have even noticed the strange root wrapped around the tree in the center of the town glowing, just a bit.