Chapter Text
████ wakes up, again.
It's not sleeping, neither is it dreaming.
You've lost count of the days, drenched in dry blood, sweat, yours and her tears.
The corpse of your cousin keeps shielding you, her flesh has yet to stink but she is so, so cold, her face a perpetual serenity. She's embracing you, her arms rigid. She took the blow meant to kill both, you don't know that two perished.
You can't think much, neither can you move. The darkness her body provides blinds you.
But you can hear footsteps. That only means one: those ████ are near.
You cannot run, you cannot breathe, it's suffocating. Their strange voices awoke a strange, deep-seated fear in the pit of your stomach: you don't know why. It has brewed with you here, sheltered by the only familiar whose fate you know.
You're the youngest of your family, your body is small enough to not be seen. You haven't heard a familiar voice in so long, don't know when she stopped reassuring you, when her blood on your head dried and caked it.
The footsteps grow near, you brace yourself for the moment.
You've been preparing for your fate; where they find out you are alive. You know what they do, you saw as they dragged your neighbor —old man, nice man, a little lazy but eager to teach— thrashing body to a █████. You don't know what it was, but the noises it makes, the snap and chew it does when it swallows, the terrifying drag of bones and flesh that shared your genus won't leave your head.
███ hears them, close, closer, the closest they've ever been. The only option he has left is pray. To whatever deity has abandoned him, his family, his people.
He puts his arms close to his chest, huddles near █████'s body, hides his head against his hands. In all ways possible, he cowers on himself. He is no strong person, his left leg is twisted at an unnatural angle, he is bruised and has not eaten in days but he has survived what can be said the worst by now, hasn't he? What else has ██ for him? what else can he withstand?
Has The █████ left him? Is he nothing but a pebble in this vast space, surrounded by blood and decay?
With a shuddering sob, █████ closes his eyes and accepts his end.
Huaiyan looks down at the dried soil when they disembark. The borisin fleets on the orbit spoke a terrible omen, the visage that greeted the general did not diverge from it.
This calamity: is just to fuel their grotesque creations, all but meat to their plates.
And for not the first time, they're late.
Dried blood, burnt vegetation, remains of rotten organisms he doesn't recognize. Demolished houses, burnt edifices and follies. Temples and hospitals, schools and gardens; all those places the citizens of this wrecked terrain once preserved.
They're seeing the end of a world.
The scent of slaughter would make lesser soldiers dizzy. The most human part of him prays: may their deaths been quick. He knows THEIR beliefs forsake any senseless, unmerciful suffering, that THEY weep whenever blood is spilled for the sake of it. Foolishly, he hopes some law in exchange of THEIR blessing forbids this rash, restless masacre.
A foolish thought in what's the finality of this world.
The path is cleared swiftly, his fleet advances with the exactness of THEIR arrow. Undying bodies and restless creatures fall, blood seeps under the eroded, dry soil. This, of course, in the pursuit of their hunt -and in the belief of something they dare not name-. His hammer plunges into one, and another. The general doesn't register much how many he has taken, how many bones he hears cracking under the weight of his mace, under the screams and orders of violence and, maybe for the past denizens of this dying world: of retribution.
His mind is focused on a lot and at so little in synchrony, an enormous objective of multiple ramifications. Various strides forwards those creatures of disgusting, organic characteristics. It does not take long for its death. Under his men, it roars; bleeding and thrashing.
Eyes focused forward, behind and beside; he keeps the rail of their path with the firmness that bestowed him his title, unyielding, unwavering.
When they've cleared enough, the true search begins. This, truthfully, was the hard part. Searching for survivors, searching for corpses, guided by the smell and the rumble, by the places where the least of those treacherous abominations linger.
At least forty-seven system hours, thirty minutes and eighteen seconds passed on. Nothing found, nothing but rumble, bodies half-decayed, pieces of people they could not recognize age, gender nor species. Almost every corpse has what remains of a golden, molten piece of jewelry with them. Huaiyan knows this planet -having visited it before- was deeply rich in mineral exportation, gold, and larimar being the two main exports. Their gold was one of a kind, the coloration and composition yet to be found in other planets.
But it was all gone now, most likely dug to extinction by the whole invasion.
A heavy sigh leaves his mouth, this is but an island on this bast planet, one they could not save.
As he gets up, his shoes caked in blood and his hands sharing the same amount, he can feel the exhaustion in the air, how this condemned land's moons have shifted on the sky, now painting a dark, verdigris sky, gently mantled by a soft blue; people of a far-way star system may call this phenomena an Aurora.
And the sky bewitched him for one little, minuscule second.
The miserable second is enough that when one of his men, exhausted and panting, screams: the general has no other choice than to twist his neck, to pull his gaze away. His legs move faster than he can tell, the noise of a voice he does not recognize alerts him.
They've found someone.
Which is two things: a miracle, and an unmatched tragedy.
The child is covered in blood, scraps, welts, bruises that have not healed, disheveled and drowsy.
He's barely conscious, the soldier -Xiēzi, he recognizes- has pried him out of rumbles and a corpse. The corpse showed telltale signs of decomposition, yet it has not reached the point of nonrecognition. A woman, probably in her early adulthood. Her attire is torn, dirty and blackening where a large, rotting gangrena brews on her stomach, crawling to her kidney. It stinks terribly, but he cannot show it.
Huaiyan does not think of who this is for the child. That sight should have stirred enough to lose ten months of sleep, but that's a vulnerability he cannot afford.
The child looks at them, periwinkle eyes puffy and dirty cheeks, tear tracks almost engraved on them. His hair is caked in what seems to be blood, his hands cling to the soldier's arm, boneless. Those eyes held both fright and hope, he cannot be older than eight, or maybe ten for a short-lived. His face keeps the roundness of youth, his height doesn't reach the Xianzhou native's standard height for 100-200 years old.
The general kneels down, his voice doesn't boom, in fact it's the gentlest tone he can muster. His hands rest on his knees, the hammer rests far from reach. He allows the child to hide behind Xiēzi, keeping his stance to look as nonthreatening as possible.
The child doesn't look at him, and speaks a language he can't comprehend well. The dialect is different to the one he heard. Yet, the message delivers.
A thing about languages: most of them have similar ways to refer to one's family.
So, as the child asks again, voice dry and trembling, Huaiyan has to take a second to find it within himself to respond.
Looking at the child's eyes, heavy with exhaustion and painted in anguish, the general shakes his head. There's no corpse to bury, no remains to show respect to. Everything has been swallowed, everything has been consumed and turned into ground fuel.
The child froze, his little hands lingered on Xiēzi's arm. Soon, grief took the shape of tears.
Truly, no sane person can leave behind a child weeping for his own blood.
With danger's still close, the child ends up with them.
The child's legs gave out as soon as he took the first step, Xiēzi's arms are steady, one supporting his wounded legs and the other holding the back of his head. Huaiyan walks beside him, guiding the path back into their ship. His small, trembling frame is huddled on Xiēzi's arms, wetting his neck with tears, his hair itching on his chin.
The general gives Xiēzi a glance, and then looks at the child. Worry is etched on his eyes, specially towards that sprained leg, the ankle twisted. His left arm is also broken, the pain must've become numb by now, for how well the kid had managed until posed with the idea of walking. Xiēzi looks at the kid, running fingertips across his scalp, trying to remove as gently as he could the dried blood. Huaiyan winces, obviously, under the noise, crunchy and dry.
The boy flinches, his scalp probably hurts terribly.
But what can he say to the child? It's a miracle he hasn't suffered a shock right there, that his wounds aren't severely infected or mortal, that he is alive.
Huaiyan does not know which is worse, but at least Xiēzi seems to think the same: this boy had to be loved deeply, or truly damned.