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The world, Omen learns, is full of the dead and dying. For every flash of a rabbit darting into the undergrowth or the budding of leaves from a tree split in half, there are bodies corroded by the elements, left to rot. Bones dragged away and left unburied or gnawed upon. The rusting frames of bodies so much like xyr own, whatever force that had powered them long since snuffed out.
Often Omen must add to this count, and sometimes xe is killed in turn, only rescued by Boon plucking xem back from a final death.
“You could only bring me back,” Omen says after one such revival. “No one else. Because you were meant to.”
“That’s how it feels. I was needed, and so were you, and together we fit into something greater. Something important.”
This is not the first time Boon has said so, and Omen feels it must be the truth of it – otherwise why this power? This grace, to rise again? But something troubles xem still. To be chosen, to be needed, means that somehow the countless other dead are not. “So this Light between us is only ours. It will never go to another.”
Boon’s eye flickers, and they drop a little lower in the air. “It won’t. But another one of my kind might find some of them, as I found you.”
And xe has seen other little drones swooping low to the ground, searching amongst corpses, scattering if xe comes close. But never many. As Boon had said – might, some. If this Light is meant to be granted, it will never be to all.
It is an unfairness neither of them had any choice in, but it lodges in Omen’s thoughts for long years all the same.
Long before it comes into view, Omen can feel it – something like stepping into sunlight or closer to a distant but expected fire. A tension eases, but not Omen’s own. The power xe has been granted, that xe draws upon so thoughtlessly and sparks xem again to life at Boon’s call, unfurls in recognition of home.
This is important, Boon has said often. You are important. That I found you and we’re together is important. But these had always been feelings and conjecture, a gravity they sensed but could not understand.
The Traveler is not quite an egg and not quite a moon. It lodges in the air with firm finality. Around and below it billow and swarm clouds of drones, almost birdlike in their flocking together. Further below them bustle people in an encampment, growing and churning.
It’s seeing all of this together which brings Omen a step closer to understanding.
That same gravity, stronger now, pulls xem onward and inward. To the people and the Lightbearers and their partnered drones – here Omen first hears Boon called a Light, and a Soul, and a Ghost –, to the clusters of animals penned up or being herded back from further fields, and eventually, inevitably, to the dead.
The people have made piles for them, bones in one, Exos in another, and many others for corpses, divided further for reasons xe cannot guess. Back and forth among them all flit yet more drones – Lights? Do they all agree on a name? – who study each and every one in turn. Omen is not the only one to stop and watch them do this. A small group lingers nearby, some armed, some following each cluster of drones with strange, painful expressions.
Watching and waiting is something xe has always been good at. Omen waits now, until this last group of drones finishes poring over the bodies and begins to disperse. One notices xem and Boon and drifts closer, though well out of arm’s reach. She too must have learned how easy it is to scoop such a small entity from the air.
“I haven’t seen you before,” she says, voice louder than Boon’s, the mechanical trill to it a bit different. One delicate fin-tip is crumpled, a scar of some past encounter. “Are you here for someone?”
It takes xem a moment to understand. Here for someone dead, who xe might miss and grieve.
“No. But you are.”
She laughs and dips down a little closer. “I am. They’re not here yet. Maybe they won’t ever be, but this is the best place to start looking. A peaceful place, in the Light.” She rotates to glance upward, and Omen cannot help but follow her gaze to the Traveler. It is still, yet now that Omen is closer xe can pick out faint ripples and traces, a subtle shift in the candleflicker radiance of its power. It is dormant, maybe, or dreaming.
Even slumbering, the Light sinks into xem, warming, anchoring. Boon tilts back, basking in it.
A peaceful place. It would be so easy to stay here, and ensure it remains peaceful.
But it is nothing like the valley Omen knows so well, with its loose settlement that flows and ebbs between seasons and years. Already there are more people gathered together than xe had seen in all that time – and far more Risen as well. The other Lightbearers and these Iron Lords hav been persistent in safeguarding the path, shepherding people along or collecting more on the way. Commendable, tireless work... but Omen suspects it would not be long before xe is expected to match them, to travel and fight and live as they did.
The Traveler had somehow brought about Boon, and led Boon to find and bring xem back. Now here it rests, wounded and vulnerable. Is it not right for Omen to protect it, and those that shelter in its shadow? Is this not the purpose xe was granted the Light for?
To take root here, to slowly be enfolded by the affairs and lives and wishes of so many people... perhaps it would not be so difficult, not with the Light above and within xem, and with Boon, who so yearns to stay.
And yet it would also not be easy.
Omen drags xyr attention outward, to the drone still waiting there. “How long will you look?”
She bobs in the air, unbothered and undeterred by the question. “As long as it takes. And I’ll always be able to come back here, to begin again.”
Xe has a thought, still unformed. An answer, maybe, to the Traveler’s silent plea, and the duty that should lie ahead of xem.
“What would help the search?”
“If it was safer to travel,” she says immediately. “You probably know too – being small and quick isn’t enough.” Boon bobs in agreement, glancing at her damaged fin. “And searching every body means staying still, out in the open. But... it’ll always be dangerous.”
“Maybe if even some of the dead were closer,” Boon adds, curiosity drawing them from their contemplation. “Less ground to cover means less risk. A better chance of finding who we’re looking for.”
Omen thinks of all the dead xe has seen – the deaths xe has caused by xyr own hands – and those alone would become a pile that could almost reach the Traveler. And they are just a fraction of all the dead in all the world, and more dying in every moment. The scope of the search stuns xem, thrumming harsh and tight in xyr chest.
“There is not much chance at all,” xe says, holding up a hand so Boon can rest against xyr open palm. “And yet.”
“And yet,” they agree. It is the only proof and comfort they both can offer.
“Are you sure?” Boon asks, hovering close. Omen is busy digging out the jagged remnants of an electrified blade from where they had broken off in xyr side. It’s a good excuse to put off an answer, but one rapidly approaching its end. Xe gets a grip on the last piece and sighs, drawing it out enough for Boon to deconstruct. Xyr fingers tingle as Boon catches it and the metal unspools into unreachable space.
“I am,” xe says, though of course xe isn’t. This is not the first time Boon has asked the question, nor the first time Omen found answering it difficult. “All of the bodies, even theirs.”
Boon’s eye narrows, but they say nothing more, swooping down and scanning the first of the dead in preparation for moving them.
Every casual cruelty, every bandit attack or theft in the night, every opponent that falls before xem (as this group has fallen) brings forth another question, and another hesitation. What right do enemies have to the Traveler and its uncertain gift? Maybe none at all. Omen has met too many warlords and borne witness to the scars left in their wake. Xe cannot say there should ever be more.
But it feels wrong and just as cruel to choose for them, to leave some bodies in the dirt and to take some to the burgeoning City. Xe cannot lay any claim on the fragile peace beneath the Traveler, not when xe will not pledge fully to it. All xe can manage is this quiet vow; to make the search easier, and only that. The thinnest of strands held up to the vast gulf between the dead and the risen.
Boon finishes gathering up the corpses, their fins ruffling and rotating pensively.
“You could say no,” Omen says. It is also not the first time xe has said so. “I would understand if you disagreed.”
“I don’t disagree,” they say. “It is important, and someone should do it. I’m... glad it’s us. But it’s hard to imagine what could come of it when they’ve just stabbed you.”
Omen looks at the ground, blackened and gouged away in great swathes from xyr power. “I have done worse,” xe points out.
“Because you had to. Necessity is different.”
“Violence comes easily to me all the same. The one who lived and died before you found me might have granted me that ease.”
Boon’s eye flickers. Their shell draws in tight for a moment, then loosens. “Maybe. But not knowing who you were is easier than not knowing what an enemy might become.”
“If an enemy again, then it’s simple,” Omen says. “Even warlords can be killed.”
They ruffle their fins again, this time in gentle exasperation, and drift closer to bump against Omen’s hand. “Simple, but hardly easy.” That seems to steady them though, and once more they rotate in the air with a soft whirring sound, searching for the words. “It is the right thing to do,” Boon says, more firmly. “But I can’t... just trust in it. Not like when I found you, because a part of me knew you, even long before we’d met.
“I wish I could. It should be so simple.”
“That’s why you ask,” Omen says, hearing each question anew. Not to doubt xyr decisions, but seeking a certainty they lacked.
“If you were sure, I could just believe in that. It would be easier.”
Omen reaches out, palms upturned, and Boon nestles there, the weight and shape of them more familiar than xyr own name. This close, the spark of Light within them is warm and unfaltering and alive. “I do not know how long I will do this. Maybe I will be killed,” xe says, and feels Boon’s shell twitch in silent protest. “Maybe the Traveler will wake and make this pointless, or I will become tired. But I do not think I would ever know it is right.”
“But you’ll still do it,” Boon murmurs, blinking up at xem.
“I do it because I cannot be sure.” How to explain it? To be able to decide so freely is its own kind of power, and one Omen does not wish to wield. “I cannot offer the dead the Light, but I will not choose to deny it to them. These possible lives and this power belong to the Traveler, so the decision should be its alone.”
Omen curls xyr hands gently, holding Boon a little closer. “It is a small thing, but if I am going to gather any of the dead, then it must be all of them. It is... all that I can do.”
Had the Traveler been any more certain when it cast so many beacons into the dark? Perhaps that too had been what little it could do.
“Not a small thing at all,” Boon says softly. “I think it’s enough.”