Ellis was woken by the sound of something shrieking up above him, causing him to jolt upright and nearly lose his purchase on the branch. He found himself leaning over the edge, staring down to the forest floor at least twenty feet beneath him and suddenly feeling very dizzy. Memories of the night before began to filter through and dizziness turned to an overwhelming urge to throw up. He sat up straight, swallowed hard and tried taking deep breaths.
Once he had regained some sense of well-being he made his way down through the branches and back onto the ruined walls, where he sat for a while staring at the strange vista of green plants and black stone walls which seemed to stretch on indefinitely. It was hard to imagine that this was an abandoned district in a world-spanning city and that, in theory, that city continued in every direction he looked. He only wished he knew how far away. Populated streets were bound to be safer than jungle ruins.
After a while he hopped down off the wall and began to wander around on the forest floor, walking between the empty husks of ancient buildings and traversing alleyways which once might have been dark and mysterious, but which were now lit by the dappled light of midday, as filtered through a canopy of fresh, blue-green leaves.
Lizard-like footprints were pressed into the mud and arrow shafts could be found sticking out of tree trunks and peppering the ground, each a reminder of the previous night’s events. The sounds of the forest: wind in the canopy, crumbling stone and wild animals making themselves known, echoed all round, forcing Ellis to make quick glances over his shoulder. His nerves were on edge, he was starving and his sleep in the tree had left him covered in aches and bruises, which only seemed to express themselves more as he trudged deeper and deeper into Blackfeather.
Eventually he found something akin to a fruit hanging from one of the lower branches of a tree, leaning over a corner wall, and, in his hunger, reached out to pluck it. It was slightly slippery, but, with a bit of pressure and a sharp tug, he was able to detach it from the branch and bring it down to examine it. It smelled bitter and its skin was a bright, dangerous-looking red, but it seemed healthy enough. He raised it to his mouth, opened up, ready to take a tentative bite, then felt a stinging sensation in his fingers, getting stronger until it felt almost like his hand was burning. Instinctively he dropped the fruit and saw his fingers turning red where the juices had been oozing onto his skin. A noxious vapour was streaming away into the air.
He wiped his hands on his trousers, then wrapped some cool leaves around his fingers in an attempt to sooth the burn, vowing not to touch anything else in the forest, even if that meant starving to death.
He got a helping hand towards that lofty goal about half and hour later when he caught something that finally made him lose control over his stomach and had him vomiting, on his knees, into the muddy hollow at the base of a tree. Max’s body lay in a clearing a few feet away, his clothes stripped and his skin carved with a rich text of arcane symbols. Even as Ellis sat, panting, his eyes closed, he could still see it all in vivid detail, remembering all the places where appendages had been removed, perhaps as trophies. His whole life was turning into one big nightmare.
He staggered away from the grisly scene in something of a daze, half-expecting some Stoneskins to jump out at him at any moment, brandishing bloody knives, their flaming eyes desperate to see flesh torn open.
He had to stop several times to vomit again, although by now he was merely choking up air. He felt stretched thin. His energy levels were almost at zero.
The sun was hard to see through the thicker parts of the canopy, but every time there was a patch of clear sky visible he tracked its course across the sky and saw the day slowly slipping away into the amber-green of evening. he watched shadows build up around the bases of trees and whole corridors of crumbling masonry fell into darkness. The sun was behind him then and only gloom lay ahead. He dreaded that orb’s last rays, for it seem that they would signal the return of the Stoneskins and the coarse butchery that would be his own demise.
Fear turned into depression and, with barely any energy left, that became a deep, gloomy lethargy. His feet seemed to be slowing down. His eyelids were drooping. Eventually he stumbled up against the trunk of a tree, leaned back against it and slid down into the muddy ground.
His eyes were closed and his own breathing seemed to be the loudest sound in the world.
Some kind of bird called out over the forest with a loud shriek and Ellis’ eyes flicked open mechanically, his back rising from the bark, and he found himself reaching to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun. It had sunk very low on the horizon now and the piercing rays, as Ellis saw them through squinting eyes, were almost like spears pointed at his head. He closed his eyes again, ready to welcome them.
Then his mind whirred into action. He was not facing west. He had had the sun behind him for the majority of his walk and he had not turned around to rest against the tree, so the light which he saw, so like the sun in many ways, could not be from that star. He opened his eyes again and squinted once more at the source of the light. It looked like the sunset, but, now that he examined it more carefully, there was something slightly more silvery about it than the real one, which he could just see through the canopy if he peered around the tree behind him. There was only one suggestion floating into his mind as to what it could be and it was intriguing enough to give him a bit of an energy boost.
He hoisted himself back up to his feet and began to stagger onwards through the forest towards the light. He had to shade his eyes to see clearly and, as he weaved in and out of the shelter of trees and ruins, the light seemed to be flickering on and off, just for him, until he burst out into a clearing and saw the source of it in all its beauty and glory.
Rising up out of the maze of ruined buildings and patches of forest was a massive and surprisingly intact building, which seemed to have once been covered entirely in silver plating. Now that silver was restricted to the truncated pyramid which served as the focal point of the architecture, standing at least another thirty feet above the top of the forest canopy. The rest of the building was covered in the same charred black stone as all the other ruins of Blackfeather. A stark, square cut entrance, shaded in vines, lay beneath the tower, looking both tantalisingly secure and dangerously dark.
He glanced back at the growing shadows of the forest and sighed, figuring that the ruin, imposing though it was, would be easier to hide in. He didn’t fancy his chances spending the night in another tree.
He staggered across the remains of the building’s still-cobbled yard as quickly as he could, all but feeling the light fleeing behind him, then, suddenly, he was before the dark mouth of the ruin, caught in the currents of air succumbing to the chill from within. It was starting to look much less safe than it had from the other side of the yard and, even if Ellis hadn’t been developing doubts, he realised there was no way he could see anything inside its walls.
“What a waste,” he said, slumping to the ground against the wall leading off into the darkness. His voice, hoarse and weak through it was, echoed along that tunnel, exploring all the secret places within, and whispered back its report in his own words.
The sun was sinking low, behind the forest canopy and the ruin seemed to breathe, slowly, patiently, as it waited for night to fall. Ellis let his forehead hit his knees and closed his eyes. He was giving up. He was out of ideas, out of options and he was pretty certain that he was almost out of time. There was no point in fighting it anymore, even if he’d had the energy to do so. He let his breathing slow to that of the ruin, becoming one with the cycle of icy air from inside and the warmer, moist air of the forest. It was almost soothing. He thought that, if he could just fade out like this, slowly and calmly, it might not be so bad to die. What did he have to live for anyway? Failed relationships, a half-abandoned education and the life of a ‘soulless doll’, as Sarah had described him, didn’t seem all that much to cling to. In the larger scheme of the universe such a conceit seemed almost embarrassing.
Why should he fight to live? It wouldn’t make a difference to anyone else anyway. Of course, there would be some sadness and some grief and, for his family at least, the painful memories wouldn’t just fade away, but they’d still get by, they would live on and the universe would not be affected at all, not by his brother’s pauses at the door to his old room with an instant of sharp, bitter memory, or his mother’s sad face when a certain song plays on the radio, nor even by Ellis himself, pondering the meaning of his own existence in the middle of a jungle of ruins in another world entirely. Even that kind of metaphysical thought, and that kind of distance, was as nothing to the extent and age of the universe.
Give up, the whispering breath of the ruin seemed to say, not unkindly, it’s only honest.
Ellis could only agree.
You still have the knife, you could save yourself a little time.
That’s true, Ellis thought.
Save yourself a little pain as well…
Pain, Ellis thought, there was no point in suffering pain at the end of things. The cleaner and quicker the better.
All you’ll need is one cut, just down the vein. Two would be quicker, but one would be enough.
Ellis reached down for Galen’s knife, which he had slipped behind his belt, and slowly drew it up into the failing evening light. It was surprisingly beautiful, the serrated edge bending the light in strange new ways, no pattern ever repeated.
Just one cut. It’s only honest. It’s only fair. It’s only right.
Ellis nodded and lined up the blade.
AUTHOR COMMENT: Oh dear, it seems all is not well for Ellis. Next week we switch back to Siren for 'Reflections'
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