Everwinter: The Forerunner Archives (30 page)

Seems kinda dangerous to me.

"They
were
," a completely new voice sounds from the direction of the cabin, "until you scared all of the fish away."

We squint, all looking through the blowing snow to see a slight figure, bundled head to toe in animal skins, rounding the cabin toward us. The voice is feminine, but all we can see is her eyes.

"I wondered when I'd see you again, Altair," the woman says, greeting him warmly. Her eyes seem to be smiling.

"Hello, Navani," Altair replies, embracing the woman wholly.

Navani pulls away from him and eyes the rest of us. "What band of ragtag trollops have you fallen in with now?" she asks, pulling her face covering down. She has a harsh rash across her face and a few boils, but I can see that she had at one time been beautiful.

"I'll explain inside, if you'll have us," Altair says, gesturing to the cabin then looking at me. I'm shaking uncontrollably from the cold.

Navani laughs. "Come on in," she says.

44.

Cozying
up by the fire, my leg still feels like its burning, but I can handle it.

I'm more worried about Traylor.

He's in the other room–the
only
other room–sick in Navani's bed. I can hear him coughing again. Ursa is beside me, sitting on a deer skin rug before the hearth. The main room contains just the hearth, a table, a couple chairs, an old couch, and a bookshelf. There's a curtained partition in one corner, where I learn there's another hole in the ice.

A peehole, as Navani cheekily refers to it.

Altair, Glamis, and Navani are conversing at the entrance to the bedroom, talking about Traylor.

"Glamis and I are going to head into Endura," I hear Altair say. Endura must be the Fringe town he was referring to earlier. "I assume the hospice is still up and running?"

Navani nods, but reluctantly. "It is, but I hope you don't expect the doctors to simply
hand you
some antivirals," she says. "Times are tougher than ever, as you know." She runs a callused hand over her rash-stricken face.

"I won't be asking," Altair smirks, his intentions clear from the expression. Navani looks unimpressed. "I wouldn't do this if there were any other choice, Navani," he soothes.

"I know,” the woman nods. “Just don't hurt anyone. You'll be hearing from me if you do."

Altair embraces his friend again. "Thank you," he
says. "We'll be back in a day. Count on it."

They pull apart an
d Altair comes toward Ursa and me.

"We'll be back as soon as we can," he says. He looks at Ursa. "Keep Traylor as comfortable as you can in the meantime."

"Of course," Ursa smiles. "In fact, I'll go check on him now." She gets up, heading for the bedroom.

"I have a fish stew brewing," Navani says as Ursa passes. "It will help bring his fever down."

"Thanks," Ursa says, disappearing into the bedroom.

I get up and embrace Altair,
then Glamis. "Be careful you two," I say, giving them both a quick peck on the cheeks. Glamis blushes but Altair is characteristically stony. He brushes a warm hand across my cheek and then he's gone, out the door with Glamis.

It's just me and Navani in the room now.

We stand by the fire together.

"He cares about you," the woman tells me, coming closer. The proximity makes me uncomfortable.

"Oh, um, I dunno," I say, shifting where I stand. "We have been through a lot together." Navani stares at me, but I have trouble meeting her gaze. "Um," I say, "you and Altair aren't a...
thing
, are you?" I realize then for the first time that I have no knowledge of Altair's romantic entanglements whatsoever.

He could be married, for all I know.

Navani laughs, uncontrollably almost. "Me? And Altair? Gods no!" She hesitates, considering something. "How can I put this? We were raised together. We're not siblings, but we're the closest thing to it, I suppose."

"He told me you’
re an Assassin too. Or
were
."

"That's right," Navani confirms. "We trained together, but I left that life behind a few years ago."

"Why?" I ask, genuinely interested now. I'm
finally
getting some dirt on Altair.

Navani shrugs. "It wasn't necessary anymore. Every assassin has a purpose
–a lifearc, we call it. I completed my lifearc, and am now working on a new one outside the Assassin’s Guild."

"There's a Guild?" I ask, incredulous. "Where?"

Navani breaks her gaze from me and her focus seems to drift skyward. "Far, far from here," she says. An awkward silence descends for a moment. "There are so few of us left..."

Harsh coughing from the next room breaks the tension. We hear Ursa fussing over Traylor. She sounds
motherly; an uncharacteristic trait for her, in my opinion.

"Is it dangerous where Altair is going?" I ask, changing the topic. I'm kinda weirded out by Navani's suddenly spacey demeanor. "What's it called? Endure?"

"Endura," Navani corrects, then shakes her head. "No, it's not dangerous. Well, no more so than anywhere else in the Fringes. Altair can handle himself." She smiles. "I think the sight of his companion will ensure nobody messes with them anyway."

I return the smile. "Yeah, Glamis is definitely someone you wan
t on your good side. I feel bad we took him from his home. I think he really loved it in Takay, despite how dumpy the place is."

"I know what you mean," Navani agrees. "Takay is pretty...
rustic
. Endura is much the same. There's an old Forerunner building there that's pretty much intact though. The town is built around it." My eyes go wide and Navani takes note. "Do you have Forerunner constructions where you come from?"

I shake my head. "Not exactly. We've got buildings
made
from Forerunner buildings, if you get what I mean." Navani nods. "I've seen my share of Forerunner stuff though." I laugh to myself. "Actually, that's a bit of an understatement." Navani stares at me expectantly. "I'm kind of
obsessed
with them. In my old life I was anyway, before the Final Judgment."

Navani puts a quizzical look on her face, touching her cheek where the rash is most prominent. "Is that what they're calling it in Eversummer?" she asks. "The Final Judgment?"

"Yeah," I confirm. "It's a religious term." I hesitate. "It's funny. I've always been told that the ways of the Forerunners are the ways of death." I shake my head. "Our society really hasn't done much better since they fell."

Navani tilts her head as she looks at me. "You're really interested in the Forerunners, aren't you?"

"Oh yeah," I say. "There's this beach in Krakelyn, where I grew up, where old Forerunner artifacts used to wash up all the time. It was a forbidden place, but my Father was a powerful man and he used to send me there to collect them. Then he’d make me watch him destroy them." I shake my head. "I guess he thought if I saw all that stuff turned to dust I'd just accept it as the way things had to be." I smirk. "But I never did."

Navani moves suddenly, her joints popping as she crosses the room from the hearth to the book shelf on the other side. I'd only glanced at it cursorily since arriving here, but now I notice that the shelf is
literally
stacked
with books, ranging in all shapes and sizes. I had plenty of books back in Krakelyn, but most of the stuff I'd read was fiction written by locals.

And, of course, the True Body
Plan.

I'd only read that once though, despite my
Father's insistence.

Navani comes back with a
fairly thin volume with a plain leather cover. Stamped into the leather in black lettering are three words:
The Forerunner Archives

My eyes pop and my heart feels like it's gonna leap from my chest.

Navani hands it to me. "I think you might find this interesting," she says with a knowing smirk. "It's a firsthand account written by the people who lived during the time of the Forerunners." My jaw is nearly on the floor. "It's fragmented, but the truth about our world is written in those pages, Juno." Navani heads to the door, grabbing her animal skin coat from a peg next to it. "I have to go check on my fishing lines," she says. "Stay here and relax. Read. I'll be back soon." Then she's gone.

Still stunned, I look down at the book resting in my lap, running my fingers over the soft cover.
I look toward the bedroom but it sounds like Traylor's fallen asleep.

Taking a deep breath, folding myself on the rug in front of the hearth, I open The Forerunner Archives.

45.

June 2nd, 2075

Why is this happening?

Our best and brightest still don't know.

It's been a gradual thing
, to be sure, but things are starting to escalate. At first it was no big deal. The length of the days changed by only minutes. But those minutes soon turned into hours, hours into...

Well, you can probably guess.
 

Why has the world stopped spinning?

July 12th, 2075

The havoc this has wreaked on our biological clocks has been stagg
ering! I can't get enough sleep! No one can. Not with that blasted sun stuck in the sky for months on end! And then it's night for months!

I feel like a zombie.

There were people who used to chase the sunrise, constantly moving around the world to stay with the light. Now that's become all but impossible.

The face of the world has changed.

August 5th, 2080

They jus
t broadcast the first images of the Earth from space in over five years.

The people on the space station must be losing their minds with grief!

Needless to say, we're all a little overwhelmed.

The oceans have flowed toward the poles. They say the inertia of the planet's spin is what kept the water and air centered at the equator. Without it, it's all gone toward the poles. Cities at higher elevations, like Denver, have been abandoned, the air too thin to breathe.
There are only certain places in the world with enough air to breathe now. And with those oceans flowing north and south, the lands above and below the Tropics are all but flooded. 

Gone. Billions dead.
 

New York, gone. Boston, gone. London. Paris. Tokyo.

I don't know if I want to live in this world anymore.

November 23rd, 2081

The earthquakes have been devastating.

Apparently, with the erratic shift in the planet's spin, the Earth's layers are constantly rubbing up against one another, creating terrible friction. Earthquakes and lava flows.

The Earth is literally ripping itself apart.

During the light half of the year, the sun scorches us. During the dark half, the night freezes us. Our society is becoming more and more fractured. There's rumors of cities that still have power, food and water.

I'm finding that harder and harder to believe.

Things are getting desperate.

If we didn't have the few firearms that we do, we'd have been murdered long ago.

We're all just trying to survive.
 

There are also rumors
of a new colony forming out on what used to be the ocean floor. 

I might try my luck there soon.

There's nothing left for me here.

February 8th, 2083

I made it.

It only took me a year and a bit.

And the rumors were true, for once!

A group of oceanographers and other like-minded sea folk have acquire some ships and started an
ocean bound colony on the old sea floor. They catch lots of fish, but fresh water is a problem. It only rains a few times a year–so they tell me–but when it does, it rains for weeks. After that, they're stuck with the rations they can collect.

Winter is going to be a lot tougher.

The Earth's spin is still erratic.

Sometimes the light half of the year is lo
nger, sometimes the dark half. Some of our scientists think the planet might be speeding up again. With so little communication with the space station, it's impossible to tell.

We haven't heard from them in over a year.

Are they even still alive up there?