The Reward of The Oolyay (7 page)

“Just try,
okay?!”
Teftek pushed it into Aljefta’s now empty hands and walked away from the gathering of soldiers huddled around their morning fire. Dawn hadn’t entirely broken the ridge yet, and Teftek was giving Inlojem the courtesy of time in order to rouse the female Necrologist.
Now there’s two of them
, he thought indignantly as he placed his butt down on a cracked, rotting log and stared into the gray nothingness of the rolling fog. He tore some y’Yoz root and stuffed it into his mouth, the tingly feeling assaulting his gums quite suddenly before his body hesitantly relaxed. It hadn’t been five days, but Teftek was under too much duress to care.

“I know a secret,” a child’s voice announced from behind him. Teftek’s head slowly turned, anxiety creeping right back up his neck. He realized it wasn’t an alien with a child’s body dangling from a tentacle - it was just Iogi.

“What...what do you want?” Teftek answered, turning his body.

“I know a secret,” Iogi repeated.

“Let me guess - I’m the Death Priest,” Teftek crowed halfheartedly .

“Nooo…” Iogi teased, his body swaying in the fashion of a little child. Teftek also swayed back and forth a little, gnawing on the y’Yoz root, sucking the juice out of its porous structure as it rolled between his teeth. He spat across the wet dirt and turned his narrow gray eyes toward the child.

“Yeah, alright - tell me your secret,” Teftek surrendered.

“Um- um,” the child chortled, in a fit, “you’re a believer!”

“Hah!” Teftek scoffed, getting up and spitting his y’Yoz root on the ground. “Yeah right, kid,” he said as he rubbed his hand roughly over the child’s barbed red hair, walking away.

“Yeah right kid! It is right, kid!” said Iogi with excitement. “I know because one time...um...one time when you were a little boy...um…there was this guy who told you that one day the world would end, and you didn’t believe him!” It stopped the young captain in his tracks, his thick rubber soles scrapping to a halt in the grimy gravel. His head turned eighty degrees and forced his body along with it as he listened to the child with sudden zeal. “And you said ‘you’re a stupid old Necrologist’ and then... and then you threw a rock at him and it hurt him, and then he grabbed you, but then someone shot him and you looked at him and you felt really bad, and you thought you’d never believe, but he mentioned the red people and I know...“

“Shut up,” Teftek stated curtly. “Now. Go back into the tent.” Iogi stared at Teftek for a moment. “GO! GET OUT OF HERE!” Teftek barked at him. The child sprinted and fumbled clumsily through the tent flap like a Quwarki skiff-runner through a narrow canyon, and cuddled up against Inlojem’s knee. Teftek stared at the tent and then turned his gaze toward his own hand, which shook almost uncontrollably with fear. He gripped it and turned away from his staring soldiers.

He looked at Aljefta, who had witnessed the exchange. In his hands was the listener receiving some scratchy communications. Teftek stood in the same place, riddled with shock as everyone gathered around toward Aljefta when he turned up the listener. They could make out a Qol news program. There was a reporter on the ground.

“It’s entering low atmosphere right now, over the Juldji District. DGS is telling us to stay calm- they’re still trying to evacuate the districts before they launch fission weaponry…” there was a loud crack, and then static. Teftek knew what that meant; Qol was gone, obliterated by whatever these things were. If they eradicate the city in one swift blow, then they would be preparing a ground invasion, which meant thousands of those things spread across the city, ripping people into pieces as they asked “Will you be my friend?” Either that, or DGS would turn the city into a nuclear fire to stop the spread of the invasion…which was not outside the realm of possibility. Teftek’s toughness came back and overwhelmed his fear.

“Pack up! Let’s get ready to move out!” He commanded as he walked the opposite direction. For such a small thing, Teftek’s presence was always commanding. He heard the camp rustle into a panic behind him; a form of obedience he found quite comforting.

He walked just out of sight and sat down against a rock face while his soldiers packed. Teftek stared at the tree line, from which a thick bank of fog taunted him. He felt his hand shaking again as the memory emerged into his mind and gripped him like a terrible hallucination.

The old Vesh with his wide red eyes, the brims of them twitching, pointed to Teftek’s child-like frame and made his inane prophecy known. The rock in Teftek’s young hand was smooth enough that he would take it down to the river later and skip it along, with a pile of rocks he had saved for weeks, if the guards of his labor camp permitted him to leave that day. The old Necrologist clutched his knee in agony, with gritted teeth, staring at the child like he was an aberration on the world while Teftek had pointed and laughed and Pojlim and Aljefta were cringing at the sight of it.

The feel of the Necrologist’s cane striking across Teftek’s back was the most intense pain he had ever felt as a child. The deepest agony, that far outweighed the pain, though, was watching the two Uyor military officers drag the old Vesh up against a fence...and riddle him with bullet holes. They said it was for beating those children, but it was really because he'd annoyed them. Thick purple ooze poured from every appendage of the broken old Necrologist as Teftek confirmed his death with his eyes, and then with his hands, as viscous liquid sputtered from the dead Necrologist’s mouth. He felt his own tears streaming down his face as Pojlim and Aljefta tore him away from the sight.

“You’re shaking,” Inlojem observed from behind Teftek. The captain clenched his hands together and gritted his teeth, releasing a long, cool sigh. The priest persisted with “What troubles you, my child?”

“I’m not a child, and I’m not yours,” Teftek seethed, walking past Inlojem. Inlojem’s hand caught Teftek’s shoulder, and their eyes locked.

“Iogi has rattled you, hasn’t he?” Inlojem asked slowly.

“You know
nothing
about me and nor does he,” Teftek spat.

“And yet he sees inside of you. There is death on your conscience.” Inlojem responded coolly.

“
DEATH?!”
Teftek yelled, shaking Inlojem’s hand off of him. “What do you
really
know about death, death-priest? You Necrologists claim to be the be-all-end-all authority on death, but how many people have you really killed, thirty? Forty?”

“Fifty seven,” Inlojem stated.

“Fifty seven,” Teftek repeated. “I lost count at a hundred.” The Necrologist heard Teftek’s words but found himself speechless, failing to comprehend the trauma of this young man. It was true that Inlojem believed himself to be the most experienced purveyor of death among these people whom he regarded as children, and yet this one had simply shattered his reality. “I know more about death than you do, Inlojem. You may have a nice little ritual, where, OH, the weak old chieftains beg you to put them in the ground - how pleasant for them. Death must be a nice walk. But I’ve put young children in the ground when they begged me not to. I’ve killed more of your people, and more of the Hagayalicks, than you can
imagine.
And if I wanted to I could kill you too, in a heartbeat.”

Inlojem stared at his opponent with a heightened sense about him. The soldiers around them had stopped to gawk. Iquay looked on as well, with most of her strength regained, holding Iogi’s shoulder for support. Inlojem slowly pulled his knife from his belt and handed it to Teftek.

“If I am such a burden, present me with my death, that I may welcome it before the end of the world,” Inlojem eloquently declared. He presented Teftek with the blade, but Teftek did not even extend his arms. He slipped his sickle-blade back into its holster and clipped it. “You may be a well-trained killer, Teftek, but I am a Necrologist. I do not study death for the sake of understanding death. I study death to understand life. You have much to learn about life.”

He walked away from the soldier and lowered his shoulder so that Iquay could lean on him, instead of Iogi. Teftek stared at the ground until Aljefta came up and harassed him about the day’s journey.

Inlojem placed Iquay down on a cracked rock, and presented  her belts, lined with potions and small throwing knives, back to her. She took her sickle-blade from him and latched it to her leg, and then she checked the caps of all of her potions, noticing that her bottle of Ytiri herbs was full.

“Did you give me these, Inlojem?” she asked.

“You’ll need them for the road ahead,” he replied.

“But what if they strike you?” she suggested.

“Then I am an old Vesh. I will die,” he explained.

“But the proph-“ she started

“the prophecy is for the young,” he finished. “I am an old Vesh…and it is refreshing to find another…true Necrologist here.” Teftek walked up briskly, batting Aljefta’s complaints off of him, and placed his back to Inlojem to speak to her:

“We’re still three days away from our goal. Is there a Temple nearby where we can rest?”

“Yes,” she stated, “but my people aren’t particularly fond of your military.”

“Well, these two
are
your people, so they’ll have to make do,” Teftek declared, and walked away with just as much brashness. He picked up his carry pack and stopped, staring at Iquay; he was waiting for her to lead. The other soldiers, all young men, looked back toward her and Inlojem. The three Oolyayns could not have looked more foreign to them- all dressed in rags, with little bands of valuables strapped to their limbs or hanging below their tattered robes like ornaments, and not a hair on their faces. The soldiers, in contrast, were all carrying two-handed guns, and loaded down with body-sized carry packs, their skin covered in rusty bronze hair that glinted in the pale light.

“They aren’t a patient group are they?” she asked Inlojem rhetorically. She stood up on her own, limping forward. He tried to help her, but she assured him that she could walk perfectly fine. They watched her walk between them and take up the lead, taking up pace behind her as her pace grew faster.

*  *  *

A short time passed before they reached a massive slab of pyrix that seemed to carve itself through the glacial mountains, directly across their gravel path. Yet straight down the middle of the slab was a narrow slit that could have been cut with lightning, showing a slim opening for the gravel path to keep going. As Iquay reached it, her eyes widened and she turned to the group, seemingly nervous.

The fog had recessed only slightly for them, not burning off in the morning sun, as expected. It lingered, tracking them as they trekked farther and farther up into the cold, barren, mountainous landscape . The opening in the slab was only large enough for one of them to nudge through at a time, and Iquay peaked her head through it to behold the gripping white cloud of fear that faced them. A whole basin lay ahead, completely filled with thick white fog, which rose above the path and seemed to merge with the clouds overhead. Iquay was visibly nervous as she turned back to the soldiers.

“I must tell you now, my home is called Terminus,” she stated. Inlojem recognized the name immediately. It was the first of all Oolyayn civilization; it was an ancient city surrounding a massive temple built on the tallest mountain of the region, lined with many steps down which the blood of the sacrifice would flow almost steadily. It was believed to be surrounded by Shades on every side and almost impossible to penetrate, except by those who held residence among it. “What lies before us is called, by my people, the Dread Gulch. It is almost impossible to exit Terminus to the south because of this place…it is where I was attacked. Many,
many
souls die here…but it is the only way to Terminus from this side…and the only way to your destination for many peaks.”

One of the soldiers piped up and proposed, “Why don’t we just climb up one of these peaks and go around?”

“Try if you must, but the sides are smoothened pyrix…they’re not conducive to climbing,” she clarified.

“You don’t actually expect us to go through there, do you?” another soldier, with a scraggly beard asked Teftek.

“Stay here if you want- I’m sure those things that killed Pojlim and the Tiqu twins will be happy to rip your limbs off,” Teftek remarked bluntly. Everyone stared at Teftek with a mixture of terror and anger. “Stick together, real close, and keep your eyes on the Oolyayns- that’s what we came here to do.“

“No, this is ridiculous,” a young, fresh-faced soldier scoffed. He started to walk away, and two others began to follow, before a loud, piercing shot echoed through the sky. They clenched their guns and almost leaped from their skin, slowly turning back toward Teftek who held his smoking Vorstram toward the clouds.

“You go back that way, you die. If not by whatever’s back there, then by me. I won’t have troops abandoning my command, now
FALL IN LINE!
” They looked at Teftek in disbelief, until Aljefta raised his weapon too, and the other two other soldiers began to level their weapons at the potential defectors. A tense moment lapsed and the defectors walked slowly toward the group again. “You three - up in the front,” Teftek commanded. He nodded toward Iquay. “Go through. We’ll be right behind you.”

Iquay inched herself through the small crevice and emerged into the white void of fog swirling around her. The ground dropped off below the fog, only two jumps of the grassy slope showing itself through the voluminous mists. She turned back toward the crevice and nodded. Teftek slipped through first, and then the rest of his soldiers trickled through one at a time, with Inlojem and Iogi picking up the rear. They clumped together and moved like a slug into the rocky valley, not knowing just how deep it went nor where it would lead them. They could only depend on the tattoo riddled ranger, barely into adulthood, that the old Vesh called a “Necrologist.”