Ashes of Eden

He was cold. Then again, he'd grown up being cold. Eric's hands were shaking, frostbite clung to the tips of his fingers. This wasn't how he had planned to spend his first days as a free man. He had wondered aimlessly for hours after they discovered he'd killed Malvato. Hiken wasn't the friendliest place for a boy his age—a child without parents or owner. Eric didn't have a slave brand, not that Malvato hadn't tried branding him a few million times. For some reason, it wouldn't take to his skin. Malvato said—used to say, because he was dead now—that it was because Eric was too filthy and unworthy to even be a slave.

Eric slipped on a patch of snow. The feel in his feet had left him a long time ago, would he be able to get up now? His nose was burning, his cheeks tingly with snow biting them. Sleep came, drawing him under, telling him to give in to death while sprawled on the white feathery mass. Would it cover him if he stayed down long enough? The blood on his neck, torso and wherever else it had landed on, seeped into the white pureness—staining it. Malvato's blood, Eric thoughts, eyelids dropping. Eric was strong for his age, he heard them whisper behind his back, about things he shouldn't be able to survive or do, but manage to anyway. They called him demon, cursed-child, abomination—the list was endless. With his strength, he'd taken the axe Malvato used to chop off firewood and swung it at the slaver's leader legs. Malvato hadn't expected it. Eric hadn't lingered in hesitation, he'd swung the bloody weapon again, causing Malvato's head to roll with one fair swoop. The other slavers found him afterwards, chasing him across Hiken, leading him to leave without even looking where he was going. Now, Eric was going to pay for taking a life—a worthless life, he thought bitterly, recalling what Malvato had been telling him before Eric decided to act on rage. He'd been talking about selling him off—definitely—to a man four times Eric's age. A nobleman or just a wealthy fuck, Eric couldn't have cared less. He wouldn't be a fuck-boy every night, much less for the remainder time he had alive.

Snow scorched his closed eyes; the skin was boiling even though it should be cold. Why? So many things he didn't know, so many things he would never learn... He lied there, waiting for death's sharp, clawing talons to sink into his abused flesh. He waited. Waited. Waited. And waited. Until he felt like he was in a drift, floating and unfeeling of anything, being lulled. Was it... peace? Was this death?

"No place to escape, no place to call home or your own,

A knight in servitude to an unknown master,

I heard it calling for me, said the knight, and still I resisted its pull, for it would not have satisfied my hunger and needs,

A servant to the darkness, forced upon this existence with no choice,

His is a lonely path, with blood and death,

None shall be his own,

Rest, child, for night comes and you will survive until dawn breaks,

Death will walk in shadow, dear heart…"

Those were the words Eric heard as more snow created a blanket atop his still body. He didn't know where they echoed from. They felt like something he'd heard before, somewhere, long ago. They didn't lull him, they roused him, fed him like sunlight fed a flower and nurtured it to grow stronger. Those words made his fingers twitch. Made his eyelids blink. Eric summoned unknown strength and crawled, shaking his shoulders from the cold crystals of water. His wet hair matted his forehead, obscuring his right eye. Eric pushed on, each breath burning his insides. His lungs suffered with cold agony, but he kept going.

He would keep going. For what reason or even how, he didn't know, but Eden wouldn't get the pleasure of killing him. Lips that had lost feeling decades ago turned, muscles working to shape a smile too wide to be described as joyous. It was a smile of bitter victory.

He was finally free.

***

Eric groaned, clawing himself from sleep. His vision was spotty when he first opened his eyes, he rubbed them with his left arm.

"Nice nap, princess?" Nadia's tone was teasing.

Eric twisted toward the small cave's entrance. Nadia sat close to it, hiding herself behind the boulder he'd moved last night with the remainder of his energy. She must've been keeping watch.

"Yeah, the Ritz has nothing on this moldy cave." Nadia snorted at his smartass snark. "It's lacking when it comes to breakfast, though."

"You were the one who said you'd hunt us down some food."

"True." He conceded. With a groan, he dropped his face into his hands. He smelled soil on them, dirt. Eric took a breather. Everything that happened last night came back too fast for him to wrap his head around. Carter was… His jaw clenched at the word jumping to the forefront of his mind. Carter wasn't gone. He just… wasn't here—with him—with them.

Eric's breathing stilled as a hand gripped his knee. Eric's eyes saw the damage his trousers took from the night before. They were torn, the material caked with dirt and crusted blood from the cuts on his legs. He reached down a hand, tracing a finger over his skin. The cuts must've looked worse without light—they weren't deep at all.

"Did you hit your head last night? In the fall?" Nadia's voice was tight but… softer. Softer than Eric had ever heard it, anyway. Deep down, part of him knew she'd rather kick his balls than be nice.

She looked at his legs, confused.

"I'm fine." Was his muffled response. Slowly, he lifted his face. Icy-blue eyes caught silvery ones. "I don't know what to do."

Nadia was still sporting confusion lines across her forehead when she looked up.

"You don't know how to hunt?"

"What? No." That was one of the only things he was an expert at. "About this—I don't know what to do." Eric repeated angrily. Being responsible for his safety was okay, but being responsible for Nadia's well-being was… He didn't like the weight on his shoulders. "Can you use a weapon?"

"My body is a weapon." Eric almost heaved a laugh at the sheer seriousness of her.

"Yeah, that's great if we're jumped by people wielding small knifes or small swords. But kickboxing won't be much help if we're attacked by arrows or people with swords like mine." Or axes. Or spears. Whatever these people fought with. "So, can you use a weapon?"

She gave his sword a long glare, "How hard can it be to wing a sharp piece of metal around and cut people with it?"

"Harder than it looks."

"Am I supposed to be impressed by you, then?"

"Can you not turn this into a fight? I'm trying to be nice and you keep acting like you're programmed to hate me or something."

Nadia's hand—still on top of his knee—tightened. Her fingers dug into muscle and bone. Eric felt a strange shift in the air around them. He felt himself move forward, leather vest squeaking with his movements. Nadia's face became too close in such little time, Eric felt dizzy. Feeling her breath beating on his nose felt intoxicatingly hot and he was so cold. Colder than he'd ever felt as if he'd been sleeping in a bed made of ice.

"I'm not programmed for anything. Much less to hate a stranger." She breathed, her lip brushing his chin when she closed her mouth. "Why are you coming closer?"

Eric didn't have an answer for that.

"Why aren't you backing away?" No answer. Eric conjured a little smirk. He ran his tongue along his lips, keeping their gazes from drifting. He felt something primal and old rush inside him as he leaned closer, just a measly inch…

Horses whined—somewhere outside their small shelter. He and Nadia looked left—outside. Sharing a meaningful look, Eric slid closer to the boulder obscuring them from view. He peeked around it as much as possible. It was like a scene taken from a movie. People were being transported in wooden cages, pulled along by horses. Were those people slavers? Eric sneered at the idea.

"Shh," he held up a finger at Nadia when she made to open her mouth. Eric got the feeling he should drop said finger before she broke it. "I think they're slavers."

Nadia's warmth met his back as she pressed into him from behind, squishing his front into the hard, cold boulder. He made a face.

"Can you back up?" he ground over a shoulder.

"Why, feeling uncomfortable?" she hissed, lips brushing the shell of his ear.

"Yes."

Nadia got a smug face on, but whatever smart comeback she wanted to throw his way slipped her mind when her eyes widened, seeming as large as actual moons.

"Eric!" her hand forced his face against the rock—squishing his cheek on it. He grunted as she pointed at the middle cage. "Look! There's a guy—that ginger one—his shirt…"

Nadia didn't need to finish. Eric saw the ginger kid, looking to be about their age and he was wearing a Gun's and Roses t-shirt.

"I'm pretty sure Gun's and Roses don't travel across space and time to play shows." Nadia breathed. Which meant… "We weren't the only ones dragged through that fissure. Maybe he popped-up after us or maybe there was more than one? Maybe he showed up somewhere different?"

"That doesn't matter, does it? He's being carried off as a slave." Nadia sent him a shrewd glare, daring his next answer to be: well, tough luck, I'm going to catch us some breakfast. "We can't just attack them. There's at least six men. They all have swords and at least two have armor. We need a plan."

Nadia took a minute to look taken aback by his quick assessment. During her shell-shocked stupor, her eyes ran across the slave parade, confirming Eric's accurate description.

"I think we should follow them first." That seemed risky, yet, Eden was turning out to be a giant gamble with their lives. "Think, Eric. Wherever they're heading they'll be selling those people. Which means there should be a place with food, right?"

"It can't be worse than being lost." Eric whispered more to himself than to her. "Alright. We'll follow them, but only after I can't hear the hooves. See those marks they're leaving? It's a pretty easy trail to track."

Nadia nodded. They retreated into their humid cave. Water must have spilled inside, seeping through dirt and cracks on the walls. The earthy scent calmed Eric just like it always had, he was the glad some things were unchanged between here and home. Nadia got on her knees, so she could slip off her cloak. She dropped it on her Nike bag.

"You should get rid of that." Eric said without thinking.

"Excuse me?"

"It's... pink." Nadia glared at him, debating whether to kick him or take his sword and stab him. "I don't mean it's girly or whatever the hell is running through your crazy-ass brain. I mean it's flashy. If someone spots us with it don't you think they'll be curious?"

"I'll just hide it under my cloak—like I've been doing."

"What if something like yesterday happens? What if we need to make a run for it?"

"I'll run." Nadia said. "Turn around." She started reaching under her hip-length chemise. Nadia gave Eric a pointed look as he frowned, still staring at her. "I'm going to adjust my bra, okay? Will you do me the curtsey to turn around?"

Eric found himself moving toward the boulder to spy on the fading slavers instead of facing a dirt wall, like a grounded child. Once he looked outside, there were no woodened carriages to be seen. He could still hear hooves and murmured voices, though.

"Are you done?" Eric questioned after an awkward silence stretched out.

"Yes, but you can stay all the way over there. It's way roomier for me." Eric scoffed, completely ignoring her wishes. He retreated into the small cave on his hands and knees. He rolled his shoulders once he was sitting. There was discomfort when he lifted his arms. As if the vest would tear from being too small on him. That hadn't been the case before, though. Could leather shrink? "Are you pouting?"

"No," he moved his shoulders forward, still trying to discern why it felt like he was wearing a different vest. "This... my clothes feel... tight."

Nadia was donning her cloak, her Nike bag already safely bulging underneath it.

"Is that some awful excuse to get naked?"

Eric cracked a humorless laugh, "I don't get naked for just anyone." Eric gave one last stretch to his arms in the confined space before reaching for his bag and sword. "Carter says I have a bad habit of walking around our apartment naked. He really hates it—especially if Dinah's there."

"Dinah is...?"

"His girlfriend."

"Carter's girlfriend has seen you naked?"

Eric half-smiled.

"No, I wear a towel. But Carter's paranoid." Eric crawled to the exit ahead of Nadia simply because he beat her to it.

There was no one outside. Not now, anyway. Eric walked around the boulder, setting his dirt smeared hands on the moss-covered stone. Nadia watched silently as he slid it into place, covering the entrance to their hiding spot. He still couldn't explain how he'd known about it, but he wouldn't put much thought into it since they were going to track a band of slavers. Eric made sure his sword was secure around his waist before they started making their path along the carved wheel tracks and horse prints.

"The ankle's good?" Eric asked. He'd completely forgotten about until now.

Nadia shrugged.

"It feels alright. I must've hit a rock on the way down or twisted a little." He wanted to ask about the arm. He felt strangely guilty for hurting her. It had been his fault, but it had been accidental, it wasn't like he'd meant to hurt Nadia on purpose… "My arm is alright, too. You can drop the guilty puppy eyes. I'm not a porcelain doll, I kick and punch people for sport."

Eric was sure Nadia had some issues with guys going on at this point. She kept underlining the fact: I can kick your ass. Or she really just didn't like him, for reasons he didn't understand.

On their right was a steep wall made of solid rock. It was imposing, with a jagged surface and scarce vegetation poking out, and the trees that grew on it, nearly at the top, were curved and skinny—at least from where they were standing, way down below. Eric thought those trees would break like twigs after a few swings of his sword.

Nadia rammed into his side. A heartbeat later, Eric got why. A sharp squawk had Nadia covering her ears. It was a shrill sound, coming from above. They stared at the sky as the large bird flew across Eden's cloudy sky, casting a large shadow on an already grey day. The bird was large, unlike any other he'd seen, maybe the size of a small aeroplane. Its beak gleamed like Eric's sword, but that couldn't be... unless it was made of freaking metal. Molting feathers fell as the bird flew out of sight. Eric could still listen to its strange cry without it being in sight. A feather landed a couple of feet from them and Nadia went to it, crouching and grabbing the large thing. Eric approached as she turned it a few times, admiring it. Nadia got to her feet and whirled around smacking the feather on his cheek.

"Sorry," was what she breathed, but Eric caught her grinning softly, so, really not sorry. "It's pretty." The feather started as a deep blue, then was a mix of green-yellow, until it turned red at the top.

Eric skimmed a hand through his hair, looking up at the heavy clouds. The air was heavy with dry heat, like before summer storms.

"We should hurry. If it rains their trail will be washed away."

Nadia walked beside him as she fumbled with the feather's hollow shaft. She was trying to stab it into her cloak for some reason Eric didn't care about. They were lucky the man-made road was straightforward, so far. To their left, in proximal distance, trees thickened into what Eric thought to be another part of Loron forest. The trees weren't the strangely colored ones, though, they were shorter with pale greenery.

Eric's eyes shot over his shoulder. The sound of voices made him stiffen. He kept walking, passing Nadia a glance that told her to act normal. She'd finally managed to stab and secure the feather on her brown cloak, he noted. A faint, two-second-long smile touched his lips.

The voices were male. Distinctively. For some reason, Eric's muscles were tense—tenser than they should be. He hadn't been provoked so why...

"I heard that, I heard it—"

"You're a liar!" There was a loud laugh. Eric didn't think it sounded like a drunk laugh, that was good.

"What?" The other sounded indignant. "I'm telling the truth here! Ragnos has been seen in Loron. He wants to enter Idril and..."

"Steal some Fae metal?" there was a loud, derisive snort. "Why would he charge into Fae land, Melc? We want nothing to do with them. Ragnos is a captain for the Crown."

"That's why, you gnat! He's learned that Dybbuk can be defeated."

"Oh—who tells you these things?"

"It's true, swine." There was a distinct meaty thud, sort of like a slap or even punch. "You will listen carefully, Lazu. I heard this from a good, honest woman..."

"Oi, of course. It's that little cunt you've been sinking your cock into—the one you gave those pidians to." What the hell were pidians? Eric barely noticed Nadia's hesitation to keep walking—his fingers brushed her clad arm. She tilted her head, heaving heavily, like she was mustering restraint and kept her eyes focused on the trail. "You're a fool, Melc. Did those gems serve to pay for fucking her or for the fairytale stories she's been feeding you?" Another laugh.

"She heard it from a merc." The man—Melc—gritted. "He told Pria he'd been paid by Ragnos himself to search for Fae that were willing to lead him into Idril—he paid many people, not just mercenaries. Farmers, inn keepers, even children—if you can believe it."

"You do."

"Well, it sounds true... Why would she lie about it?" The man who until now had been nasty and unwilling to believe stayed silent. "You see?"

Eric didn't understand much, the only thing jumping out was the word Dybbuk. Nadia's lips pressed together each time that word made an appearance.

"Say," Lazu began. "There are smugglers who capture Fae. You would think a captain would be aware."

The conversation continued between the two loud men. Sometimes Nadia would get an infuriated look about her. Whenever they talked about Pria or any other woman they had fucked in Hiken—which was possibly where they were heading now. Eric could feel a spark of annoyance grow inside. It grew larger with every step. Keeping a steady pace became more challenging a few hours later. It had to be hours, Eric thought, muscles burning. The trail was still fresh, though, and they weren't going to rest. They had no food or water. If they sat down, there was a good chance they wouldn't get up from exhaustion. Their travel "buddies" stopped to do whatever a mile back and Eric had seen Nadia's fists relax. Her palms were red from how she'd buried her nails in. The ground they were on now was dry, cracks littered the dry muddy sand beneath their shoes.

"It's a mud desert." Nadia commented.

It was true. For the first time nothing with life—besides them—could be seen for miles. The sandy colored mud stretched out, just a flat surface, barren of any plants or rocks. There were no places to hide. Eric was crouched, trailing his fingers on the parched ground. With all the cracks and harshness of the soil, the tracks were less distinguishable. There were others, maybe older, maybe not.

"It rained last night." Eric mussed. "This ground shouldn't be so dry."

"It might not have rained here." Nadia's suggestion was valid. Her arms were crossed as she spun in a half circle, eying the landscape. "Do you think people know we're missing?"

That pulled Eric's attention from the trails to her. He looked up at her as she looked down at him.

"What do you mean?"

"On Earth," Eric chuckled at the weirded out face she made. She shook her head. "Do you think they know? Or do you think that... That time flows differently here? Like a day here is an hour there or—or... Eric?"

It was happening again. Like someone pulled a rug out from underneath him, Eric tumbled on his side. His body felt like it weighed nothing, and he drifted somewhere. Images shoved themselves inside his mind.

"This is the final battle."

He snorted, "There's always more battles, Priestess."

"No, not regarding this. I am certain of the future the Goddess Phyta has shared with me, I believe we will build a new country. United." The blond woman side-glanced Eric with a slit of her eyelids. "Would you mock my beliefs even now? We are marching into battle at dawn."

"Oh, we are, are we?"

There was a growing disappointment on the girl's face. Still, she arched her shoulder back and held her chin out. Showing her brand of defiance. Eric wasn't amused knowing the serious implications her wishes could have on her survival.

"I am going to fight alongside you. All of you—"

"No, you're not. That's what soldiers and knights and other fucking ranking leaders are for. It's what I'm for." Eric pointed out lifting his sword like one would a weightless bottle. "Don't argue about this with me. You'll lose."

The blond beauty shifted closer to him, her hands behind her back and a sudden smile on her soft lips. Eric knew nothing good came his way when she looked the way she did right now. Her eyes shone in the dying light, catching colors of ambers.

"That was what you told me when I first tried convincing you to join me." She lifted a shoulder clad in fine blue silk. "I won, then."

Eric cocked his head forward. Kali raised her hand. First, he thought she was trying to grasp something he couldn't see, with her Sight. But no. She traced the flat surface of Erebus. The Fae metal it was made of was pure black. The hilt was the only part with a splash of color other than black. Two silver dragons with entwined tails formed the guard of his sword, their tails coiling down the starts of the blade. The pommel was made from the same silvery Fae material as the dragons.

"Tomorrow something new will begin." She whispered in a manner Eric had come to know not to take lightly. Kali considered the horizon as the bleeding sun faded from their view. Wind whipped around them, twirling Kali's loose hair, causing it to clash with Eric's bare arms. As they looked on, from atop an Azar mountain, he could see Hiken. Standing on a much shorter mountain's plain. It was just a dot in the long distance. "I can feel it."

Somewhere someone yelled. Someone shook him. The scenery fell apart and Eric felt himself swim to the surface, gasping and clawing with some crushing force. Just before his mind broke the wall separating him from his body and reality, he saw those dark eyes dancing. Teasing him.