An End of Gods & Dust: ACT III

"Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The screaming wind was soon drowned out by the sound of terror.

Kokuo rushed to the cave entrance, the hair on his arms standing on end as he peered through the black dust storm toward the source of the ear-piercing screams.

Karra appeared at his side, her blue eyes wide and apprehensive. “Prepare yourself,” she said to him. “It will be gruesome.”

The black storm slowly peeled back then as five figures shuffled through the dust.

The first figure ran toward them, their yellow-green eyes the only feature sticking out of the grey shawl wrapped around their head, mouth and nose. Once they lowered the shawl to their neck, Kokuo quickly identified them as Leto, the youngest member of their group.

“It’s Selene!” Leto yelled, his gaze wide and frightened. “She was attacked!”

Kokuo’s heart fluttered in a sickening way. No large predators had been spotted in several years. “Attacked? By what?”

Beside him, Karra froze, her jaw going rigid.

Leto ran past them into the cave, not bothering to answer Kokuo’s question and clearly too frightened to do much explaining.

Turning back to the approaching figures, it took Kokuo a moment to realize that it was two people holding up a third between them, and a fourth pacing around them, checking on the woman screaming.

It was the most horrid sound Kokuo had ever heard.

The man who had been running alongside the three others reached him first. It was Tryfon, a former noble who was usually too skittish to go on the water retrieval missions, but had decided to go this time because Selene, his partner, was going.

“Are you okay?” Kokuo asked the man, noticing a bunch of shallow cuts and scratches along the man’s upper arms and lower legs.

Tryfon shook like a leaf in a turbulent wind, his legs practically knocking together. Even his usually carefully brushed blonde hair was a wild mess. “It-it came out of nowhere. We had no idea…there was no warning!”

Kokuo laid a hand on Tryfon’s back and urged him into the cave, knowing that like Leto, Tryfon needed space to process what had occurred. “It’s ok, I’ll help the others inside. Go take care of those wounds.”

Tryfon woodenly obeyed, but paused and looked over his shoulder for just a moment, his eyes still wide and frightened, but also concerned. “Selene…”

“Me and Karra had great success with the herb garden while you were gone,” Kokuo said to Tryfon, his heart breaking for his companion. “She will have the best chance, I promise.”

Tryfon nodded, the blank, haunted look returning to his face as he shuffled into the cave.

Then the smell of blood overwhelmed Kokuo, and all pretense of chances vanished as he looked upon Selene’s thrashing body hanging between Hallas, a large red-haired man with a scar on his face, and Ourania, the eldest among them, and the leader of their little rag-tag group.

“Gods above,” Kokuo exclaimed as the two stumbled past him and into the cave with their burden. Blood dripped from several long, twisted and gruesome tears in Selene’s pale skin, slicing perfectly through her chlamys. It appeared as if she had lost the pin that usually held it together at her shoulder which was also covered in blood.

Selene continued to scream as they quickly walked deeper into the cave, going down into the darker area where a small, bare bones trickling stream came out of the rocks, providing some fresh fertile dirt and a place for herbs to grow.

It was not enough for drinking, maybe to wet your lips once in a while or to clean your face and hands. Plus, when they first arrived, drinking from the stream had caused severe stomach aches, prompting the creation of regular water runs.

At the change in brightness, Selene began to calm, and her screaming turned to drawn out wailing and quiet sobbing.

Gently, Hallas and Ourania placed Selene on the soft, cool sand next to the thin stream.

“Where is the water?” Karra demanded.

Kokuo looked over his shoulder to see that Karra had followed them. She glared down at Ourania as she asked the question, her sky blue eyes cold and unfeeling toward Selene’s condition.

Hallas responded. “That’s the first thing you ask?” He shouted, his amber eyes raging with fury and fear. “We were attacked, Karra. We had to drop everything we had to make it back alive.”

“Where did you drop it?” Karra asked over Selene’s whimpering.

Hallas growled. “For God’s sake help us-”

“The water, Hallas!”

A roar of frustration and anger came out of Hallas, and in the blink of an eye, he had Karra pushed up against the cave wall, his arm pushing her off the ground and his other hand dripping golden blood as a long, serrated bone blade pushed out of the skin of his forearm, grazing her throat.

The power of the Gods, Kokuo thought in both awe and fear, taking a small step forward, his hands out in front of him as if he could reach out and placate the raging man.

Karra spat in his face, her fury so potent it felt like the air around them was on fire. “Disgusting apostle,” she hissed, grasping at Hallas’ arm pushing on her chest. “How dare you use that power against me.”

Ourania looked up from where she had been leaning over Selene, patching up the wounds with clean cotton strips she kept on hand to stop the worst of the bleeding. “Near the rock outcrop beneath the dead tree,” she told Karra, her voice calm and sure despite the tension in the room. “We were all grouped so the water jugs shouldn’t have scattered too far when they were dropped.”

Hallas turned to protest, only for Karra to take the opportunity to break free of his hold, ducking under the blade and pushing him away with surprising strength.

Karra only nodded to Ourania, completely ignoring Hallas, and turned and vanished up through the tunnel.

Kokuo was torn. He wanted to follow Karra to make sure that whatever had attacked Selene and the others didn’t also harm her, but he had no idea what this thing was or what it was capable of.

He took a breath and turned to Ourania. “Ourania…can you tell me what happened?”

Ourania did not look up from her work as she sniffed and poked at the growing garden of herbs beside them. She pulled a few right up from the roots, while others she simply plucked seeds or leaves from, leaving more room for growth. “As has been iterated, we were attacked,” she said, her glittering stardust hair sticking to her scalp where sweat and blood had gathered.

“By what? There are no predators out here. Not anymore.”

Ourania didn’t pause as she began peeling back her patchwork of cotton wraps on Selene’s body and started packing in the different herbs, eliciting high pitched cries and loud hissing from Selene. Without needing to be told, Hallas crouched back down next to her and held her down to make sure Ourania got the herbs into the wounds.

“I’m not sure how to describe it,” Ourania said quietly as she sat back, breathing a bit heavily.

“Did you not see it clearly?”

“No. I saw it perfectly, even in the dust storm, but none of the others saw it.”

“What? But Tryfon and Leto-”

“They saw something different,” Ourania said, letting out a long weary sigh as she raised her dark, star-flecked eyes to Kokuo’s. “We all saw something different.”

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Author's Note:

Apologies for the wait! I had a busy few weeks, from vacation, to a new online class, and to getting a bit sick. Feeling better now!

Act IV is finished and just needs some edits. I'm planning to have it up next week!

I hope you enjoy this newest installation! <3

ACT IV

( vocal glitch is not allowing a link to the next chapter. You can find it on my page! )

Haven't read ACT I? Check it out below!