The Last of the Etela, Chapter 1

Kareva ul-Varyta faces an impossible decision on his first day in charge of the Hodrir...and someone else makes it for him.

The sun was going down. They’d have to light the torches soon, mounting them in place behind the wall itself so that a stiff breeze wouldn’t blow them out. That was the last thing Alakuz needed tonight. He uttered a quick prayer to Povod, god of the winds, under his breath, asking for calm so that he would be able to see beyond the wall for as long as possible. 

Alakuz was standing above the North Gate of the fortress, overseeing the night’s first watch. It wasn’t a huge detachment, simply a few archers and a couple of runners. Most of the men were resting in the several barracks houses that lined the inside of the walls. There were a few other patrols out now within the fortress itself, keeping watch over the granary or the well, and a few others making their way through the makeshift streets of the ever-growing tent cities lining the outside of the walls.

He strode past the two archers nearest him and tapped one on the shoulder, beckoning him to follow. 

“Report, Inaz ul-Aravan.”

“No change, Ohta. Another ten refugees or so arrived the night before last…They’re Tvomir, I think, according to one of those that brought them in. No men though. Just women, girls, a couple of boys too young to hold a blade properly. Same as the last several groups.”

“Alright.”

“How much longer do you think we must wait before the king comes to himself and sends them back—“

“That is not a question for you to ponder, Inaz.”

“Forgive me, Ohta. It’s just, not meaning to give any offense…”

Alakuz stopped walking and stared the young archer down, wondering if he would be brave enough to speak his mind.

“I…a few of us…” Inaz steeled himself. “I’m worried that we won’t be able to fit them all inside the fortress if there’s an attack. I wish them no ill, truly, but how will we be able to defend them, or ourselves for that matter, while we’re tripping over them?” He exhaled, then caught himself. “Ohta.”

Alakuz sighed. “Your instincts are not wrong. It will make our task more difficult.”

“Then…”

“They are all Etela, and they call Varyta Kogon, same as we do. If he commands us to protect them, we protect them.”

“In that case, he probably should have had us all band together, shouldn’t he? We might have had a—”

Alakuz cocked his head to the side, daring him to continue. The younger man knew he’d gone too far. He bowed his head. “Avzaka-min, Ohta.”

Alakuz kept his tone even. “You ask intelligent questions. I don’t punish men for that. But we don’t waste time second-guessing the king’s decisions. That lowers morale, and that’s dangerous for all of us. I won’t hear it done again. Understood?”

“Yes, Ohta.” Inaz hurried back to his post. 

Alakuz grimaced as he turned away. If even the likes of Inaz were starting to grumble, they were in terrible trouble. 

It didn’t help matters that the boy was right. Varyta was the first High King the Etela had acclaimed in a hundred years, the greatest warrior chieftain these lands had produced since before the Eternal War had broken out in the north. He also hadn’t been seen in public in over a year. The last command he’d given was to offer shelter to any Etela refugees that came looking for it in Hodrir territory. 

And so the sands around the Scorpion’s Lair had started to fill with tents. First a few dozen people came through the caverns, then a few hundred, and now at least a few thousand lived underneath the walls—almost exclusively women and children. Their men had all fought, as the Way commanded. 

Alakuz closed his eyes, reflecting on the glorious dead. Not a single man of the Vaymir had made it to Kalaa Ukruv'r. Only a handful from the other tribes had survived their respective battles and escaped the aftermath. Even more concerning, not a single man, woman, or child of the Gvelir had appeared to seek sanctuary—and nobody had any idea what had become of them.

So how long could Alakuz keep his men together and disciplined when they were all alone out here, effectively in hiding, taking orders that hindered their ability to fight, all in the name of an absentee ruler? Rumors were flying about Varyta’s illness, his madness, his impending death—some of which were now uncomfortably close to the truth. But everyone had been cooking up wild fantasies for so long that no one took them seriously. What else were they going to do, as famous as the Kogon was in his day?

It would break their hearts if they knew what their hero looked like now. And sooner or later they would be forced to reckon with the idea of following his second son, who’d been just as quiet as his father these past few years, but without the benefit of a reputation. And that could easily trigger a succession challenge, if a few things broke the wrong way.

Still, Alakuz reasoned, it could be worse. Nobody was starving to death yet. And there was hardly any disease—truly shocking, when having that many people living that close together could have been calamitous if the right plague had hit. The women were clearly smarter about these things than their men would have been. Nobody had been foolish enough to do anything that might threaten the water supply, for instance…

But there were so damned many of them, unarmed and untrained—which would never have even crossed his mind, except for that all the men who were supposed to help protect them were dead, and his several hundred soldiers were, indeed, going to be tripping all over them when the Pohyor came.

It was no longer an if. A runner had come to him not two hours ago to tell him about the three strangers making their way through the caverns. Alakuz had given the young man strict instructions to remain silent until he said otherwise. Alakuz had no doubt he would obey; it had been made abundantly clear to him of the consrquences if he didn’t. 

And so Alakuz would take what little time he had left to rack his brain for a more elegant solution than to simply hope for the gods to intervene and finally let Varyta die so that Kareva could try to rule in his own name.

At least then everyone would know someone was actually giving orders. That would be a step in the right direction.

—

Kareva stood at the foot of his father’s bed in silence. He had no idea how long he’d been standing there. Someone had left him some food outside the chamber earlier. It was still there, for all he knew. He drank some of the water from the jug on the table near the south-facing wall, and noticed that someone had put a jug of wine there too, at some point. It was ancient, maybe twenty years old, surely found covered in dust in the cellar by one of the women who kept his father’s hall. It must have been part of a gift from one imperial general or another during some forgotten campaign. 

The Eternal War. Kareva turned the famous words over in his mind with contempt. Two mighty empires locked in sixty years of combat, pouring every last resource into their fight, draining their manpower and their coffers, causing endless collateral damage in the ‘disputed lands’ they fought over, and leaving how many dead who had nothing to do with the conflict? Only the gods knew. And of course, they had destroyed each other so completely in the process that no one had seen any Runir or Imandrir warriors in this region in the past few years. He understood why his father had wanted to keep his people out of it. 

Kareva looked out the window. The sun was going down. Alakuz would have the torches lit sooner rather than later.

To hear his mentor tell it, Varyta had been cautious with his power ever since he was acclaimed—in the aftermath of a famous, brutally efficient and clever victory over a Kasvir chieftain who had gone to war with the Hodrir over something petty and paid a heavy price for it, losing nearly three hundred men and his only two sons in an ambush as they made their way through the red rocks of the Vesret Pass in search of Kalaa Ukruv'r. In a moment when he could have demanded the other chieftains kneel to him, Varyta allowed them to come to the decision themselves, knowing restraint and respect would be the smarter course. That was how he led them, through influence and advice rather than through commands. And when the Pohyor first appeared over the massive mountain range that had been the region’s natural northern border, Varyta saw existential danger and counseled everyone to be cautious. His son Varyta (his first son, Kareva’s older brother) saw existential danger, too, and wondered why his father had not consolidated his power while he had the chance.

Then Varyta the Younger tried to do something about it. Kareva, all of thirteen at the time, had seen that part firsthand. Their father had never been the same since.

Varyta coughed again. Kareva tried to keep his mind still and cold to combat the frustration boiling in his guts. The Kogon had let six years pass without so much as having a conversation with the other Etela chieftains. He left them to their own devices, even though he knew they couldn’t come to a consensus without him. He said he wanted to ‘respect their independence.’ That independence drove them all to look for new opportunities in the newly wide-open north, without the manpower or resources to hold their new territories—especially when the Pohyor came over the Brul mountains in force. So the Etela fought and died, one tribe at a time, while Varyta sat in seclusion, consumed by his own personal loss. And finally, after it was far too late to save ‘his people,’ the old man had decided to offer sanctuary to all the survivors.

Kareva shuddered. He still couldn’t believe it. The power of this place was its secrecy, and now far too many people knew how to find it. Was this really the only thing Varyta could think of to do to make himself feel better about how completely he’d failed them all? 

Kareva looked down, finally, at the skeletal creature in the king’s bed. Whatever this ‘wasting sickness’ was, it had certainly run its course. The king finally looked the way he’d been acting since his first son died, like there was nothing left of him. Disgust and anger and hatred rose into Kareva’s throat and he swallowed them, forcefully, at the sound of hundreds of people excitedly entering the fortress.

Excitement was the wrong word. Through the window Kareva could hear moaning, screaming, sobbing. The eventuality that he and Alakuz had talked out time and again had finally arrived.

“My Prince?”

Kareva turned away from his father’s bed and walked towards the voice. He opened the curtain separating his father’s chambers from the main hall. It was one of the young runners Alakuz had told him he could trust completely. The boy stood with his right fist over his left collarbone. Kareva had never liked that salute. He couldn’t remember which empire they’d copied it from. This probably wasn’t the time to think about it.

“They’re here?”

“Yes, my Prince. And they’re demanding to see your father.” 

—

Inaz ul-Aravan stood next to Metoz ul-Zimion, like he always did on watch, and the two of them took in the three strangers on horseback standing on the path in front of the North Gate.

The two fighting men on either side of the envoy matched what they’d heard from all the stories the refugee women told, but that didn’t make them any less intimidating: big, strong brutes on big, strong horses, holding heavy spears that looked like they could break a wooden shield easily with the right power behind them. That was the type of fighter that had torn all the other Etela tribes to pieces north of the Pass. And there were thousands of them. Tens of thousands, if the refugees’ tales were true.

That was the kind of army you could expect to raise, Inaz supposed, if you came from a place where food was always readily available. 

It was the messenger between the two soldiers that he found truly astonishing, though. How much wealth could the Pohyor have that a man like this one, who didn’t even carry a weapon, could be that well fed and lavishly dressed? 

A couple of years ago, when he first came of age, Inaz had accompanied his father on the yearly trade run across the endless sands of the Turma to the independent city-state of Makan Alabar, a massive, ancient, beautiful port at the nexus of the desert and the Sea of Suola. Only there, in the enormous, thousand-year-old marketplace, he had ever seen men as fat or as richly appointed as this man, but never men who were both at once. And men like that did not tend to stay long in Makan Alabar, Inaz’s father had told him, for there was always someone else there with the motivation to rob them—and they made easy targets.  

And yet this man was utterly fearless. When he first bellowed “We will speak to Varyta Hodrir!” up towards the men on the gate, he seemed almost bored. Everything about him announced the presence of a man used to dining with imperial governors up north, drinking their wine, using their serving women, and eventually taking lavish gifts back with him to his master to show their respect. He was far, far too important to treat with the likes of the Hodrir.

“He despises us,” Metoz muttered from next to him. He’d noticed it too. 

“He doesn’t see us,” Inaz whispered back. “We don’t exist.”

“And the two big ones don’t think much of us either.”

“Well, they just haven’t had the chance to get to know us yet.”

Metoz grinned, showing teeth through his dark, unkempt beard for a split second. Then he remembered what was happening. He turned ever so slightly to look at his watch-companion. “Inaz.”

“What?”

“How the hell did they find us?”

—

Alakuz heard the tone of the commotion behind him change, with surprise and confusion tempering the panic a bit. The crowd must have seen the prince, and were now wondering why Varyta was not coming to the gate to deal with the foreigners himself. 

Just as well. Better to get it all out in the open now, when it was just one more piece of unsettling news on a night already full of doubt and dread.

Presently he saw Kareva appear on the path with young Makava, the prince out ahead and the runner respectfully keeping a few steps behind his new master. Kareva wore the black robes of a law-giver. Of a chieftain. He had taken command from his father, without any official designation or ceremony. It was, to put it in the simplest possible terms, a coup. 

He looked young, too young to have this much on his shoulders. Especially given the decision he was about to have to make in his first five minutes in power. 

They’d talked it out countless times, going over their very limited options while they stood sentinel over Varyta’s sickbed (the only place they governed from, so that no one could witness their conversations and accuse the prince of trying to usurp his father’s authority). Alakuz could not see a way around joining the Pohyor that didn’t end with all of them dead. And however it was that the Pohyor had come to know the location of Kalaa Ukruv'r, their last good option—hide until everyone else forgot about them and then reappear to negotiate on their own terms—had just vanished. They’d have to offer the Pohyor their allegiance. Kareva knew it too, and his disgust with how his father had handled the whole crisis was rooted in the fact that Varyta had left them without any room to maneuver. 

Not to mention, the Way was very clear: they could not serve these foreigners and still find favor with the gods. Vei in particular cursed those who submitted; she made them suffer indignities in life and then denied them entry to her hall in death. Yet how could the gods, even Vei, whose bloodlust was the only thing more powerful than her beauty, have possibly seen fit to let the Pohyor find this place, after witnessing the destruction of the rest of the tribes? 

Either way, the Hodrir were already doomed. Not that Alakuz (or Kareva, for that matter) could tell everyone that. But the two of them knew it perfectly well, and were trying together to decide how best to get on with it. Kareva had given Alakuz free rein to give whatever military commands he needed to as Varyta’s sword-arm, and they understood that Kareva would be, in fact already was, the chieftain of the Hodrir. But again, they would not dream of sharing this development with the rest of the tribe until something happened that required the old rules to give way. 

And tonight was the night. The Hodrir and their guests would get to take their first measure of the young man who must be their next leader. But first, everyone, the soldiers especially, would need to be reminded in no uncertain terms that the tribe’s most fearsome warrior was behind him.

It was not vanity. Alakuz had earned his reputation the hard way six years ago, in battle against Prince Varyta’s rebels. Even among a tribe full of skilled fighting men, there was nobody confident enough in themselves to relish the idea of having him as an enemy. 

He met Kareva at the gate with his sword drawn, made a show of staring him down for a moment, as planned, pretending to silently challenge his authority, while the prince said nothing and held his gaze. Around them, the soldiers on the wall and the folk in the crowd stood transfixed, daring neither to speak or move. After milking the tension for a few seconds, the commander saluted his protegé, then knelt in front of him with his sword point in the sand. 

“Oproz.” Kareva was not the Kogon: Varyta could not pass that title down.

Kareva held out his hand to his mentor. “Rise, Ra'an Ohtar.” First of captains—the title to formalize the arrangement that was already effectively in place. The transfer of power was complete before anyone had a chance to question it.

Then, from beyond the gate, came the envoy’s imperious voice again. “We will speak to Varyta Hodrir!” Internal politics would have to wait.

—

The heavy iron gate swung open slowly. The two bodyguards, as they did every time they were on an errand like this, held still with their huge spears leaned back against their chests. Their circular shields protected them from any potshots a fortress’ defender might make the mistake of taking.

The envoy felt no need for such immediate protection. He knew, and would say at the slightest hint of resistance, that if anything happened to him there would be nothing left of this fortress or the people within it. Plus, they were surely standing out of range.

He had done four of these errands in the past year, visiting two towns on the eastern border of the horde’s lands, in what used to be Runir territory, and two to the west that were once part of Imandris, meeting erstwhile garrison commanders left behind to protect their old empires’ interest as their masters retreated. They were all sworn to Ersev Vrangar now. 

These Etela would bend their knees to his master’s ascendant power as their betters had done, or they would die as their fellows had. Frankly, the envoy didn’t care either way. He was thinking about the tall, pliable slave girl he’d brought back with him from his last diplomatic mission, the gift he had selected for himself from the tribute he had accepted from the old Imandrir stronghold of Efez. The Runir and Imandrir satraps knew how to receive an ambassador, at least. Their old masters had taught them something useful. But these people were nothing but mad desert-ghouls who ran around killing each other in the name of barbarous, obsolete gods. Civilization had progressed for centuries without including them. It would not miss them when they were gone.

One of the barbarians was standing in front of the gate now. He was surely not a king. It was just some boy in black robes. If these heathens insisted on insulting him, he might as well have a little fun.

“Boy! Are you Varyta Hodrir?”

“No.” The ghoul was looking directly at him. He didn’t seem to have blinked yet. 

“Well...go get him!” His guards chuckled.

“He is not coming.”

The envoy swung his left leg over his saddle and landed surprisingly lightly on his feet. “Well then, boy, you have a problem. I’ve been sent here by Ersev Vrangar, Khogon of Khogons in all the lands south of the Brul, to accept the allegiance of Varyta Hodrir. If he does not appear and bend the knee to me, your lives are all forfeit. So go get him.”

“Varyta-Kogon will not be kneeling to you, whoever you are or whomever you serve.” 

A light breeze kicked up some sand across the short distance that separated the envoy from the boy.

“And who are you, to tell me what your King will or won’t be doing?”

The boy had taken two steps closer to the envoy. Both guards eased their horses forward slightly. He raised his voice now to make sure he was heard.

“I am Kareva-Oproz ul-Varyta of the Hodrir. I speak with Varyta’s voice. I act in his name. And you are trespassing here. If you’re done threatening my people, I suggest you leave and avoid a dark result.”

The envoy paused for a second, then chuckled coyly. “Kareva? I thought Varyta’s son was named Varyta…” The boy’s jaw tightened. He’d struck the nerve he thought he would. 

“You don’t want to talk about my brother.” 

The boy stepped further forward. His two horsemen lowered their spears. None of these barbarians would be good enough shots to kill from this distance with their primitive bows. If the boy was foolish enough to draw a weapon, his guards would get to have a bit of fun as well. 

They knew not to kill him, of course; they’d just humiliate him in front of his people before forcing him to kneel. Make sure the lesson was learned. 

—

Alakuz knew what was going to happen as soon as he saw Kareva step forward. “Inaz, Metoz!” he whispered to the two archers nearest him. “On my signal, take the spearmen.”

The envoy had raised his voice. Alakuz could hear every word he spoke now, and shook his head in wonderment. The arrogant prick had no inkling of what was about to happen to him, did he? “You may speak with your father’s voice, boy, but I speak with the voice of the warlord Ersev Vrangar, and you will hear any word I have to say, on any subject I choose. If it pleases me to ask you about your dead traitor brother, you’ll—”

—

Time ground to a halt in front of Kareva. He saw the spears wobble slightly, betraying the lax, complacent looseness of their bearers’ grips. His left arm was swinging counter-clockwise, up and across his body, before he was even aware of it. His forearm struck the spearhaft of the guard on his right, knocking it into its twin, throwing both of them off-center. In one motion he had spun himself underneath the guards’ spears and suddenly there was a knife in his hand, and in the next instant it was buried deep into the right armpit of the guard on Kareva’s right, where the armhole in his mail coat left an opening. Kareva pulled the knife out of his first victim, whipped around and struck like an uncoiling snake, stretching his arm out as far as he could and stabbing deep into the lower thigh of the shocked second guard, in front of his shield. Kareva wrenched himself back the other way, using his body weight to rip the blade out sideways, severing the man’s quadriceps and femoral artery. The guard screamed in horror and agony as he struggled to keep his balance; his horse panicked at the sound and reared. The other guard was moaning, trying to force his useless right arm to do his bidding and fight back. Then there was a strange sound, zzzzzzzzipthudthud, and both guards were suddenly silent and falling slowly off their horses.

The sound itself wasn’t strange. Kareva knew what arrows striking flesh sounded like. The strangeness sprung from how unnecessary those shots were. Both of those men were already as good as dead. Kind of a waste of ammunition. 

Kareva came out of his pirouette in a side-stance, knees slightly bent, already poised to lunge again. He looked up at the envoy, whose mouth had dropped open. The fat man took two steps backwards, pivoted, and ran as fast as he could towards his own horse. Kareva caught up to him as he was trying to clamber into his saddle, grabbed his robes and yanked him backwards as abruptly as he could to maximize the force of his fall.

—

The Voice of Ersev Vrangar let out a wail as he flew off of his mount. He landed with a thud on his back. His cry was cut short by the desert ghoul’s boot crashing into his ribs. 

Then he was pinned to the ground; the boy was kneeling on top of him, the bloody knife pointed at his belly. 

"Wait! You, you don’t—" 

—

Kareva didn’t let him finish. 

He heard a gasp as he pushed the knife down into the man’s flesh. He pulled it out, slowly, never taking his eyes from his enemy’s face. Then he slammed the blade down a second time. The envoy cried out. He pulled his knife out again, even slower, and smiled at the sound of his victim’s whimper, and then suddenly he was unable to control his fury any longer. He stabbed downward again and again, ripping through cloth and skin, through fat and muscle and entrails, scraping bone.

—

Alakuz grimaced. For all the obvious provocation the envoy had given Kareva, he would have been much more useful alive. There were some things Alakuz would have loved to ask him.

For one thing, the envoy knew the name ‘Kareva’ when he heard it. His reaction made it clear that he’d expected a young, unprepared second son without any real authority. He had clearly planned to humiliate Kareva, frighten him into a quick submission and be on his merry way home to his warlord. 

He’d been working on incomplete intelligence, to be sure. He’d been expecting to deal with a child, not a killer. But there was still the question of where he’d gotten any intelligence to begin with. 

Next to Alakuz, the two archers’ mouths were working as they watched Kareva plunge his blade into a dead man again and again.

“Look away if you need to.” Inaz and Metoz looked over at their commander, unsure of what to do next, clearly uncomfortable with the grisly piece of theater unfolding below them. “You heard what that man said. Wouldn’t you be doing the same thing in his position?” Alakuz asked quietly. 

Inaz glanced back over the wall again, briefly, then he looked down. Metoz simply nodded imperceptibly, unable to take his eyes from the prince. Alakuz stepped forward, softly clapping each of them on a shoulder. “You both shot well. Go down to the gate and make sure he gets inside safely when he’s done.” They saluted him and turned towards the stairs. 

Alakuz turned back to the scene on the ground. Kareva had finally stopped stabbing the envoy. He was still on his knees next to the body, breathing heavily, his shoulders heaving. After another moment he stood up, covered in blood, and walked past the two dead Pohyor guards and back towards the gate. 

—

Kareva’s rage had not subsided; it had flooded him completely. He could not think clearly, could not frame words, could not distinguish between the sights and sounds cascading into his brain. 

He did not notice the gate swinging open in front of him as he walked through; he would have run straight into it, if he’d been walking any faster, and never known the difference. 

He did not register the faces of the two guards who saluted him as he walked past them, nor could he make out the faces and voices and bodies of his father’s refugees crowding around him, reaching for him, supplicating, entreating, calling to him, pulling on his sleeves... 

The first thing he heard clearly was a shriek from beneath him on his left side. He looked that way, trying to follow the sound, and saw a little girl with blood all over her hands. And suddenly his senses were coming back. He smelled the stink of the envoy’s blood and guts on his clothing. He saw more blood dripping down the left sleeve of his robes, and the right. He looked around and saw the faces now, saw their confusion and their fear as they all began to step back from him. He wondered briefly what his face must look like.

There was nothing to do about it now, anyway. He kept walking, ignoring whatever reactions were going on around him as best he could, until he reached the door of his father’s hall and stepped inside. Then he sank to the floor, back pressed against the front door, trying to shake himself free.

The specter was in front of him again, eyes open, face curled into a malevolent sneer, blood on his lips. He’d been there since the moment before Kareva knocked the guards’ spears aside. He’d been there for the past six years. 

—

Varyta sat with his back pressed against the front door of his hall. 

His dead son, his namesake, was in front of him again, eyes open, face curled into a malevolent sneer, blood on his lips. The handle of Varyta’s sword was protruding from the younger man’s chest. Varyta could see part of the blade coming out of his back, dripping red.

Varyta heard a rasping sound and turned to find the source of it. To his right, he saw a door that should not be there, and standing in its threshold was his other son, his younger son, Kareva. 

He heard the rasping sound again, louder this time, and suddenly Kareva was no longer there. There were only red footprints leading through that door from where he must have turned around…

Varyta stood up and ran through the door, trying to find his son, bring him back, make amends. He called out to him but there was no sound coming out of his mouth. There was no sound at all, actually. The only thing he could hear was that rasping noise, which seemed to come in and out of its own accord without any rhythm or reason…

This was wrong. He had to make himself heard. 

He inhaled deeply and screamed, except there was no scream, no sound at all, and now he was getting worried. He couldn’t call Kareva if he couldn’t make noise. He had to try harder. He took in as much air as he possibly could and let out a roar full of pain and anguish and regret, full of guilt and self-loathing, full of grief. He doubled over with the effort of it. Except no sound had come out. There was only the rasping noise again.

And then a few drops of red fell to the floor directly in front of him. He reached his hand to his face and touched his mouth. It was covered in a warm, wet, sticky mess of blood. He recoiled in horror and when he straightened up his eldest son was in front of him again, and suddenly Varyta felt the sword in his own chest, rather than his son’s.

Then Kareva appeared next to his brother, covered in blood, smiling just as cruelly at him. They looked the same. They were interchangeable. 

The rasping was getting louder, and faster somehow. Varyta tried to scream one more time, if only to make it stop.

—

Kareva had made his way back to the foot of his father’s bed. At some point he had heard a raspy, tremulous voice call out “Kareva? KAREVA!” from within the bedchamber, and after that came the first scream. He forced himself to stand up and walk through the hall into the room to see if his father was somehow awake. 

He wasn’t. Or, at very least, he wasn’t aware. His shirt front and his chin were covered in blood. He was tossing and turning, muttering as he thrashed about. He sat up and screamed again, hoarsely, unaware of how much damage it must be doing him. His eyes seemed screwed shut, and his fists were clenched so tightly that his fingernails were drawing blood from his palms. His rasping breaths were getting faster, more pronounced. 

Kareva made no move to comfort his father but simply stared, watching the last reserve of adrenaline spend itself. This was a journey Varyta would have to make alone.

Varyta fell back on the bed again after screaming for a third time. His body’s last resistance had broken, finally. He seemed to settle somewhat, his breath slowing down again, still raspy, still labored. 

Then it stopped.

After a moment that felt like a thousand years, Varyta gasped, then exhaled slowly. Another moment went by. Varyta gasped again, hungrily.

Then all the air seemed to slowly drift out of him, taking something else with it. 

Kareva sighed and looked down. He had loved this man, once.

—

Go to the next chapter.

—

The Last of the Etela: Table of Contents