The sky had sorted into pale blue — the first rays of light the empire had seen in over a month. Eirlyn's sense of smell was failing, and the more she wheezed, the more noticeable the gurgle in her throat bubbled. She'd been gripping her revolver like a lifeline ever since the battle, almost as if it would ward off death. She knew it wouldn't. That was why she was hobbling hill over hill toward the caravan.
The soil squelched at her every step, and she hummed so she wouldn't have to hear it. They were happy, loud tunes that blended together awfully, but anything was better than the dirt. Sometimes, as the sun battered the earth, she could've sworn the ground tinted red. A gooey red. But then, like waking up from a nightmare, the color slipped away, leaving only sunlit dirt behind. Yet she was still walking. Then it all started again.
It must've been hours since she'd escaped the battle. She'd crossed hundreds of winding hills, vision fluttering across the horizon. Nothing. The distant thundering of battle chased after her. A high-pitched sound rang out — like nails on a chalkboard — followed by a low rattling. The noise warped, seeming so close to her one moment and a hundred thousand paces away the next. She couldn't escape, like a prisoner trapped in a prison they didn't understand.
Her mind raced faster. Where was the caravan? It would have medical care, so where was it? She couldn't wait any longer. She needed it— had she been infected? What if she was already doomed.
But her thoughts were interrupted by another thunderous crack, only much closer, and much more surreal.
Eirlyn spun to face the noise, catching the after effects of the trembling crash. She saw it too well in fact — three figures battering into the spined abomination. It must've been… back up. But they were too close — the entire battle was too close. Maybe a dozen hills away at most. Nausea and disturbance quelled in her stomach.
'How… far did… I actually go?'
Then a fourth figure bobbed into view a few hills away. They were fast, much faster than her. They bowed out of the battle and headed in her direction. Eirlyn felt no inclination to run, half because if the person was a part of reinforcements, they likely weren't malicious. And half because even if they were, deeming her infected, she was too exhausted and uncaring to run. So she stood there and watched, body mangled and hair torn to scraps. Any will she had to go on had been stomped out along with that stare.
In fact, a part of her hoped they were there to put her down, but that candle was extinguished once she recognized the figure.
The woman.
She'd forced Eirlyn to run, and it was unlikely she'd go to such lengths only to kill her now. This tenuous thought floated to the surface of Eirlyn's mind along with the image of her stomping down on the guy's skull. Eirlyn's face remained blank, not bothering to scowl or laugh as she looked at her ally.
The woman reached the hill just behind Eirlyn, but instead of closing the remaining distance, she fumbled to a stop as she met Eirlyn's gaze.
They stared at each other, and the sound of battle seemed to fade away.
A gust swept by, flicking the woman's hair into the air. It was blonde, and shimmered like a stream of golden confetti strands. Like Eirlyn, her hood had also been torn open. But unlike Eirlyn, her goggles still masked her eyes, and she was far less bloodied. Still, she certainly wasn't healthy. A myriad of thin cuts sliced across her neck, and there was a deep gnash drilling into her side that her right hand pressed into. The woman's left arm seemed to be entirely unresponsive too.
Shakily forcing her finger away from her wound, the woman raised her hand, as if to communicate she meant no harm. Eirlyn must've looked like a wounded animal to her.
"Eirlyn, I…" she paused, seemingly not sure what to say, but Eirlyn didn't interject. The silence dragged out for a moment, and the woman must've taken that as confirmation to begin closing the distance, seeing that no move was made to stop her as she went. That was, until she crossed half the distance between them. Eirlyn took a step back, and immediately, the woman paused in her tracks.
"I… It's just—" Eirlyn turned away. Her voice was completely changed. It was sore, raspy, and hollow where it was meant to be soft and smooth. Magically suppressing the swelling in her throat and talking only worsened it, probably irreversibly, but Eirlyn ignored that.
"—The way he looked at me and—" she hiccuped, wanting to cry but unable to find the tears. "And you just—" Eirlyn stomped into the ground. It was a crude reenactment.
Insensitive given the guilt the woman probably carried by how she looked away, but a twisted part of Eirlyn wanted to worsen it. So the woman would remember what she'd done every time she tried to sleep. Then they'd both be up. But ashamed of her actions, Eirlyn quickly stopped, and stood there silently.
She was about to apologize when the woman tore off her goggles and threw them to the ground, unveiling two deep blue eyes. They were wet like the ocean and to Eirlyn's surprise, big like them too.
"Damnit! I'm not a hellwarden, Eirlyn! I can't do the impossible! What was I supposed to do?" she lashed out. "Huh? Let him bleed out? Save him so he could die later and bring everyone else with him?"
"His head!" Eirlyn shot back, suddenly reinvigorated. "His head! It- it caved! I don't care about your stupid reason or… or… damnit!" She kicked the dirt, but her anger soon died on her lips.
"You killed him." Her voice cracked, knees giving way as she rubbed her eyelids.
"I don't even know what to think. I don't even know what's real right now!"
Deep down she didn't truly blame the woman, but paradoxically, she also still found her guilty.
Eirlyn felt rather than thought. She felt the dread of reality, the sorrow at being alive, and the confusion as to why any of it ended up this way. Why had she ended up this way? Why had she done this to herself?
"…I'm sorry. I…" she apologized to the woman, but her voice trailed off. Eirlyn couldn't gauge the woman's reaction: her eyes were closed and her world black as, for many seconds, only a rustling sound met her amends. Then there was a sigh, and the woman's muffled voice responded.
"It's alright. I'm trying to get a grasp too."
Eirlyn's chin twitched. "Yeah."
The entire exchange couldn't have been longer than a minute, and yet she felt completely debilitated. A moment of silence passed between them, as if they were both waiting for the aftertaste of the argument to fade away.
Eirlyn bit her lip, watching the weird shapes of light bleed through her eyelids.
'This… was a bad idea.'
She'd wanted to be a warden. The fabled protectors of the empire — the last bastion of civilization in an apocalyptic world. She'd known the fatality statistics, the traumatic stories that seemed to haunt every warden in becoming one, but she'd thought she'd be different. Of course she wouldn't. What an idiot. Now someone was dead because of her.
How could she think of herself as anything but a murderer? She was nothing more than the blood on her hands.
Eirlyn's thoughts began to spiral, but the woman's awkward, dejected voice broke in before that could happen.
"The caravans' that way."
Eirlyn paused, then opened her eyes to see where the woman was pointing. West. At first glance, it seemed empty, but when she looked closer, caught between the cliff side and the endless hilly expanse, an array of camouflaged tents were pinned to the Earth.
Abruptly, she laughed. It was a short, sporadic huff that she immediately cut off. Her face twitched and contorted through a spectrum of subtle emotions until one expression stuck. Her thin, pale lips curved up serendipitously, her unusually dark and sharp brows relaxed. Emerald. Flinty. Mad. There was a listless, destructive rage in her gaze.
"I see."
The woman observed her, like how a teacher would a troubled student, but didn't attempt to extinguish the fire. "Let's go back… we both need… attention." She grabbed her flare gun, unknotting it from its holster. A puff drifted through the sky and toward the camp, first rising like a guiding star and then falling like a lost meteor.
Eirlyn nodded, not bothering to look up at the flare as she silently hitched her way back to camp. Any pretense of hurry in her step was gone, fickle as the wind that battered her into an occasional stumble.