Chirp chirp chirp…
The distant sound of nesting birds…
Whoosh…
The cooler breeze of the rainy season…
In the 40 years that Lionzio Miller spent as a farmer by trade, he’d only been able to appreciate the lack of dust in this cool breeze a handful of times.
After all, the approach of rain used to be nothing more than his cue to get his creaking bones into action.
But today Lionzio can enjoy the breeze, and the smell of rain on the soil. Though he would’ve never imagined this respite would be possible thanks to a Blazer of all things.
You’d swear any of his six children would’ve filled that duty long ago, but he never had the best relationship with them.
Blazers weren’t an uncommon sight here in Oldsteed Plains– why, the town was one of the many set up in the efforts to explore the Western Belt, after all. Plenty of young’uns with too much fire in their hearts and too much wood in their heads seeking whatever fortunes this frontier might provide.
That, or older folk with nothing left to lose, what little they started out with already ground down by life and blown away like dust in the wind.
Once upon a time such fortune seekers were called Trailblazers, a title given with a sense of awe and weight to it. But as the speculative nature of the fortunes to be found rose and the romantic call of the virgin frontier fell, Trailblazers became more and more common, to the point that what was once a revered title became a common word not worthy of the effort it took to utter.
Hence “Trailblazers” became just “Blazers”.
FWOOOOOOOOSH…
The breeze picked up, and the birds’ chirping momentarily stopped.
Blazers always dropped by for a night or three, gave some patronage, maybe made themselves useful if a pack of sandhounds ended up too close for comfort, before packing up and leaving.
Regrettably, not all of them were entirely pleasant. There were a fair few Blazers over the years who’d tried to skip out on paying.
There were even whispers that the father of Modda’s three year old son was one particularly gallant Blazer that dropped by four years ago… but considering Modda earned her living by providing a certain entertainment for visitors, it mighta just been her picking the most flattering one of the bunch.
The kid sure hadn’t looked particularly gallant up to now, though. He looked a bit more like a rat than a man to be perfectly honest.
Nobody judged Modda on her line of work, of course. After all, everyone had to make a living somehow, and there were bigger problems to worry about than an attractive young woman wanting to use her attractive young charms before age took that particular career away from her.
Whoosh…
The breeze stopped, and with it Lionzio’s reminiscing.
They say as you got older you started to live in the past more, but it struck Lionzio he hadn’t had time to even do that much. He was only allowed that luxury thanks to this particular Blazer.
But the Blazer’s diligence with manual labor wasn’t the only thing that stuck out to Lionzio.
No, this Blazer was an interesting specimen even among the vagabond fortune seekers who usually made up the Blazer demographic.
This particular example came into the town with very formal looking attire. White jacket and pants, white shirt under a white vest, light brown shoes more fit to walk down a fancy street than the rugged roads of the frontier. White on white on white, it would’ve looked like the sort of white attire an asylum patient would wear were it not for the red lining of the jacket and all the intricate gold embroidering and patterns sparkling in the frontier sun.
It wasn’t a practical outfit at all, and it was nothing short of impressive how white it had remained despite the surroundings.
As if the outfit wasn’t flashy enough, this particular Blazer had very long red hair tied into a long red braid.
This young Blazer’s unblemished skin and soft hands didn’t give the impression of someone that had ever worked a single day in their life, and yet the physical strength and resilience shown in the past few days shocked Lionzio.
This Blazer… this kid…
Lionzio had to refer to them as “kid”, not just on account of their youthfulness, but from the fact he couldn’t figure whether they were a lad or a lass. But he figured that if that didn’t trouble all the girls, and some of the boys, in the town, why should it trouble him? Didn’t matter to him whether the body tending his fields was better suited to skirts or suits.
And this kid tended his fields better than he ever managed even when he was of similar age.
Their first day there they pulled weeds and thrashed grain, the second they tilled the soil and drew water, and now on this third day they were planting seeds in the field.
It was all the more impressive when Lionzio considered the one element left out of all his musings on how he’d describe this particular Blazer when he was finally grey enough to spend most of his time telling stories from a rocking chair…
The kid had done it all while carrying a massive… thing on their back.
The general shape suggested it was a sword, though Lionzio had never heard of swords that big, and it was wrapped in so many bandages that it might’ve been a really weird banner, or the Western Belt’s most impractical oar for all he knew. If this kid was about 165cm tall give or take, the thing on their back was easily around 130cm. Almost one head of difference, always one head above ground.
It was slung across their chest with the help of some more bandages, and they refused to be separated from it. The kid had looked downright insulted at Lionzio’s suggestion to leave it in their room.
They had no problem leaving their jacket or few belongings in the rented room unchecked, but to suggest parting for a second from the massive thing on their back was over the line.
…
Chirp! Chirp!
As the birds’ chirping resumed, Lionzio thought about the fact that the kid hadn’t said a single word since arriving. The only reason they were working the land was because after minutes of uncomfortable silence when Lionzio tried to inquire how they were going to go about earning their stay without showing him so much as a nickel from their pristine white pockets, he’d muttered sarcastically that they could work in his fields for it and the kid had suddenly nodded enthusiastically.
The kid was no mute, though. The town had a mute already, Miss Fadina who worked as the treasurer for the mayor’s office, and contrary to the moniker the so-called ‘mute’ woman made so many sounds that people had come to understand her as if she had a language all her own.
No, this kid seemed to have the same thing so many Blazers that crossed Oldsteed Plains had in some amount… What was the name again? Impact? Hit? Something like that. There was even a variant that involved mollusks apparently.
“Ay kiddo! Time for grub, lessgo.”
Lionzio noted with amusement how the Blazer looked up like his ol’ dog used to when he heard his food tin rattling at supper time.
He took the kid to the Rocksteady Stable, one of the only restaurants and certainly the only bar in the whole settlement. Despite the ‘kid’ being old enough to drink, Lionzio was the only one sipping whiskey while he treated his useful and flashy guest to dinner.
At first Lionzio had been relieved to see that the Blazer ate very little and always excused themselves quickly to their room. But on this third day, his relief was starting to turn into concern.
It just wasn’t normal for someone that exerted themselves so much to eat so little…
The next morning Lionzio was in the Five-Legged Stallion, one of the handful of restaurants in the whole town, picking out a pre-packaged breakfast and lunch for his odd guest.
“Here’s me wishin’ I knew what the kiddo’s damage wa-AGH!!”
A warm spatula sharply rapped his knuckles. Lestiné, the cook and resident “widow ready to mingle”, had tactically allowed her quick spatula to cool just long enough to startle rather than burn the idle gossip out of Lionzio’s mouth. The spatula was already back on the griddle and deftly weaving its way through sizzling grease and batter.
“What!?” Lionzio protested, rubbing his hand. “We all got crossed wires and fried cables here and there, I ain’t judgin’. And I’ll have you know, for lack a better or any word at all, I ain’t got no other way a figurin’ out what’s in the kiddo’s noggin than to talk it through. Sheesh…”
Lionzio paid for the meals with an exasperated pout and left the Five-Legged Stallion to deliver them to his mysterious guest.
The Blazer was staying in a shed on the outskirts of Lionzio’s small field. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it had four walls and a roof and it allowed whoever was inside a measure of privacy.
In fact, considering those four walls had no windows in them at all, it allowed whoever was inside all of the privacy.
Knock knock…
Lionzio knocked a couple of times, then waited a spell so that his guest would have time to sort themselves out. After all, with how the kid vehemently refused… or maybe, was unable, to utter a single sound from their mouth, he didn’t expect his guest to welcome him in with a “how do y’do, give me a minute to finish polishing up my giant oar” or anything like that.
Lionzio pushed the door open a crack knowing the Blazer would be wide awake by this time of day, but today the lights were still off. He opted to leave both of the meals near the door and gently shut it without making too much noise.
As he walked back to his house to start his own day proper, Lionzio had a few things on his mind. Foremost was concern. The Blazer was usually wide awake by now, often warming up their muscles for the day ahead by the time Lionzio arrived with their food. Them being asleep at this time of day wasn’t exactly out of place for this sleepy town, but to Lionzio, it hinted at the Blazer having accumulated exhaustion.
Exhaustion then brought Lionzio’s mind to what little he had involuntarily seen of the Blazer in the bed. They were sleeping with the thing normally on their back right besides them! Not with the air of keeping a weapon on hand under their pillow as he’d seen plenty of Blazers do, but rather treating the massive heavy looking thing like it was some kind of pillow or safety blanket.
“AHEM…”
Lionzio loudly cleared his throat as if it would clear his head as he thought about the sight of the Blazer in bed.
Normally, though their appearance was mostly androgynous, Lionzio had comfortably assumed they were just a really effeminate man after seeing them toil in the fields so relentlessly. They’d also had a general lack of… flair and fussiness that Lionzio associated with girls as compared to boys.
But now, after seeing his guest with their long hair released from its braid and trailing down their scantily clad back, with their general guardedness completely gone as they slept? Lionzio wasn’t so sure about his assessment anymore. It wasn’t polite to ask about such a thing, but he couldn’t expect a “yes” or “no” about whether water was wet let alone just who or what or why or anything from the Blazer.
He clucked his tongue and muttered to himself as he got to his daily tasks.
“Kids these days…”
“It never hails, it never blastin’ hails ‘round these parts… so of rustin’ course when it hails, it’s only mah side a town that gets hit!”
Later that day Lionzio took advantage of the extra muscle at his service to transport some spare wood to Mr. Morris, the local handyman.
It was what everyone in the town called “repair credit”. Everyone gave Mr. Morris any spare materials they had lying around so that when a repair was needed anywhere in town, less of it was required.
Lionzio was thus explaining to his guest that the origin of all the spare wood they were lugging was from an old tool shed that had been destroyed in a freak hailstorm a few months ago.
Rebuilding it was a lost cause, so all the salvageable wood was now being carried in a cart drawn by the Blazer.
“But like my ma said, we all have a Big Plan laid out for us, so maybe the wood’s for the next time mah roof leaks, who knows.”
While Lionzio talked he could feel all eyes in town going his general direction, though he was aware they were directed at his guest and not himself. He mentally patted himself on the back. They were all oh so interested in the Blazer now, but he was the one who’d afforded the stranger a place to stay instead of shunning them for their silence.
Smack!
The sound of a loud hit, followed by a child’s crying and a mother’s protests scurrying away took him out of his smug thoughts. Lionzio then noted the Blazer was looking distressed towards the source of the sound.
“Past few somewhens the town’s pipsqueaks been messin’ around near Purple Cave…” He said, slowing his pace to match the Blazer’s. “There’s a rumblin’ and they dare each other to find the ‘monster’ in there or whatever.”
Lionzio tapped the Blazer gently to remind them to redouble the walking pace and then continued.
“Ain’t no ‘monster’ though. Prolly just a cave-in waitin’ to happen.” He jerked a thumb towards the mother that reprimanded her child just moments ago. “Crista’s a right sweetheart, but her pup keeps fallin’ for those dares and she’s at her limit methinks.”
The Blazer nodded as if relieved, and Lionzio noted that this was one of very few times he saw any emotion from them whatsoever.
After dropping off the wood at Mr. Morris’s storage, Lionzio asked Mr. Morris for an errand boy to push the cart back to his farm while he took the Blazer to go see more of the town.
In truth, the wood was just Lionzio’s excuse for the diligent Blazer to at least take it easy that day. Without any further excuses he decided to show the Blazer the aforementioned Purple Cave.
“Oldsteed Plains is like… 40 years old or sumthin’?” He explained as they slowly trekked up a hill. “When the Westward Break happened I came here with the wife and a kid. She and I had five more a the li’l buggers while out here, then they all had enough of me and the frontier, and went right on back to Valvion…”
A short silence followed where anybody else would have inquired further about Lionzio’s family situation. To his relief, his guest didn’t choose this particular occasion to break their commitment to silence.
“Cave was here when we came…” He continued climbing the steady slope after a very brief break. “Too damp to store anything, too rocky to build anything, nothin’ to mine, nothin’ to hunt…”
He then recalled how a few passing Blazers in the past thought it was weird or even ominous that the cave didn’t even have bats. The locals always believed the cave was so nasty that even bats and snakes didn’t want to live in it and that was that.
“Only thing this cave was good for was horny younguns pawin’ at each other… least ‘til the rocks started falling in.”
Lionzio paused for a second before continuing.
“Nah, no cave-in’s gonna knock any sense into a woodpecker thinkin’ about his wood. Rather, none of the pipsqueaks in town happen to be at that exact age just yet…but these double dog dares and what-have-you’s how it all starts, I tell y’what.”
As they approached, the Blazer suddenly stopped cold and didn’t take a step farther towards the entrance.
“Don’t like caves? Knew you were a smart one.” Lionzio told them with a chuckle. “S’all right though, you can see why it’s got that name from here.”
From the mouth of the cave, a very faint purple color glinted from the walls. The color wasn’t glowing from any source within, but rather, light hitting the rocks in the cave a certain way caused them to sparkle and glitter.
“They ain’t no gems or metals, and no Blazer knows what they is…” Lionzio trailed off when he saw his guest’s face twisted in concern.
Now this was certainly the most emotion he’d ever seen on their face this entire past half week.
“Oh come on, it’s just a buncha rocks. Nothin’ to worry over.”
He pulled them away from the cave and returned to town, hoping dinner would change the look on their face.
GROAAAAAAAAAARRGH
That night, after everyone had turned in, a chilling roar echoed from Purple Cave and all throughout the town.
The roar had the voice of a beast in pain, but the cadence of asserting dominance.
By the time Lionzio looked outside to see what was going on, the first thing he saw was his guest, fully dressed, running at a shocking speed past him.
As the Blazer continued their rush through the town, the familiar sight of the mother from earlier in the day, Crista, slowed their pace… that is, until they realized Crista was hysterically wailing in the direction of Purple Cave. She was being held back and consoled by some townfolk. The Blazer stopped merely running and became a white and red blur.
The few people that caught a glimpse of the Blazer streaking by in all the commotion sneered at first. Figures that a drifting Blazer would be the first to turn tail when trouble hit. But these few witnesses soon regret their prejudice when they realized the Blazer was running towards Purple Cave rather than away.
The Blazer’s reservation earlier in the day to step any closer towards the cave was nowhere to be found now as they sprinted inside, where the source of the sound awaited.
The not-so-imaginary ‘monster’ the children taunted each other over now loomed inside the cave in front of the Blazer.
It was like a bear, but three times the size of even the largest grizzly, and instead of fur its massive body was plated in some kind of bug-like exoskeleton. Instead of chitin, the monster’s armored skin was composed of rocks.
Rocks that glittered purple in the dim moonlight seeping from the entrance.
Beholding such a beast would have made anyone tremble in instinctive fear and confusion, but the Blazer simply glanced around the cave until they found a small figure trembling near a crumbling wall.
Crista’s child was curled up like an earthworm in the rain, both trembling and utterly frozen as if struggling in molasses on the floor. But the Blazer’s appearance startled them into making eye contact. The child’s face held horror and awe as the Blazer finally broke their silence.
“RUN!” barked the Blazer, in a rough voice that sounded more like a violent cough than a deliberate command.
But the monosyllabic imperative was enough to finally break the stalemate between his brain’s impulses to both flee and freeze at the same time. The child bolted past the Blazer, out of the cave’s entrance, and kept running back towards town without looking back.
Alone now, the Blazer and the beast sent each other measuring glares.
Faced with the child, the bug-like bear was posturing, feral and angry… but faced with the Blazer, the beast seemed eerily calm, ready to fight for its territory against a fellow apex predator.
The thing the Blazer carried on their back started emitting a faint white glow visible from the gaps in the bandages covering it. Upon noticing the light, the Blazer finally slung the object from their shoulder and gently placed it on the ground.
The bear bug took this lack of focus towards it as its chance to attack. It aimed to disembowel the Blazer in one decisive blow, but its claws met empty air.
In one fluid motion, the Blazer dodged backwards and chopped with their hand at a joint of the bear bug’s armor. The creature recoiled in pain, and the Blazer put more distance between them once again.
The Blazer waited for the beast’s next move. The gold embroidery on their clothes had turned red and seemed to pulse with light. The embroidery even seemed to leave the white cloth and stitch its pattern into the skin on their hands, shoes, and face.
The bear bug rushed down at its opponent. Rather than the singular lunges that had left its shoulders and joints vulnerable last time, it tried to overwhelm the Blazer with a flurry of claws. The Blazer dodged or deflected every swipe and adjusted their positioning to avoid the beast’s attempts to drive them against a wall.
After what seemed like an eternity but wasn’t more than twenty seconds, the Blazer found their mark and hacked at the same joint they had before with a single kick.
There was a wet crack, then a loud roar of pure pain. The roar was so loud that the Blazer flinched and was almost hit by the beast’s limb suddenly dropping to hang limp against its body.
The bear bug glared at the Blazer with a terrifying intelligence in its eyes. This was not a wounded animal, but an opponent seeking vengeance.
But this would be its undoing, as it drove the beast to attempt another decisive lunging swipe at the Blazer once more. The Blazer had ample room to aim towards neutralize its remaining arm.
Another wet crack, another roar of pure anger.
The Blazer was aiming to end this fight with one last blow to the beast’s neck when it suddenly spun on the spot, allowing centrifugal force to swing its limp arms towards its attacker. The Blazer barely had time to block the unorthodox movement before they were sent flying by the barely blunted force.
The Blazer tried to right themselves but found something was holding them in place.
A stalagmite of glittering purple rock was jutting out of the left side of their chest.
It’s always like this with you, have you noticed that?
They could feel their heart and lungs fluttering wildly against the cold rock in their chest.
Bad things happen when you try to protect others. Why do you bother?
The bear bug was clearly gloating as it turned towards the impaled Blazer.
But all that can finally end here and now.
As their sight turned blurry and they felt like they were fading away, they could see the bear bug open its maw…
Except you’re not going to let it end, are you?
…the opening continued down the beast’s neck until everything from its shoulders up became a giant crooked mouth.
Too stupid even to die. It’s as true now as it was back then. And besides…
The last thing the Blazer saw before their sight went black was rows upon rows of silver needle-like teeth sprout from the impossibly unhinged jaws right as they snapped closed on them.
You have a promise to keep.
It took the better part of an hour, but a search party had finally gathered outside of Purple Cave.
Amongst its ranks was Lionzio brandishing the machete he used for the particularly stubborn weeds in his fields. His guest hadn’t returned and he was growing wild with worry.
As the party approached the cave, an eerie silence fell over all of Oldsteed Plains. It wasn’t just that the sounds of battle or the roars of the beast had stopped. A low hum nobody realized was always there had finally gone silent.
They found an unholy mess as they entered the cave. There was no beast inside. There was a load of entrails, torn up organs, and armor-like plates of rock smashed all over the surfaces of the cave. Everything looked to have been ripped by inhuman bare hands into unrecognizable chunks.
Lionzio’s first impulse at the sight was to comb through the bloody chunks in the fear and hope he wouldn’t find anything that looked human.
Nobody found any trace of a person inside the cave despite all the debris scattered everywhere. Lionzio felt his heart fill with even more dread, rather than relief.
Where was the Blazer? Hell, where was that big thing they kept carrying on their back? Wasn’t here, wasn’t in the surroundings around the cave, and nobody saw anybody get out of the cave after Crista’s son came bolting and crying out.
As the sun rose, the search party was cautiously optimistic that the nightmare was over and talks of sealing the cave or even leveling the whole hill with dynamite began.
For the moment, Lionzio decided to go back to the shed where his guest had been staying to lock up their possessions. If they were out there somewhere as Lionzio could only hope, he didn’t want anyone in the town thinking they could “borrow” their stuff in their absence.
When Lionzio approached the shed, blood stained the entryway and door.
He rushed inside fearing the worst, but he found nothing.
In fact, aside from some drying blood stains, nothing of the Blazer’s was there anymore.
As Lionzio checked the blood trail which told of someone entering, grabbing things in a hurry and leaving, he noticed the wall near the mattress where the Blazer slept had four words hastily written in already browning blood.
“Sorry, thank you -Enio”
Lionzio’s legs gave out as he slumped onto the mattress in relief.
“Least I finally got your name, kid…”
He chuckled as a single tear drew a path down his leathery cheek.
Forsaken Gaia – Chapter 1: Heavy lies the sin on their back.
Written by: Fernando Damas (@ironiclark)
Edited by: A friend