Chapter Text
It had told her abould many things.
When it had been in a good mood, it had told her about a past that had been long forgotten. When it hadn't, it would complain about the state of its body. About its missing fragments. About its cursed existance, of which she had been both victim and perpetator.
It had started talking more, after she had been defeated on top of its bones. When her blood had become inscribed in the runed along its bones.
It had been very talkative, despite it only having talked when answering her. It had told her about the past, about all the stories its bones could remember, about concepts she had thought were only mythology. But when given the chance, it had also asked her about the present. About the world it had no longer eyes to see. About Kazdel, of which the last remnants of its body was trapped.
One day, it had stopped talking. Then, it had screamed. A warning. She had been scared, but by the time she had recovered to ask, it had fallen silent again.
The next day Kazdel had been consumed by Originium.
She had only been able to escape because of its help. Even if it hadn't answered anymore, its bones had. Only a few hundred Sarkaz, mostly dock workers and few mercenaries, had escaped.
And they had found the rest of Terra wasn't in a better situation.
Its bones had been uncontrolable. The constant hopping they had done in order to find a safe place to land had led them to see the icefields, covered in black snow. They had seen yan, battling against a dragon whose body streached far beyond the horizon. They had Iberia, Victoria, Rim Biliton and Bólivar being consumed by a tide of creatures as dense as the sea itself. They had seen Originium grow everywhere.
She hadn't been able to keep count of how many had died. Every jump someone had died of either illness, a loose proyectile, consumed by terrifying creatures or turned into a sprouting masses of originium.
It would have been more accurate to ask how many of them had still been alive.
Four.
...Five, if she counted it.
But its bones had broken. Its body fully fragmented, as its mind had been millenia before, it had known it wouldn't be able to return to Terra. It had had to depart. But it had known she wouldn't have survived. So it had given its most important memories directly to her.
And it was gone.
Mostly everyone was gone.
She was so alone.
Keeping track of months had lost its meaning, for the climate had been so messed it didn't follow any predictable patterns. They hadn't been able to measure using the moons, either, for in the chaos one of them had been destroyed, and just using one of them was useless to give precise dates.
After some time the chaos had come to a halt
Originium had stopped growing. The sky had gone calm again. An indescriptible silence had filled Terra for a night, before the sound of featherbeasts announced the worst had passed.
But by then she had already lost everything.
---
Now, she wandered the wastes. Her clothes were tathered, sewn together from what she looted from corpses and the few pelts she carved when she hunted to eat. She had adapted to survival.
She was so lonely.
Her oriopathy wasn't showing symptoms of worsening despite getting no medicine. It still hurt. It hurt a lot. But at least it wasn't growing. She was no expert, but if originium itself had stopped expanding - why wouldn't oripathy be the same?
And she was so lonely.
She carried a stack of weapons upon her back. A massive sword as tall as her. A bunch of black knives. A blood-stained blade that smelled of decay. A bunch of other weapons for which she had no use.
A pocket watch, and a broken arts unit.
She wandered the wastes. Not knowing why she was still alive, but with basic instincts not allowing her to surrender to death. Living misserably just to see another misserable day.
Her name was Ulšulah.
Her name was also Ines. Her name was Hoederer. Her name was Nadine. Her name was Lifebone. Her name was also many more she couldn't keep count of.
Her name was of none of her concern any more, for there was no one left to call her by it.
Yet she, a nameless Sarkaz kept wandering. Across lands she hadn't know before but wouldn't have recognized even if she did, for the world had turned upside down.
She continued, alone. With only the memories as company.
-----
The Lock and Key were guiding Mostima somewhere.
The Lateran Law had died, and it had almost taken all the Sankta down with it. Only those who accepted the truth managed to survive. And that had been the first onslaught, before everything else begun breaking the world.
Yes, she was following the Lock and Key.
Alone.
She couldn't have brought Lemuen with her. She hadn't fully recovered when everything went down, and her sister had stayed back in the camp where they were taking refuge. Even the hot-headed liberi wasn't able to go with her after seriously having hurt her arm saving her from a collapsing building.
But Mostima couldn't stay with them. The Lock and Key, or, better said, the very few strands of consciousness left in them, were guiding her somewhere. She was curious. The Lock and Key had saved the four of them. And it had been revealing secrets... many of which Mostima had learned already on her own. Secrets that had driven Andoain to the verge of madness, but which Mostima had ignored for so many years. However, it was still worth following the direction it was pointing at - for the secrets it was revealing were not about a future to obsess over but about a past about to be forgotten.
Its own past. Because it was dying, and apparently wanted Mostima to be its witness.
She had plenty of experience living of the wilds due to her many years as a Messenger and Legatus. Even so, she was struggling. It was so rare to see any kind of beast, or even just some berries. Water was contaminated - and not only with originium dust, but with hundreds of other pollutants caused by the end of the world. Finding shelter was also a challenge, you couldn't trust anything to be safe anymore.
Despite this, she thought the hardest challenge had been the landscape. In all the chaos, whole mountains had risen and fallen, originium even creating its own peaks and ravines. The feramuts that had coarsed through the lands, either with murderous intent or survival instinc, had reshapen the lands they passed through.
Her detailed maps, gathered from her years of work, were useless.
Anyone not familiar with Messengers would think it didn't matter much. She was following the Key and Lock, without a destination in mind she didn't really need a map. However, those in the know knew the dangers of not having a map. Even if your destination was still unknown. Navigation was key. She would've done the job of a cartographer, were it not for the fact that she was in a hurry.
Still... She must admit there were pretty views. Even amongst the newly formed mountains and the pits and valleys, the sunrises were still there. The mountains themselves, fully formed of originium, glitered in a beautiful manner. The trees that had survived the cataclysmic event now nurturing small families of musbeasts and fowlbeasts. The ocasional drizzle of rain in those fleeting moments before a thunderstorm. The world had crumbled away. Yet it felt peaceful.
She needed to continue walking forwards.
---
Separated by an ocean of ignorance and plains of the forgotten, they walked towards each other. Unknowing, but fully aware. Time had come to an end.
---
As the sun rose up, Mostima packed her sleeping bag. She had taken the risky decision of trusting the trail of a burdenbeast and sleeping out in the open, protected by nothing more than a few trunks of fallen pine trees. It had been a cold night. She put on her jacket, took out some dried fruits and had breakfast.
She had been on the trail for two months now. Almost three since the world had descended into chaos. Soon, winter would arrive. It would probably take many of the lifes of the few survivors to the Final Catastrophe...
No that didn't sound right. She still couldn't find a suitable name for the 'End of the World'. She always could find hilarious names to call Fiametta by but couldn't come up with something as important as this. Had she always been this unserious?
Finishing her breakfast amongst her musings, she rolled up her sleeping bag and tucked it to her backpack. It was rather heavy. She sighed, for she knew she couldn't bring a vehicle, not even a burdenbeast, due to the unknown nature of the new Terra below her feet. Her legs would be more reliable, even if that meant putting even more weight on them.
Next thing after clearing her camp was to do some cartography. It wasn't something she really needed to do, but maps could be useful, and not only for her. If her drawn maps could eventually help others survive... She could trade copies away to get some more supplies.
Picking up her bag, she started climbing tallest hill nearby. Judging by its shape, it had been a mountain peak. Tallest of a mountain range. Now, the whole mountain laid half-submerged inside the quicksands that had become common in that area, a star-shaped shard of originium sitting on its peak as if it was the final decoration on a holiday tree.
Getting to the top took her a while. Thirty-two minutes and fourty-five seconds to be exact. Her sense of time had already been good, but with the arts within the Lock & Key she could always measure time more accurate than any clock.
"Sixty eight days. And the arts haven't weakened in the slightest. Even when the voice disapeared, it still got replaced with the nagging feeling to go elsewhere."
She was also bored. Not because she disliked mapping new places. The current area was rather interesting and she was sure she was going to enjoy finding the path between the sunken pits and the quicksand. She was bored because she had no one to tease. Not her best friend Lemuen, nor her apple-pie loving sister, nor 'Suffering'. Not even one of the many operators from Rhodes who she went on operations with.
Rhodes Island... She checked her specialized comunicator. She had had direct line with Rhodes if conditions allowed for it, but now it had gone silent, as everything else. She knew that the bunny leader of Rhodes, cute new Mon3tr and the hooded Doctor would have managed to survive the storm. She just hoped they had manage to save most of the people there. Although she was sure they had taken as many as possible with them.
She packed the map. Not the comunicator. She found herself fiddling with it. She should have resumed walking but she was here, waiting for something to happen.
Thats when she saw her. She inmediatelly took out the spyglass from her pocket (a keepsake from a certain Iberian liberi) and locked sights onto a sarkaz. There was nothing out of the ordinary about her. Forward facing horns, pink hair. Small tail, since it was indistinct from that far away. And dressed in rags. Carrying a bunch weapons on her back. Walking very slow, though. Either they weighted a lot or she was very weak.
In which case it was safe for her to go meet them. She really needed someone to talk with.
Then a stinging sensation of realization washed over her as she instinctively activated her arts.
That person had been walking towards a cliff.
Even with time dilation arts Mostima was unsure if she could reach her. She had thrown down her pack and bursted out running without thinking twice. She was going much, much faster than the time arround her. But even arts had its limits. And she wasn't sure if those limits would resist under the stress.
You see, gravity had this bad little habit of escaping the grasp of time.
THUD
...
Droplets starting falling on Mostima's face
...
Rain would soon come.
...
There was a cave, in the cliff. She'd have to climb a little
...
It was hard to climb carrying so much weight.
...
...
...
...was the person she was carrying even alive?
She could only hope so
For she had felt the staves react.