Will You Die Here?

When he wakes there is the smell of charred flesh. He sits up in the dry grass and looks down at the seared skin peeling back from his leg. He looks out at the village and can't believe the sight of it. There is no village. There is rubble. There is char. There is death. The homes that hadn't been burned to the ground are gutted like skulken. The streets are ripe with bodies.

Jora does not go in search of his loved ones but he finds them. He closes Hammond's pale eyes with his fingers. He lies beside Amerra and resists the urge to cradle her crushed skull in his arms. He imagines what it would have been like to tell her "I love you". He imagines the look that would have softened her face as she whispered it back.

He wanders the ruins of his civilization each morning, turning endless circles in the charred dirt as if the passing of one day could undo the devastation of the one before. Hungry and full of lonesome he prays, he cries, he curses, he spits, he breathes, he sleeps, he stares up into the stars. The sky always moonless as if the watchful eye of the gods too has abandoned him. The wound on his leg begins to stink and bubble up with puss. He ignores it. He is empty.

Then slowly. Creeping up on him. There comes a desire to open his wrists like a love letter, both tenderly and impassioned. His face an ocean of snot and tears, he sets about finding something sharp. Anything to scratch the itch. But coming up empty handed, he resolves to hang himself instead.

Jora limps into one of the gutted houses, strips the bed of its sheet and knots it with clumsy hands. He climbs slowly up onto the roof, affixing his shoddy noose to a low hanging nearby tree branch. His mind is a muddled blur of sounds and color, empty of all words and thoughts as he slips the other end of the noose around his purple neck.

Jora thinks to murmur one final prayer to the gods, but decides coldly that there are none. He jumps as if to take flight and the sturdy grip of the noose clips his wings. It's like fire at his throat. Tears instantly spring to his eyes, he feels his lips sputtering but no part of his body is his anymore. He's floating above himself, looking down. He's inside himself so small, a scar-less child playing in a grown Tarnanite's cloak.

His vision sways and springs and darkens as his legs kick futilely. Somewhere far away he thinks he hears a cracking sound. His brain is getting cloudy. The cracking sound grows closer, hungrier. Jora gasps out what he's sure will be his last breath and then the branch tears loose from the tree and he spirals down into the dirt.

Puffs of it fill his mouth and he lies there coughing. Hot tears sprint down his cheeks, his lungs threatening to come up his throat. His mouth is full of grit. But slowly the darkness is receding. When he can easily take in air again Jora tilts his head back and screams. It scares the birds from the canopies of their trees. It shakes the gods in their hiding places.

He screams again, banging his fists in the dirt. His screaming melts into sobs. He wrenches the useless noose from his neck and his fingers brush the amulet. He remembers the joy in Hammond's eyes when the old king had put it over his head. He remembers the pain in Amerra's voice the last time he had seen her alive. "Come back from there! It's not safe!".

He should be the one rotting dead in the rubble. For his selfishness. For his anger.Him. It is all his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault.All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault.All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. All his fault. No.

No.

No one's.

None of them.

None of them deserve to be dead. Not even Nadir. Not even Nadir. It's the humans. The humans. Those monsters who had stripped everything from him. Who had stripped everything from so many other peoples. They do not belong in this galaxy. They are a plague. A blight. They are the only ones who deserve to be wiped out. Why should he die hopeless and alone while the filthy humans live on to continue ripping the galaxy apart?

It's me, Jora thinks suddenly. As if the realization had been waiting there all along in a dark room in the corner of his mind; waiting for him to fling the door of that room open and discover it. I am the one to do it. I am the one to destroy them.

Suddenly, he feels disgusted with himself for seeking death. He drags his starved and stupefied body to it's feet. The amulet pressing against his skin seems to burn now with strength instead of secrecy. I swear to you Amerra. Hammond. Cardimina. I will carry your deaths with me like a tumor in my heart. And as the weight of them grows and metastasizes so will my conviction to make them pay for everything they have done. I will erase them from the universe.

With something new and steely churning in his guts, Jora turns and limps off towards the forest.

He makes salve from the bark of the trees, the way he was taught to in the King's army. He follows the map in his memory to a spring. Nurses and cleans his wound until the feverish infection begins to recede. When he is strong enough he hunts as many skulken as he can find. He eats the meat raw, it makes him stronger. He crafts makeshift canteens and containers and a large pouch from the skin of the skulkens. He stores as much food and water as he can in them and puts it all in the pouch and straps the pouch to his body.

After many days of resting he starts walking. He scours the planet for miles. He resolves to leave no corner of it untouched until he finds what he's looking for. The felled starship. He spits on the decomposing body of the human. He bends his head and ducks inside. Everything is in a strange language, foreign symbols that he can't understand. The letters mock him. There are packages of what appear to be dried human food. There is water. Enough food and water to last for many moons.

It takes him years it seems to decipher the symbols but he reconfigures the control panel and the engine bubbles to life. Jora holds his breath as it wobbles on it's weak wing and trembles and gently lifts itself into the air. The sustainer engines cough fire and then he shoots up into the sky and off the planet.