Chapter 04 — Strained Steps

The roar, harassing and looming, pursued them for what felt like hours. Unconscious, Lisa was a heavy in Zuberi's arms, her stillness a contrast to the rush thrumming in his own veins. He burst through a final curtain of broad, silver-veined leaves and stumbled as the dense jungle yielded to a steep, rocky incline.

It angled into a sharp upward and unforgiving slope. Zuberi scrambled, arms screaming, Lisa's weight an ever-increasing burden with each ragged breath. His boots skittered on dark, sharp rock, slick with unseen moisture. Behind, Hanz cursed, navigating the treacherous climb. A final grunt from their pursuer pushed Zuberi to haul himself and his charge onto a narrow ridge at the top of the incline, a stone serpent carved through the jungle, as if to divide it. Below, on either side, the canopy unfurled, a carpet of tainted green to the right and bruised violet to the left. Above, the mauve sky pressed down, the suns bleeding long, distorted shadows across the land.

Zuberi paused, lungs aflame, and listened. The roar came again, but fainter now, distance muffling the sound, the jungle's density attenuating it. They were far from safe, but he thought they'd bought themselves more time.

Hanz collapsed against the rock face, breath tearing from his lungs, one hand clutching his side. "Great," he wheezed, words laced with acidity. "Out of the frying pan… into another frying pan. With a view." His eyes, wide with unease, traced the sheer drop to their left. "Couldn't have picked a more exposed place, could you, chief?"

Zuberi scoffed as he shifted Lisa's weight. "We are more exposed, yes, but we can see threats coming. Down there," he nodded towards the jungle, "ambush is a certainty. And," he hoisted Lisa to stress the point, "we are not swift."

A flicker of shame crossed Hanz's face before he looked away. Zuberi suppressed a pang of sympathy; the man's flippancy was grating, but the woman Zuberi was stating as their reason to take risks was his sister. This ridge offered better odds that the jungle by giving them awareness, a worthy trade for the stealth Hanz's clumsiness would compromise in any case. Zuberi did not say that.

He scanned the path ahead. The thin plateau snaked ahead as far as the eye could see, then crept up the side of the nearest mountain, and disappeared beyond. The porous black rock underfoot offered good traction. His senses, sharper than ever before, picked up subtle variations in the stone. He had a feeling there were things etched there, like writing erased by time, though the feeling vanished when he tried to focus on said etchings.

"We'll rest when we find a defensible position," Zuberi said, setting the pace.

A groan, then Hanz pushed himself upright, trailing Zuberi. It took no time for the complaints to resume, a low, bitter litany against the oppressive heat, the relentless twin suns, the treacherous footing, and Zuberi's burden.

"We should just leave her," Hanz said, voice loud enough to carry, though the shadows at his feet contracted to a barely visible circle around Hanz when Zuberi turned to scowl. "She's slowing us down." More grumbling. Hanz kicked a loose rock; it skittered, then plunged into the canopy below, dragging a few of its ilk for the steep incline. "Probably attract more trouble," he said, though Zuberi noted the volume decreased with every sentence.

Zuberi, aware exhaustion had frayed his nerves, resisted the urge to point out that she, at least, wasn't dislodging stones for their pursuers to hear and track. He chose instead to ignore the remark, recognizing that fatigue was as much to blame as his companion's attitude. Zuberi was starting to accept this was Hanz's way, deflecting fear and stress with cheap jabs. A flimsy shield, but Zuberi didn't believe he wanted to abandon his sister, despite the clear rift between them. He focused instead on each step, balancing Lisa's weight with care. A fleeting thought, almost a whisper in his mind, suggested a more efficient way to carry her, a subtle shift in balance that eased the strain. He let his body adjust and found that Lisa was easier to carry.

Time bled away. The suns began their slow, languid descent and, gradually, the ridge widened. Ahead, a structure emerged from the haze, a partially collapsed arch, the majority of its roof gone. The stone was different, Zuberi noted, regular and polished, hinting more at design than nature. Zuberi threw caution aside when the sheltering advantage it offered became evident, protection from the jungle on either side and, beneath its intact roofed section, from the unknown terrors the sky might hold. After the iron-shell snails, monstrous rhinoceros hybrids, and the silverbacks with unsettling, intelligent violet eyes, Zuberi had no desire to discover what aerial menaces this world harbored.

"Here," he announced, lowering Lisa against a weathered wall. "We rest." A shrug dropped the moon-fur rabbits from his shoulder where they were slung. "We can risk fire as we rest and hope that what is after us is not that intelligent."

The mention of fire, the promise of food, shifted the atmosphere. Zuberi unwrapped one of the two leaf-bundles he'd prepared near the watering hole, back in his crystalline shelter. As the pink flesh of the moon-fur rabbit was revealed, raw emotion flickered across the Hanz's face. Relief, hunger, even disbelief.

A faint smile touched Zuberi's lips, followed by self-reproach. He should have offered Hanz food sooner. Two full cycles Hanz had journeyed with him—irritable, difficult, yes, but if the drooling man in front of his was any indication, also starving. If his companion hadn't eaten since his arrival in this world, his abrasive demeanor was more understandable. It cast Lisa's desperate feating on the azure berries in a new light as well. Her symptoms, much more violent than Zuberi's, now made a grim sense. He had eaten with caution, testing a theory, half-expecting illness. She, likely driven by gnawing hunger and parching thirst, to say nothing of the fruits' own pull, had nibbled one, waited mere moments, if that, then devoured a handful. Empathy, sharp and sudden, pierced him, a shared understanding of the desperation this hostile place could breed.

Five days, ten, or twenty, Zuberi could only guess how long they had been stranded. The erratic dance of the suns defied familiar cycles. The true darkness of night never fell. Sometimes one sun blazed alone, sometimes both. Their rhythm was alien, unsettling, and resulting in nights that were nothing more than prolonged dusks.

His thoughts drifted as he prepared the precooked rabbit meat, sacrificing three precious arrows to make skewers. His breath caught as his fingers brushed the familiar spice-bundles in his pouch, tucked away inside his robes. Fearing them spoiled, he hadn't dared use them when alone, a fear exacerbated when his flint had appeared to have gone bad before surging back to life. Each bundle was dry, their contents as they were when he had wrapped them.

Lately, memories Zuberi had banished to the depths of his consciousness were forcing their way to the surface, unbidden, unwanted, uncaring. This was no different. Bakari, his best friend, voice rich with laughter, mocking Zuberi's culinary fussiness. "You'll fight your woman for the cooking fire, Zuberi!" A wide grin, a habitual wipe at the ruined eye, a gift from a lion's claw during Bakari's hunter trial. The teasing always died when the scent of death, that of butchering, of guts and splintered bone and blood, yielded to that of transformation, sizzling meat, rendering fat, simmering stew. Then, Bakari, mouth full, would pretend he did not enjoy every little bit as he wiped his bowl clean and eyed Zuberi's, knowing that most often than not, his friend would have left him a good portion. It had been a cherished ritual and Zuberi would love to revel in these memories alone.

But this place did not have the monopoly on cruelty. Plain old life had that to spare. Zuberi's eyes squeezed shut, and forced himself not to react as the final image, brutal and unforgiving, held all him, forcing him to watch at Bakari's vacant stare, the bad eye forever stilled, mouth frozen in vulgar silent scream of pain and terror.

Zuberi felt eyes on him. Lisa. Her gaze brushed aside the memory's hold. She locked eyes with his, as if to give him a warning, then they bore through him. Not long. A second or two, not much more. Then, a gasp. Silence. Their eyes met again, and this time hers held a flicker of knowledge, or was it recognition. Tears shimmered there, yes, but something else startled Zuberi more. The hum that had now faded into the background, omnipresent in the jungle, in the crystals, and even here, spiked. It lasted a fraction of the time it took him to formulate the idea, half a heartbeat, but for that long, the hum was a tether. It was terrifying and beautiful at once. It was a million threads of energy, of fire and ice, of knowledge and care, of space and of time, wound together and coiling even now, strengthening what was already unbreakable, undeniable, absolute.

Realizing he had stopped breathing, Zuberi looked away, turning back to the fire, flipping the makeshift skewers he had flipped seconds before. He reached for salt, then hesitated. Their supply was finite and replenishment an unknown. He decided he would keep the little he had for meats that proved less forgiving than the moon-fur rabbits, which were delicious even unsalted.

Zuberi glanced at Hanz, but the man's stare was plastered to the skewers. He let out a sigh, realizing he was glad Hanz had not witnessed the strange event moments before.

Silence settled over them as Zuberi finished cooking the meat. Soon, the crackling fire and the siblings devouring their portions was all the sound Zuberi let reach his ears. He ate sparingly, a token gesture honoring the traditions of the shared kill, rituals he once dismissed and mocked as archaic, now lone anchors to his fading identity. To forestall another wave of memories, he watched the siblings. Hanz devoured his portion, eyes darting between Zuberi and the remaining meat. Lisa ate slowly, deliberately, her gaze distant, lost somewhere Zuberi fond himself curious to know. He kept that to himself. The silence was a comfortable one. It felt necessary, a space for individual traumas to breathe, for the roots trust to sink and firm.

Zuberi extinguished the fire after they had eaten, Hanz having swallowed the biggest part of Zuberi's portion. He was happy to let him, a way to make silent amends for not offering sooner. But he was adamant when Lisa was about to push her own skewer to her brother. She needed the food more than they did. When Hanz snorted and both Zuberi and Lisa leveled murderous gazes on him, he pouted and went away, mumbling more of his harmless threats.

"Can you walk?" Zuberi asked Lisa.

She nodded, then winced at the probable headache due to her jerking her head. Despite his pretense outrage, Hanz was there in a flash, offering a hand to help his sister to her feet. The gesture would have surprised Zuberi, but he was starting to understand the young man with whom he traveled. Zuberi stepped back and let Hanz take the lead in helping Lisa, the gentle touches bringing a smile to Zuberi's lips. She swayed, leaning into him for a moment, and both went rigid, as if a viper had bitten them both. They were a tableau of unspoken histories and tangled affections, yet neither pulled away. Zuberi kept watching, the scene a mirror to his own buried griefs, strained bonds, words forever unsaid. He slammed the door on those memories.

Lisa was the first to break the truce, and Zuberi doubted she did this on purpose. "I can manage," she said, though her voice lacked conviction.

As if someone had slapped him, a second viper had bitten him, or he had realized his hands were holding a red-hot cooking stone, Hanz let go. Lisa stumbled but quickly found her footing.

Zuberi offered his own arm. She accepted it, resting her hand on his forearm. They set off again, moving slower now, keeping pace with Lisa's steps.

Whether he cleared the path ahead or was creating distance, Hanz scouted ahead. The journey resumed its punishing toll. The ridge shrank back to a narrow path that would not accommodate more than two abreast. As they crested the mountain, the drop on either side of the black rock was a yawning abyss. More than once Lisa had stumbled, leaning more on Zuberi as her strength waned. Tremors wracked her, pain etched lines on her face, yet, she uttered no complaint, her resolve a flickering but stubborn flame. Hanz, uncharacteristically subdued, pointed out loose rocks and treacherous footing. The sarcasm had vanished, replaced by a quiet watchfulness, a taut alertness. To his astonishment, Zuberi found he would not mind as much if the young man picked up his antics.

Zuberi had trekked across countless mountains. He'd always found how day could transition into night when, within a few steps, you found yourself on the other side of a mountain. Despite him expecting them to, things did not happen that way when they crested the mountain and took the turn to be on the other side of the mountain. Yes, the sky was a darker mauve going on indigo, yes the shadows lengthened further, but no more. The world's texture shifted in more subtler ways, colder air, scented with damp earth and an underlying metallic tang that made Zuberi want to retch, thinking back to his foes, the iron-shell slugs.

As they descended, the vibrant jungle on either side of the ridge yielded abruptly to strange growths. Skeletal trees, twisted and stark, replaced lush foliage, their branches draped in curtains of pale, spectral moss that swayed in the dry air. A heavy mist rose and thickened, too fast for fog. The mist felt like something sentient. It pooled on the ground and rocked back and forth like the waves of an intangible ocean.

The ground, which the trio could no longer see now that they were in the thick of the mist, crunched underfoot, like brittle bone shattering. Silence, profound and draining, swallowed the jungle's lively symphony. The hum remained, however, though it changed its timber in ways Zuberi could not explain, an echo of grief, a prelude to terrible things.

The terrain widened, and before long they could now stand three abreast. A valley lay before them, swathed in the dense, shifting fog, the ground below, obscured. Stone spires pierced the haze, precarious stacks that threatened to crumble and crush you at any moment, reminiscent of the bones of a colossus flayed where it stood. The trees grew denser along the path they could no longer see, branches intertwining into grotesque archways.

To Zuberi's right, Hanz halted, face contorted into apprehension, eyes wide, lips sealed, jaw muscles rippling. His shadow, faint as it was in the low lighting, was disconnected from him as if its own entity, rippling at the edges, as if trying to break free.

"What the fuck is this place?" Hanz's hand vanished inside his jacket, but came out empty after another string of expletives.

Cold dread seeped into Zuberi, a primal, unreasoned fear. The marks on his arms, which had faded, now tingled, a low hum vibrating through him. Superstition had never been his way. Curses were coincidence; spirits, mere shadows. But this place was fundamentally wrong. It felt like ancient sorrow, but amplified, concentrated. It felt like stepping into a raw, unhealed wound.

This was not a danger predators posed. Not even that of poison.

This was older. The source of fear itself.