Chapter 167: Chapter 162

Despite the cold wasteland around him, Gils’ lungs burned from the exertion of constantly running for days. The Field of Craters was up ahead, and somehow, he had managed to keep a good distance from the Mancatchers. 

 

The most basic of tribal lessons had kept him alive so far, allowing him to stay clear of Doomgeese tracks and other signs of wild danger. Unfortunately, tribal wisdom did not provide any answers against losing his pursuers. And his moosefang dagger would do little against the well armed and armored marauders. The ruins and balding forests of the wilderness offered no sanctuary against the highly proficient manhunters, so Gils had no choice but to keep moving.

 

Gils wanted to just hide in a hole, any hole, but his tribe depended on him, as low as their chances were right now. He knew he was being herded away from neighboring tribes, and being driven into the open, desolate wild was tantamount to a death sentence. But fleeing meant that the tribal boy might outlast his hunters, and give him that slightest of chances of saving his people, his family.

 

It was the thought of rescuing his siblings and parents that forced his legs on, kept his mind awake, and numbed the biting cold. He stopped bothering looking over his shoulders anymore, the muted jeering from far behind Gils was all the boy needed to know that they were still on his trail.

 

He needed to risk shelter in the Field of Craters. Everyone knew that none dared enter the cursed place. It was a desperate plan, but with the Mancatchers slowly gaining on him, it was the best idea young Gils could come up with.

 

The boy slowed to an exhausted stumble when he cleared the broken roads and frozen forest to see what must surely be the Il’dorlean. The storied tradepost that the older hunters once visited might not exist anymore, but hopefully the Doomgeese had moved on from the site, if not from the island entirely. And hopefully they left something for him to hide in.

 

Gils forced himself to keep moving, there would be a bridge further south. Hopefully the cursed wind from the Field of Craters would leave it untouched. He eventually slowed to a stop as something utterly foreign graced his tired eyes. Massive spikes, akin to giant ribs, loomed over the ruins and trees. Gils turned his head to find that the things were evenly spaced out across the horizon.

 

Was it something new that the cursed Field had spewed out? None of the elders’ tales mentioned anything like that, and it was definitely something worth mentioning.

 

The rough voices of Mancatchers snapped the boy out of his musing, and he went back to running. 

 

Or at least, he tried to.

 

Stopping was a mistake. After that little break, his body was reminded of just how much it needed rest. His limbs, his lungs, even his head, screamed for him to lie down for just a moment. But Gils trudged on, limping weakly towards the closest spike. He still clung onto that sliver of hope. Maybe no one ever mentioned the spires because it was really nothing of note. Maybe the malevolent red glint on the tips of the curved things were just for show.

 

Whatever it was, it probably beat whatever fate awaited him once the manhunters caught up with him.

 

No, no. If. If they caught up with him.

 

Gils ignored the curved, black metal that slowly grew larger as he dragged himself towards it. He fully focused what little will he had left to silence the aches and pain, and to just…keep…movi-

 

He let out a yelp as he tripped and fell, and there was no strength left in his weak body to pick himself up.

 

So Gil resorted to crawling. Panting heavily, his lungs thanked him for the slowing pace, but his instincts wailed at the inevitable doom that would befall him.

 

The voices of ravenous, angry men grew louder and clearer.

 

Gil’s legs finally gave up, and his thin arms were not strong enough to drag his whole body across.

 

He looked up, finding himself in the shadow of a massive, sharpened thing that was either capped in shiny red stone, or painted with wet blood. The boy collapsed on his back, managing to raise his head to see his pursuers once more after four days since the hunt began.

 

They slowed to a lazy walk after seeing his sorry state, their polehooks and fusils cradled with predatory anticipation. Gils couldn’t understand the harsh noise they barked out, but their laughter told him enough.

 

The Mancatcher party of twenty got within a harpoon’s throw from him, enough for the exhausted boy to make out the details of their ugly, scarred faces. None seemed to care about the curved spike that loomed over everyone.

 

So it was truly nothing of note, then.

 

A few of them exchanged words, and then those armed with fusils brought their weapons up with hungry grins. Gils gulped down his last breath, while his young mind did its best to brace himself.

 

Then a deep hum made everyone pause. Gils looked up along with the Mancatchers, and they saw the cap of the spire glow brighter and brighter, just as the humming grew louder and louder.

 

The red glow turned almost white, and then Gils had to avert his eyes in pain as a beam of light flashed out with a loud thrum that rattled his bones. The smell of burnt meat made him open his eyes and find that wafting piles of ash replaced most of the Mancatchers. They had been killed so fast that they didn’t have time to scream.

 

Not the seven survivors though, those Mancatchers at the edges of the now-disintegrated group screamed in terror. Some tried raising their weapons to shoot at the structure, others turned to flee. None were allowed to do as they wished, as clawed giants appeared out of thin air and tore into the manhunters. 

 

Gils eyes went wide open in mute terror as he watched the nightmare of his tribe be torn apart by even more terrifying beings. The four-armed things moved with lethal quickness, tearing out arms and legs of the wailing men like they were nothing. In just a few seconds, all seven were reduced to screaming stumps, carried by these metallic monsters with glowing red slits for eyes.

 

They walked past him, and for a moment Gils thought he had been spared by some fluke of the spirits. Then another monster appeared out of thin air right in front of him, and the boy froze up. The cyclops regarded him in silence, like a Black Grizzly deciding whether to make a meal out of a wounded seal. Then it barked a noise similar to the Mancatchers, and Gils found it in him to regret not paying attention to the lessons on the outsiders’ tongue from his elders.

 

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“P-Please don’t…don’t kill me…” he whimpered.

 

There was another pause, and then the giant seemed to stare off into space. Gils almost believed that he was truly beneath such creatures to be worth their time, but then his hopes were dashed when another monster appeared.

 

The many-eyed, many-tentacled thing swimming in the air towards him made the boy finally scream. He brought his hands up in a vain hope of protection, but the creature’s bulbous head stopped just a few handspans away from his own face. Gils dared look the monster in the…eyes…and saw nothing but empty coldness in the red, reflective orbs. A clawed tentacle slowly slithered into view, with something grasped in it. Gils had no time to react as the artifact was pointed at him and he was bathed in a white light.

 

Panic turned into dumbfounded amazement as he immediately felt better. The burning pain of his lungs, heart and limbs were banished, and so was most of his weariness. Blinking in confusion, the boy slowly sat up to regard himself, finding scars old and fresh gone from his skin, and the lumpy growths on his face and body were gone.

 

More movement caught his attention, and another tentacle deposited something on the ground before him. With a delicateness he hadn’t expected, the many-eyed thing carefully cut apart the object with its tentacles, revealing it to be a package with small bricks inside.

 

His nose picked up the familiar scent of cured meat, and Gils immediately understood what the opened package contained. He looked up at the creature, now with more reverential fear more than sheer terror. “Is…is it for me?” he asked, pointing at the strange blocks of pemmican, and then at himself.

 

The creature remained still, so Gils let his basis needs drive him and slowly went for the food. The lack of reaction encouraged him, and he picked one brick up and gave it a nibble.

 

Gils almost dropped the food as the sudden rush of rich taste flooded his tongue. Nibbles turned into greedy chomps, and the boy quickly devoured the offered meal without any care in the world. A bottle of water appeared while he was eating, and he gulped it all down in an instant. It was cleaner than anything Gils had ever drank, not even the purified snow tasted so pure, so free of metals and grit and dirt.

 

Another package of food was offered and licked clean, and only then, as he leaned back to let out a satisfied belch, did Gils notice a growing dark shape in the sky. It was like one of the metal birds from the ruins, only more like a bird than the others, and in the same black metal that covered the red-tipped spike, the cyclops (who had now disappeared), and the many-eyed…thing.

 

The flying vessel descended a short distance away, and out walked a few people. They were nothing like the outsiders Gils knew. The men and women were clean, smooth-skinned and free of any bumps or growths, and wore clothes that were far too thin for the cold. To the boy who was used to the malformed, scarred faces of his tribe and the Mancatchers, they were utterly beautiful. It was as if these people were the spirits made manifest.

 

A woman with short black hair walked up to him, her warm smile made Gils smile as well. “Hello, small one,” she greeted, and Gils perked up at understanding her speech. “Me, you understand?”

 

Despite the way the words came out, it somehow sounded far smoother, far more natural than Gils tribe’s own tongue, as if it was the correct way to speak it. Gils nodded quickly at the spirit woman, and felt comforting warmth as her smile grew. She turned to a man behind her, stern and almost menacing in his loose coat. They exchanged words, and then the woman turned back to Gils.

 

“I am Curie. What is your name?”

 

Gils answered without hesitation, and then answered some more questions.

 

The spirit people were curious about him, asking about where he came from, why he was running, and who the Mancatchers were. Curie translated his answers to the others, and Gils didn’t know whether their frowns were a good thing or not until she finally told him, “Come, let us free your tribe.”

 

Gils’ eyes remained wide as he followed them into the metal bird and soared to the heavens. He marveled at how the walls inside turned into glass and allowed him to view the world below him. Curie confirmed the landmarks with him, and in no time at all Gils was looking down at the Mancatchers’ camp. At this height, he doubted that anyone had noticed them.

 

“Will we go down to save them?” he asked, noting how the metal bird was floating in place.

 

The stern man called Sev seemed to understand his question and raised an open palm at Gils. “Not yet,” Curie replied, and pointed down at the encampment. “We’ll make sure it’s no danger first.”

 

Danger? Gils wondered what could possibly harm the spirit people with all the powers they wielded.

 

As if sensing his thoughts, Curie’s smile became a little sharper. “For you, and any of your tribe.”

 

His disbelief was interrupted as a whole cloud of tentacled servants blinked in the air just below the metal bird. The boy couldn’t properly pick out any individual creature amongst the swarming, roiling mass. Then, as one, they dove down.

 

Just seconds after watching the metal tide smash onto the Mancatcher’s camp, the metal bird descended and Gils exited along with the spirit people. Contrary to his expectations, the place was not razed at all, though the pitiful screams of dismembered Mancatchers filled the air while the people from their larders were cowering in sheer terror.

 

“Do you see any of your tribe, Gils?” Curie asked with an extended hand. The boy first squinted, and then broke into a run towards a group he recognized.

 

His family was bruised and cut up a little, but otherwise alright, as were most of his people. “Mama! Papa! The spirit people helped us!” Their astonishment outweighed their fear as they saw him, and elder Eloi gaped first at the boy, and then at their rescuers. The elderly matriarch staggered on her feet despite her overgrown right leg, and then dropped to the cold earth to prostrate herself before Curie and the other spirit people, mumbling delirious gratitude.

 

The other freed people, whether from Gils tribes or the neighbors, quickly followed suit. Gils himself fully realized who had saved him and his tribe, and quickly brought his forehead down to the earth. One did not take the higher powers so lightly after all.

 

Curie’s voice sang out again, drawing everyone’s attention. “No, no, please. Rise.” Gils knew for a fact that the sight of her warm, beatific smile enraptured the crowd. “We will feed and heal you all soon. Please, rise.”

 

After a hearty meal provided by the many-eyed servants of the spirits, and after watching everyone lose their growths and wounds, when Curie invited the survivors to the spirit realm of the Nexus, it was no surprise that everyone instantly prostrated themselves once more pledge themselves to Curie and Sev, her lord husband.

 

Gils would take pride in serving as one of the guides to bring salvation of the Nexus to the other tribes to the Northeast Coast. Even after a thorough education, the rescued tribespeople of the desolate region would become one of the most devout followers of Sev, and even more so Curie.

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