FIFTY-FIVE: Man on the Moon

 

Alden had heard that some humans could run hundreds of miles without sleep.

Not even Avowed. Just ordinary humans.

Not that ordinary, he thought as he jogged. Ultramarathoners. Trained, awesome people.

He was not trained. Or awesome.

And he was carrying another person on his back.

But if being an Avowed was ever going to count for something, he wanted it to count for this. He had Azure Rabbit. He had a whole lot of ground for it to work with.

It wasn’t that he thought he could travel across country without rest for days, but that he needed to. Depending on when Kibby had stopped the car, depending on how fast his average speed was, the trip could be two days. Or four. Or more.

Maybe there were three hundred miles left to go. Maybe there were twice that many.

Alden hadn’t asked Kibby for the number before he started carrying her because it didn’t matter. They were in it now. He would run, walk, or crawl them out of it.

Or they would both die.

In a way, the clarity of his options was a gift.

There was no longer any point in second guessing the decisions that had led them here. Alden was sure he’d made stupid mistakes. Probably a lot of them. He was ignorant and incompetent in too many ways. But he’d done his best, and now all the choices had been exhausted.

He didn’t even have a compass. He just traveled in what he hoped was a straight line away from the car, even though he knew it probably wasn’t. He tried to aim for large holes or ditches he could make out in the distance directly in front of him. It was the best he could do for landmarks. At least his target—the non-chaos zone—was massive. As long as he didn’t get delirious and start walking in completely the wrong direction, he wasn’t likely to miss.

He ran sometimes. He walked others.

He wished he had music to drown out the drum of his own heart in his ears.

When he got thirsty, he planted a sprinkler deep in the ground and sealed a plastic bag over its head to catch some of the water. “Thanks, Thenn-ar,” he whispered as he paced around the device.

He couldn’t stop moving. Maybe Kibby could still withstand the corrupted environment for a long while. Or maybe it was only minutes. He didn’t think she knew any better than he did.

It took a while for the sprinkler to produce a decent amount for a drink, but it was better than trying to carry jugs of water on top of everything else. He ate some dried fruit while he waited. When he’d drunk his fill, he picked up his sprinkler and kept going.

 

*****************

 

Hours later—more than half a day if Alden’s time sense wasn’t totally wrong—he realized something bizarre was going on with the ground.

It might have been going on for a long time. The convenient way his trait interacted with the soil while he was in motion meant he felt like he was kicking off of something solid even when it was it just a thin crust of dirt or it was loose and sandy. So he didn’t notice what was happening beneath his feet by feeling it.

Instead, he saw the whole landscape do something.

The change was so subtle it would have been hard to notice except for the fact that the view on Moon Thegund was monotonous. Before it was grass. Now it was ditches and potholes.

And here…

Did the dirt just move? All of it?

Because there was no wind, Alden was not accustomed to seeing motion of any kind around him. He slowed down to his slowest walk.

Several minutes later, it happened again.

Everywhere he looked, in the same instant, the loosest patches of soil shifted. Then, they settled back to stillness.

I think it’s been less than a day. I’m really tired, but I can’t be hallucinating yet.

It happened a few more times, and Alden finally stopped walking altogether and just took single steps from side to side to keep the skill active on Kibby. There was a shallow depression in the ground in front of him. A patch with sandy crumbling edges.

He stared at it intently, and a couple of minutes later, the grains of dark sand all shivered in place. A small chunk of the edge collapsed into the depression with the quiet hiss of falling grains.

Then, everything was still again.

“Okay?” Alden said to himself. “What was that?”

He kept walking and watching, trying to come up with theories. The only one that made sense was that the whole ground was moving. Like an earthquake. If an earthquake happened for the briefest of moments at perfectly regular intervals.

Assuming it wasn’t a giant subterranean demon creature’s heartbeat—thanks for coming up with that thought, brain—his next, more hopeful guess was that it might have something to do with the wizards cleaning up the chaos.

It’s like something is banging on Moon Thegund like a drum.

On the one hand, that would be good news. Being close enough to feel the effects meant he hadn’t turned in a giant semi-circle and started heading back to the lab.

On the other…what if they weren’t doing some high-powered cleansing spell to get rid of the chaos like he and Kibby had both assumed? What if it was more like they were dropping magical nukes on it from space?

He was hoping to walk into a clean zone surrounded by benevolent chanting wizards. Not step out of the chaos into a giant bombing range.

Alden thought that most of the things that would make a planet-sized moon tremble would make a human-sized person dead.

But that changes nothing, he decided. Because I can’t turn back.

One foot in front of the other. For as long as he could naturally.

And after that, he still had a couple of tricks in his pocket.

 

***********************************

 

When I get home, I’m going to be lazy.

Alden made this decision…sometime. How long had it been? A full twenty-four hours yet? Longer?

Was that only wishful thinking?

One of the sprinklers had given up. He’d gotten water out of it five times. Elepta Farm had earned his business if they ever actually grew something that wasn’t mildly toxic for humans.

I’m going to be one of those lazy, rich Rabbits that everyone envies and hates.

No even worse than those Rabbits. I’m going to be the laziest one that ever existed.

He would never walk another step. He would buy a car. And a driver. He would hire servants to carry him on a palanquin. He’d pay some Adjuster with the right spell to follow him around and levitate him up staircases.

Everything hurt.

Legs. Back. Feet. Shoulders. Authority.

He kept adjusting the straps that held Kibby in place, trying to relieve pressure. They’d started to rub him raw even through the coat and the layers of clothes.

Focusing on his future life as the human embodiment of sloth helped for a while.

When that stopped working, he tried to hold a mental conversation with the gremlin. You were loud about the big chain debt for a while, and then you got quiet, he said. I don’t mind if you want to be loud again.

It stayed silent.

That’s really scary of you. Hey. Gorgon’s confused ancestors. Talk to me. Keep me company at least.

He waited for a reply that never came.

Fine.

Be that way.

When I get home, I’m going to hire an S-ranked Sway to force us to eat an entire rack of barbecued ribs.

He snorted at the image of himself, trying to explain to some disturbed Sway why it would be a necessary and righteous use of their powers.

From far away, there was a single whumf of sound. Staring down at the taped-up toes of his sneakers, Alden saw the ground shake.

They started back.

The distant hammering of something against the moon had gone on for a long time. Then it had stopped for a long time. And now here it was again.

With sound effects.

We’re still moving the right way.

He coaxed a few more steps out of himself with that knowledge. But it was getting way too hard. He thought his left foot might be bleeding inside his shoe.

I guess I should do something about that. It’s still a long way. No matter what, it’s still a really long way.

The supply pack around his waist contained bandages, numbing spray, and a change of socks. He was just scared to stop and drop the preservation on Kibby for the minute or two it would take him to use it.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

He was afraid she’d be hurt. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to pick her back up. Physically or magically.

Whumf.

It wasn’t like the situation was going to get better as time passed, though.

He walked a bit farther, trying to put himself in the right headspace to do and say the right things. What were the right things again?

Whumf.

They came around ten minutes apart maybe. That was cool. He could use the sound of the Artonans bombing the hell out of his destination to keep time.

Whumf.

Alden took a knee in the soft dirt.

It hurt. His knees were starting to hurt. They’d never done that before. Was it just the amount of walking and running, or was the trait taking a toll on his joints?

“Alden?”

“Don’t unstrap yourself,” he said. He was surprised at how dry and raspy his voice sounded. He’d been drinking plenty. “I’m just changing my socks really quick, and then we’re moving again. Can you do just a couple of minutes?”

“I’m fine.”

“No lies right now. We’re making good time.” Ha. Hypocrite. You don’t even know if you’re lying yourself or not.

“I’m fine,” Kibby whispered.

Alden’s feet looked way worse than they’d felt. One of his heels was actually glued to his socks with blood and whatever the clear stuff that came out of blisters was.

He lifted the foot, hunched over so that he could reach his hands around it. Made an attempt at the kindergarten hand sanitizing spell.

If you held something in a specific position between your hands it was supposed to work on it instead of them. So maybe it would help.

His authority shuddered. Straining it in a new direction made him feel how far from himself—Artonan version of the word—he was.