Silhouette: Broken

The silhouette of the canopy above his head lay on the snow before him like a picture from a long-forgotten book. The clearing spanned only one hundred square feet; a graveyard for fallen trees; watched from the surrounding shadows by a dozen pair of eyes--pinpricks of light glinting malevolently only inches above the ground. Sound did not seem able to penetrate the hundreds of yards of trees hemming him in. Birds remained on their perches and waited; none dared brave the sky so soon after the fury of the night. The clouds over his head skirted the clearing, racing around the edges to move further east. The wind moved with sporadically alternating violent gusts and friendly breezes. With a furious gust like a thunderclap the wind thrust itself at the ground as if to burrow to the very center of the earth. The last night's snow once again took to the air, swirling and colliding against itself in an effort to reach the sun and melt to fly above the earth again in the clouds. The gust died. Dejected, the flakes fell back to the ground with an almost audible sigh. A semi-tame breeze followed on the heels of the gust, making its way through the trees and across the clearing, sending a top layer of snow skidding along the ground to meet him. The flakes threw themselves against his face, dying in the heat from his flushed skin. He wiped them off with the sleeve of his thin coat and looked around.
He felt he had known this place in a dream. Some dim memory of death and sorrow called to him from the depths of his feverish mind. This place was not to be disturbed. The watch of the ancient Fallen of the old Order had held for an age and a half. Every instinct in his being screamed against entering the open ground.
He pushed his way through the bushes and stepped into the shade of death.
The clearing offered no shelter whatsoever. A single stump stood twenty feet from the north edge as if it were a solitary guard of this sacred place. The echo of a voice that had not been heard in a thousand years whispered to him in the silence. Shadows of the arms of hundreds of the dead pulled at his legs, pleading with him to turn back. Clenching his toungue in his teeth to dam the terror threatening to spill from his heaving lungs, he made his way slowly towards the stump. His fists closed in on themselves as he willed himself to take another step, and then another.
After an eternity he reached the stump and stood staring at it, his panting breath floating in a fog across his vision. The charred roots stood out starkly against the blinding white of the snow, snaking up from the ground and twisting around the base like vines. The age of the tree barely showed through the scar of the flames in the rings spiralling through the stump's core. As he watched, the rings began to take on the faintest glimmer of a dead light. Not a single flake lay on the stump's surface. The snow that floated on the wind travelled in split paths at the base of the stump that rejoined each other on the other side. He reached down with a trembling hand and rested his palm on the marred remnant of lives needlessly lost and pulled back quickly. The tree's corpse still burned with the fury of the flames that had taken its life. His hand began to blister and bleed. He watched through his fingers in horrified fascination as the outlines of a writhing face passed across the surface of the stump. It was gone immidiately, leaving only a faint trail of smoke that curled its way into the air with a delicate grace. With all of his strength he willed his legs to remain in control and turned back to face the way he had come.
The grip of the dead over his body was gone. Somewhere before him he heard the low murmer of thier sorrow.
The sound of a single footstep in the suffocating silence tore him from the last few fragments of the sanity he'd desperately clung to. Before he was conscious of what was happening, his left arm flew up in front of his body. The knuckles of his right hand were whiter than the snow as the fist that held his .45 came to rest on the outstretched forearm. His body merged with the weapon, his torso rotated towards the other intruder of the sacred ground's silence and he took a half-step towards him as his finger brought the trigger towards his palm.
A fine red mist hung suspended in the air behind the other for a brief moment before peppering the ground before the base of the forest's edge. The rabbit slung over his shoulder, weighed down with its own blood and that of its killer, slid to the ground at his feet. The other's hand wandered from his pocket to his blood-stained shirt, then fell back to his side; the watch he had held carved a round hole in the snow. The boy's twelve years faded from his eyes before his body reached the ground.
The weapon dropped from his hand and came to rest on the steaming stump. His legs relinquished the weight of his senseless body to the frozen ground and he fell to his knees. He stared at the child's body until the last light of the sun had disappeared from the sky.

He had not moved by the time they reached him. His eyes did not stray from the face of the child. They entered the clearing cautiously, approaching his turned back with weapons drawn. Fanning out silently, they followed the edges of the forest, ready to move into the safety of the trees should he turn. He did not turn. His eyes were glazed and empty. They would have thought him frozen and dead where he knelt but for the small tufts of breath that streamed from his nose.
Somewhere just beyond his realm of awareness, a father cried out in pain and horror. A man raced into his blurred vision and dropped to his knees beside his dead son. The frozen body was lifted to the man's chest and held as if to never be let loose again. His eyes followed the child's as the boy's father sobbed and screamed into his son's face. His own eyes held no more tears. The snow beneath his frozen, bleeding hands was all but dissolved in the hot salt of the agony that had poured from his eyes at the boy's death.
His eyes did not meet the father's when he turned from his son in blind fury. He did not turn when the shouts of the men in the circle were joined by the shouts of men long gone from there. He did not look away when the old stump was enveloped in the flames that had taken so many lives all those years ago. He did not raise his head or flinch when the man's hatchett sliced an arc through the air, catching the dancing flames in the edges of the blade. A smile touched his lips as her face formed before his. He closed his eyes and watched his dreams seep between them, around the father's blade, and into the ground near the flaming stump. For a moment, for a brief, glorious moment, he swam among the smoke of the Ancient sacrifice. Then the rings of the stump closed around him and he raised his voice with those of the Old in despair for the lost.

Silhouette II

Two weeks ago.

Eli could barely see through the dust and the blow fell squarely on the meat of his jaw. His head whipped around, sending excruciating tendrils of pain through his neck and tearing his eyes away from the square where the other two fought their way past the town limits. Darkness encroached on the edges of his vision. One of the men above him reached down to pick up the .45 they had dashed from his hand. Fighting back the cobwebs in his head, he swung his leg around, catching the man behind the ear and dropping him to the ground without a sound. The man's partner moved to secure his arms behind him, locking back the hammer on his own weapon. Eli waited until the man stood directly above him and threw himself upward, planting his shoulder in the tender meat between the man's legs. The man flipped over backwards with a strangled cry that flew up an octave when he hit the ground. Eyes bulging, hands gingerly assessing the damage below his belt, he scrambled towards his fallen weapon. Eli walked towards him slowly, carefully avoiding his legs. The man reached his weapon and spun around to catch the full force of the blow on the bridge of his nose. The noise of the broken bone was drowned in a gargled scream as the bone broke free of the skin and buried itself in his eye. The man's jawbone popped free of its socket with the force of the silent howl that rose from his broken vocal chords. Without a sound the man crumpled heavily to the ground and didn't move again.
Eli straightened himself fully and turned to see a third standing where he had crouched to watch his friends in the square. The reek of sweat rode on the breeze that rippled the man's shirt, filling the other's nostrils and choking the air from his heaving lungs. Dust from weeks of journeying without pause lay on the man's face like a mask. The man's smoldering green eyes never released his. The mouth was forever tipped upward in a pensive half-smirk by the burn that ran from mid-lip to earlobe. He watched Eli casually; the butts of his weapons hovering near his hips. Eli looked expectantly back at him. The man smiled, collapsing the grotesque mark in on itself and gestured toward Eli's fallen weapon.
"You see, I have honor as well. I will not fire on you while you are unarmed."
Eli tilted the tips of his mouth up in a mockery of the man's shadow-smile, but remained motionless.
The man again motioned toward the weapon. "Please."
Eli continued to watch him patiently. The man's smile slipped. His eyes regarded the other coldly. Suddenly, he let out a short bark of a laugh and nodded.
"You continue to surprise me with your never-ending lack of understanding. You have lost, and yet you continue to hope for freedom and the triumph of you and your friends. Well you needn't bother with any such delusions. The power of the man you killed reaches remarkably far. Even were I to let you and your friends pass, others would follow." He smiled again, flecks of mirth floating in his eyes. He shook his head almost solemnly in feigned regret. "I will not let you pass. And you cannot run forever. But you need not go the way of our Elder, Eli. As I've said, I do have some honor. You may safely retrieve your weapon so that you may face me as the elders of old had once faced each other. You have my word."
Eli glanced at the sky and blinked back an old memory. "Your word means nothing to me. Nor do your threats. I know you, Elsion. Do not act the noble warrior with me. Spend the bullet you came to spend and be done."
"What do you hope to gain from this charade?" The man spat. "The people of nearly one hundred towns across the Plains loved this man. The bullet you put in his head will kill you and the others as surely as it killed him, you know this."
Still studying the passing clouds, Eli nodded. "Love of a man does not make his soul clean. He was foul and wretched. I did what needed to be done."
"Who are you to pass such judgement?" Spittle soared from the man's mouth as the echoes of his shouts floated into the town and were drowned in the gunfire that rolled through the streets.
"Our Elder never believed he had such power; what has entered your head that you should believe you have been given this?"
Eli looked back down at him. "A man's soul can leak out through his speeches and letters and spread to those around him, infecting them with beliefs and ideas that should never come to be. The soul of that man was filthy. His thoughts were dangerous. His push for a foothold in the Chairs of the Wise has upset the balance of our very government. I did what needed to be done for the sake of the Race."
The man laughed again, sending chills down Eli's back. "I know you as well, Eli and neither need you play the noble warrior with me. That man had the backing of all but one Chair. This Chair, like you, lives in the past. He wishes to hold on to the old ways as you do, and he does not know when it is time for him to move with the age. The man's thoughts were dangerous to you. You did what you needed to do to ensure your way of life."
A single gunshot drifted up on the wind from the town below, mingled with a shrill cry of fury. Beyond the man's shoulder, he could make out the outline of Alya lying in the street. Gill stood over her, shoulders bent in rage and hate. Eli bit down hard to quell the fear and bile that rose in his throat. Gill's pained roar followed by a furious volley of shots broke him and he fell to the ground vomiting. Below them Gill spun around as if he'd been hit by a train and rushed to meet the ground. He saw their dead faces as if he stood beside them. They were gone, and he had failed. He forced all his will and strength to settle just behind his eyes. He would not weep in front of this traitor. He dug his hands into the ground and looked up at the man with eyes that shone over bright with pain. The other stood watching him impassively.
"There is nothing left of your way of life, Eli. You are a dying Breed. You and your kind are past your usefulness. I'm sorry, my friend, but you've watched your chance for the honor you regard so highly come and pass. Now it is time for the obsolete to become memory and for your time to end."
Eli threw himself sideways and dove for his weapon as the bullets crashed into the ground beside him. The boot of the man shot forward and found the gun first, sending it cartwheeling over the edge of the plateau and out of sight. He smiled at Eli, his face mockingly showing a regret his eyes did not attest. He thumbed back the hammers of his weapons and raised them to fall level with Eli's head. Eli immediately dropped to the ground, the wind-trail of the passing rounds hot on his neck. He flipped over onto his back and kicked out hard at the man's knees. The man leaped into the air and came down on top of one of those he'd come with. His foot found the spilled blood and he fell and sprawled across the body, his face plunging into the the pool of red near the dead man's head. His face pouring with the blood of his comrade, the man furiously scrambled to his feet and raised his weapons to Eli's face.
Eli dug the toe of his boot into the ground and flung the bloody dirt up into the other's eyes. The man dropped the weapon he held in his right hand and clawed at his face, trying desperately to throw off his blindness. Weeping furiously without thought of his pride and roaring incoherently, Eli gripped the man's arms tightly and drove him backwards towards the plateau's edge. The man frantically pulled the trigger of his remaining weapon; the thunder of the shots rocked Eli's head back on his shoulders. The man screamed in frustration as the final round missed Eli's ear by half an inch. He kicked out viciously, catching Eli's shin just above the ankle. Biting back a cry, Eli wrapped his foot around the other's ankle and yanked hard.
For an endless moment, the man hung suspended over the enormous drop. His eyes locked onto Eli's. No volumes could contain the hatred that passed across the desert air between them. Then he turned to face the setting sun and was gone.
Eli crumpled to the ground and watched through pouring eyes as the man's head exploded against the rocky floor of the valley. Beyond him, the townsmen who had killed his friends were gathering their remaining forces to venture out to find the last of the Great Man's murderers. Slowly, painfully, Eli straightened himself to face his dead friends. He stood watching their still-smoking bodies with both hands over his heart. He stretched out his hands to offer it to them, his fingers catching the last rays of the day. "Elki arfur mealan, my friends. Keep it well until we meet again."
With the man's fallen weapon secured against his hip, he turned his face to the east and fled.