A Standup Philosopher
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Nothing Is True Chapter Seven
🕑 Added 2022-08-01 01:08:49 +0000 UTCNothing Is True (Save For The Blood We’ve Shed)
Chapter Seven
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“By Sheidheda’s Black Bones!”
Costia flinched at the particularly vile curse that Niylah let loose roughly ten seconds after she laid eyes on the corpses of what had once been her modest herd. She had known it would hurt her friend, had already vowed to herself to do something about it, but seeing and hearing the heartbreak and despair in the trader both broke her heart and reinforced her opinion. Niylah, and her father, had scrimped and saved for years to buy those horses with the intent of breeding them and adding livestock to their trading post’s wares, and now they were gone. It was the kind of loss that drove people to suicide, a loss that (without outside intervention) was impossible to entirely recover from. A loss that, even with the artifacts she had acquired thanks to Klark (whom Costia needed to quietly, and privately, ask Niylah about as soon as possible) would likely bring Niylah to tears when there wasn’t an audience to witness it.
Being so affected was the only thing that would make Niylah bring out that invective.
“Niylah, it will be fine. I will help you replace them. I have many friends amongst the horse-masters and merchants.” She said reassuringly, wincing slightly at the sharp look Niylah shot her in response. Niylah’s nerves were likely not in the best shape, given the near death she had experienced, promptly followed by a financial and personal loss of this magnitude. As such, the implication that the independent and savvy trade-woman would not be able to survive without help from the Commander’s lover (and therefore, obliquely, the Commander herself) probably stung her pride fiercely. Well, she could be as unhappy as she liked. Costia had no interest in letting her friend end up a thrallina or worse simply because she was too proud to accept help that was freely offered and without any manner of manipulations attached.
“We can pick you up a few more things from the bunker if you need to as well, Niylah. I told you before, I don’t have much interest in anything that can be found there for the foreseeable future, and certainly not the dishes or the silverware or the candlesticks.” Clarke added, sounding sympathetic, if somewhat off balance, and Costia wondered briefly for a moment why the younger girl would sound confused about this situation. Then she hesitated, and her tone changed in such a way that had Costia’s eyes narrowing imperceptibly as she continued. “We can go back with Costia, see whatever this ‘sky-metal’ is, then Costia can help us carry your loot back.”
Both Trikru eyed the other girl, too experienced with people to not recognize the forced joke or how interested she was (despite her laughable attempts to disguise it) in seeing the fallen sky-metal with her own eyes. While strange, both in her attempts to disguise her interest and the interest itself, it wasn’t in and of itself suspicious. While most people amongst the clans would avoid such a thing like the plague, fearful of the Maunon and their Ripas taking notice of their presence and making retribution.
It had happened before, many times, with both fire-bombs and Ripa attacks, anywhere that a member of the clans had so much as toucheda fayagon or certain other kinds of tek. It had long been speculated amongst Lexa’s council, and amongst those who came before them, that the Maunon did so because they feared that the clans would be able to destroy them if they learned how to use the tek effectively, but whether that was true or not (and quite frankly, Costia was willing to believe it was true. The pieces fit all to well) it didn’t matter in the face of the punishment that was received for the attempt.
All that being said, Costia didn’t see an issue with letting the two of them come along, and she certainly didn’t have an issue helping Niylah acquire things to sell to help recoup her losses. Besides, she was actually quite curious about this ‘bunker’ that the two blondes had waited out the storm in. From what she had heard from them on the way to Niylah’s trading post, it was the sort of place that Lexa would love exploring, especially the library. Maybe the two of them could visit it sometime, though she wasn’t sure that she would invite herself within this time around. That might be a bit too forward, given Clarke had obviously laid claim to it.
Yes, it was on Trikru, and Coalition, land, but as the finder, and apparently the only one who knew how to open it, Clarke had de facto ownership. Trying to argue otherwise would be childish, churlish, and certainly wouldn’t make her any new friends, nor would it please Niylah. Of course, if Clarke offered to let her in, that was something else entirely, and she could evaluate if there was anything within the building that could pose a threat to the clans, at which point Clarke’s claim would be vulnerable to contention.
Always watching, always listening, always protecting Lexa and their people. That was the purpose, the goal, the cause that The Commander’s Shadow had dedicated herself.
“Costia?” Niylah’s querying tone drew the scout from her thoughts, and she blinked briefly before smiling apologetically at the other two young women, both of whom were watching her with expressions of slight confusion and concern.
“Ah, sorry. Was just thinking about my mission and who to talk to about replacing your horses, Niylah. I’m fine with helping to carry things, of course, and you’re both welcome to come with me to see the sky-metal, if you really want. It’s usually nothing worth more than scrap metal, pointless hunks of metal falling from the stars, but we always want to make sure its nothing the Maunon can use all the same.” She rubs the back of her neck as she responds, sounding somewhat sheepish and embarrassed by her loss of focus. Niylah shrugged it off immediately, taking her at face value, while Clarke peered at her for a moment longer. Raising an eyebrow at her, Costia smirked. “A girl might start thinking you’re interested if you stare at them like that for too long, Klark. Careful now, Lexa might get jealous if she hears.”
The redhead felt her smirk broaden into a grin as the younger girl blushed and looked away fast enough to send her hair swirling. Glancing over at Niylah, she saw the amusement she felt reflected on her friend’s face, as well as something very like interest, and licked her mental chops at the juicy entertainment that had just offered itself up on a platter for her to play with.
“Alright then, I guess you two have a plan and intend to follow it, whatever I have to say about it, so I suppose I can but submit. We’ll go ahead and do that, get back here by nightfall, and deal with what’s left of my herd then before heading for Polis. Any objections to my part of the plan?” Niylah sighed, sounding more put out than she probably actually was, though Costia was willing to bet there would be an argument later, when it came time to acquire her new herd for her. Klark, probably still flushed, merely started back the way they had come with haste that bordered on undignified.
“Wonderful, let’s get going then, shall we? We shouldn’t want to waste any time!” Costia clapped her hands definitively with a great deal of cheer, pulling an apple out of a pouch and feeding it to her mount as Niylah came over to join her. “Sorry, Mist. It looks like you’ve more walking to do today.”
Her beloved mount (whom she was glad did not understand English, given the ‘damn my horse’ she had reeled off earlier) munched happily on the apple before whickering gently and snuffling at her pouches in an effort to find more treats for herself. She was a beautiful mount, a dappled grey that was fourteen hands and could run faster than the wind itself. Perfect for someone that needed to move fast and travelled light whenever possible.
Gathering Mist’s reigns in her hands, she and Niylah started after Klark. Costia kept her pace slow, letting the other girl draw out of easy earshot, and quietly addressed her human companion.
“Fill me in, Niylah. What’s going on with this girl? Who is she, where did she come from?” she asked, curiosity both professional and personal fueling her questions. “She isn’t dressed like anyone from the Clans, and she doesn’t talk quite right either, or even act like us.”
Niylah frowned at that, biting down a strangely instinctive defense of her newest friend towards her old friend’s apparent suspicion. It was nothing personal, she knew that, Costia’s job was to worry about strangers wandering Trikru lands, especially on the edges of the civilized regions. It didn’t help that she was right, and she was right, about how differently Klark acted and behaved compared to their own people. It was minor things, things that really weren’t even all the noticeable. Indeed, it would be hard to point at any one thing and say ‘that’s strange’, so subtle did it all seem. The way she walked, as if she her balance was ever so slightly off. The way she talked, with strangely pronounced words and syllables, sentence structure and syntax. Her clothing and weapons, of a cut and clothe that she had never seen before. Her body language, the way she seemed to swing from shy to confident, ignorant to wise, friendly to cautious, without any obvious rhyme or reason.
Yes, Klark was a strange one.
“I don’t know where she is from, exactly, but she wasn’t familiar with the Coalition, though she does know Aleksia Pramheda. She said her people revere her as ours do, but do so in a way that is different from our own.” She answered slowly, cautiously, testing the words in her mouth and mind before she allowed them to flow to open air. “We didn’t have a lot of time together outside of the bunker she opened, but she wasn’t familiar with Rogue Storms, and she didn’t identify her people either, not by name anyway.”
She hesitated for a moment, wondering what else she should say, feeling the need to balance honesty with censorship for the time being. The last thing she wanted was to cause a problem, but in the end Klark was a stranger and Costia was not only a friend, but spoke with the Commander’s voice. Her loyalty could be turned in only one direction, and that direction was to the woman beside her, not in front.
“She has tek, Costia. Tek that I’ve never seen before, some of which she found in that bunker, and some of which she used to open the bunker in the first place, and she knows a lot about the Old World. She knew about the people who used to live in my scavenging spot, back then, and she knew exactlywhere the door to the bunker was, even though I’ve never seen her there before.” She said finally, feeling a thread of regret wind through her heart as Costia’s green eyes hardened and narrowed at Klark’s back.
“Do you think she’s some kind of Maunon, Niylah?” she asked softly, and the fear (and denial) that Niylah felt was visceral.
“NO!” she cried, aghast and appalled at the very idea, voice loud enough to send both Kostia and her mount flinching away unhappily and draw Klark’s attention back towards them, a worried look pinching her pale brow. Waving off the concern and giving Mist an apologetic pat, she continued to educate Kostia on just how wrong her assumption was. “No, not only is it impossible for the Maunon to survive outside of the Mountain -which you know, Kostia- but there is no way a Maunon would have let either of us live this long.”
“She could be planning on taking us back to the Mountain alive, leading us into a trap to take us prisoner.” Kostia suggested, though she didn’t sound entirely convinced of the possibility despite her words. Niylah was shaking her head before the sentence was even finished, a look of firm disagreement on her face.
“No, no I don’t think so. If she was planning on doing that, why would she follow me all the way back to my trading post? She had no reason to believe that I would be meeting up with you, no reason to go so far afield without a tangible benefit.” She refuted, and Kostia hummed thoughtfully with a slow nod of her own. Niylah made a good point, and quite frankly she didn’t think Klark was a Maunon either (she was too friendly, really, and while that could be a deception, she couldn’t see a Maunon being able to keep up such a façade for long). That being said, there was still something about the other girl, something that was being held back.
“Well, we’ll see. For now, I’ll trust your evaluation of her, my friend.” She decided finally, giving Niylah’s a warm smile and a short squeeze to the forearm. They walked on in silence for a few minutes before… “She’s remarkably attractive though, isn’t she?”
The blush that swept over Niylah was a delight to see, a fetching crimson sheen that was actually somewhat surprising to see. Maker knew her friend wasn’t a virgin, unexperienced in the ways to carnality, so such a display was unusual, and Kostia found herself invested in the matter. Had Niylah and Klark fucked? It would make sense for them to have ended up having a tumble together, given the circumstances that they had met under, and it would explain Niylah’s passionate defense of the stranger as well. Still, Kostia didn’t have that impression from either of them. They were neither being particularly affectionate with one another nor were they avoiding each other with shy embarrassment, the two things that Kostia would have expected for the morning after a passionate, ‘we almost died last night’ fuck.
“Hush, Kostia, you’ve got Heda.” Niylah grumbled, more than familiar enough with her friend’s sense of humour to know where the conversation was heading, and equally aware of the fact that attempting to head her off wasn’t going to do a damn bit of good.
“Aye, and I love Lexa more than I love life itself, but I’m not blind either. Klark’s the second most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. The hair, the crystal blue eyes, clear as the sky above us all, and the dimples. She has dimples, Niylah!” Kostia, true to form, ignored the (admittedly weak) protest and rolled right over it without a shred of remorse.
“I’ve noticed, Kostia.” Niylah sighed, and Kostia sniggered at the somewhat breathy way the sound flowed from her friend’s mouth. The blush deepened, a censorious look was shot her way, full lips turning down slightly in a pout.
It was no more effective than the previous protest.
“And those strange clothes of hers! I’ve never seen something so formfitting on a woman that wasn’t her own bare skin! It’s sculpted to her body, practically painted onto her! Incredible, simply incredible. The way it accentuates the way she walks…” Kostia trailed off teasingly, eyes sparkling as Niylah’s eyes immediately went to the supple, swaying rear (and the slender hips) of the woman ahead of them with an unconscious nod of agreement. Oh, her friend had quite the attraction to this newcomer didn’t she?
Delightful, simply delightful.
Niylah heaved another sigh, this one punctuated by a low groan of dismay, and mentally settled in for a long, long walk.
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“Well, it’s certainly not the usual sky-metal, that’s for sure. It’s all in one piece, to start with. Most of the things that fall turn to dust on impact.” Costia remarked, examining the pod curiously, circling the crater it had formed upon landing with interested eyes. “This one, on the other hand, seems to be essentially undamaged.”
“Not something that can be said for the ground around it.” Niylah remarked in amusement, and Costia gave a huff of amused agreement in response, before stopping and crouching down to examine the ground carefully, fingers ghosting across the pulverized dirt. “What is it?”
“Tracks. Tracks that lead from the sky-metal, but look here: none of them lead to it.” The Shadow responded, pointing to the impressions that Clarke had made during her exit from the pod. The redhead traced her route, pausing again a few moments later. “She fell here, whoever she was. Tripped, perhaps, though I don’t know on what.”
“How do you know that it’s a her?” Clarke couldn’t help but ask, curious despite her mounting horror at the ongoing events.
“You can see from the size of the foot and hand-prints. The fingers are long but thin, the palms fairly small, as well as the feet. And you can tell it isn’t a child because of how deep the impressions are and how far apart the prints are from one another.” Costia explained, pointing out each of the deciding factors as she spoke. “It’s a young woman, perhaps five and a half feet tall, between 120 and 130 pounds. Probably in her late teens or early twenties.”
If Clarke had worse self-control, she would probably be hyperventilating right about now. The expert, dangerously accurate summation that Costia had just reeled off was as terrifying as it was accurate, and she was busily cursing herself for tagging along on this little adventure. The only reason that she was here was because she had wanted to try and avoidthis very situation, or at the very least know exactly what Costia and Niylah knew so she could avoid tipping them off. Instead, she very well could give herself away if she didn’t keep her cool, never mind the possibility that the two Trikru would think about the description that Costia just gave and realize it rather matched the strange, non-clan girl that had appeared from nowhere in this general vicinity.
“A young woman that came from the sky?” Niylah asked softly, slowly, and Costia shot her a quelling look.
“Thatline of thought is precipitous, Niylah.” She warned, leaving Clarke frowning slightly in confusion at the thought of why that would be significant, or why Costia would react the way that she did. A memory niggled at her, but as stressed and distracted as she was, it didn’t form. Well, it probably wasn’t terribly important anyway, certainly not right now. “There are any number of perfectly mundane explanations for this.”
“Or, as it happens, not so mundane.” ALIE murmured in Clarke’s ear through her Focus, breaking the silence that she had held for so long, and Clarke had to clamp down with all her will to avoid twitching from shock at the sudden words. “Listen, I know you can’t respond, but you need to get out of there. I’ve been monitoring Mount Weather, and there are scouts on their way on ATVs to check out the landing site. You’ve got five minutes to get out of sight before they reach you.”
That shocked her out of her frozen state, and her head spun towards the trees as her Focus and MERCS flared to life. The sudden movement and light caught the attention of her two companions, and Costia drew a sword even as Niylah lunged to grab her arm.
“Klark, what is it?” she asked urgently, recognizing the technology, and the look on her face as well.
“Mountain Men, in vehicles. We have less than five minutes to get out of sight and into proper cover before they get here.” Clarke barked in reply, already backing away towards the trees. “Niylah, get on the horse and go. We’ll never be able to keep it quiet enough to stay hidden.”
“How do you…” Costia started, sounding skeptical and more than a little suspicious, but she stiffened as a mechanical growl reached the edge of her earshot, cutting through the dense forest and all the noise of its natural chorus. “Niylah, take Mist and go!”
The shopkeeper looked like she wanted to protest for all of a minute, before grimacing and grabbing the horse’s reins, swinging up into the saddle and wheeling the mare around before spurring her into a gallop. The aptly named animal exploded into motion, dirt clod flying as she accelerated back towards the safety of the road home. Clarke and Costia, meanwhile, made for the trees.
“Get up there!” Costia ordered, stopping next to a particularly large maple with a dense canopy. When Clarke only stared at her, baffled, the redhead scowled and jabbed commandingly upwards as the sound of the approaching engines grew louder. “I said get the fuck up the tree!”
“I don’t know how to climb fucking trees, Costia! You go, I’ll find cover down here!” she snapped back, stress making her voice shrill, as she drew her ancestor’s pistol and backed further into the trees. Costia gave quite the start as the massive fayagon appeared in her hand, and she quickly swapped sword for bow before scrambling up the trunk and settling in amongst the branches. She watched as Clarke found her own hiding spot, settling in behind the trunk of a neighboring tree that had a cluster of bushes around its base. Not the worst hiding spot, actually, if one wasn’t capable of getting themselves safely hidden up a tree like she was. Still, it made one thing perfectly obvious to Costia: that Clarke had very little training in woodscraft, if any at all. She made an appalling amount of noise, had no idea how to blend in with the shadows, and didn’t know how to climb trees. Even the Ice Nation knew how to climb trees, damnit!
http://www.military-today.com/trucks/polaris_mrzr_4.jpg
Putting an arrow to her string, she waited silently, patiently, as the Maunon finally appeared in the clearing. They were riding in one of their horseless carriages, four of them, with a small wagon trailing along behind, all but one of them holding the longer fayagons that Lexa called ‘rifles’ and watching their surroundings carefully. Well, that confirmed that Klark had been right about them being on their way, sounds or no sounds, but now she had to wonder: how did the girl know? Was she, despite Niylah’s insistence, one of them? She had tek, she had no idea how to move through the forest, she had a fayagon, a large one at that, she was pale and unusual by any of the clans’ standards…so many signs pointed to that, but at the same time there was one gaping whole in the theory: the fact that she wasn’t wearing one of the Maunon suits. All Maunon had to wear their special suits to survive outside their mountain, every member of The Coalition knew that. It was one of their ultimate defenses against the monsters, the knowledge that puncturing their suits killed them.
Surely, then, if the Maunon had overcome this challenge, the clans would learn about it as the hordes descended upon their villages spreading death and destruction. It certainly didn’t make sense for them to do otherwise if they had found a cure, and it damn well didn’t make sense to give the cure only to a 17 year old girl and send her out alone. No, Clarke wasn’t a scout for the Mountain, but Costia didn’t know that she believed the story about her being from a clan that had never met the Coalition either, not unless she had traveled from far to the west, or somehow come across the sea beyond the Boat Clan.
Neither of those theories sat well with her.
On Clarke’s part, she was busy watching the Mountain Men with profound discomfort as they inspected and rooted around in her pod. ALIE had long since tapped their comms for her, and so she was listening in on every word they exchanged with one another and the Mountain itself.
“Recon 1-1 to Eagle’s Nest.”
“Eagle’s Nest, go ahead 1-1.”
“Sir, we’ve confirmed the presence of a PROJECT: ARK drop-pod. It looks like the savages have already been here, we have horse tracks and footprints, and damage to the pod that didn’t come from reentry.”
“1-1, this is President Wallace.” A new voice broke in, and Clarke’s eyes widened and she pressed a hand to her hear, instinctively trying to enhance the voice. He sounded like an older man, refined and well spoken. Honestly, the way he talked reminded her a lot of Jaha, and that wasn’t exactly a compliment. “Does the pod look like it was occupied?”
Her breath caught in her chest as one of the men started looking through the pod itself, and she raised her firearm and took aim, pulling the hammer back. If they found any sign of her, if they figured out that she had been in that pod, she was going to shoot them. She had to, she couldn’t let them know that there were still people on the Ark, never mind coming down!
“Hard to tell, sir. The inside is pretty torn up, but there are no obvious signs of it being used. It could just be debris that had a decayed orbit, sir.” The man responded after a couple of minutes, sounding tentative, and there was a grunt from the other end.
“Prepare it for transport, I’m sending a heavy lift vehicle for it. I want forensics to go over it with a fine toothed comb. Maintain your position, and set up the spy-cams as well.” Wallace instructed, before the air went dead.
Goddamnit. She couldn’t let them do that, but how could she stop them? Kill them all? Could she even do that before they had a chance to get on their radios? Not to mention the fact that they were probably carrying guns, which could turn nasty fast. She would have to do this by ambush, then. Wait for them to split up to put the cameras up and take them down as quietly as she could. Or…
“ALIE, can you block their comms? Keep them from transmitting back to Mount Weather?” she asked quietly, and there was a soft chuckle in her ear.
“Already thinking like a general. Good. Yes, I can, and keep them from talking to each other while I’m at it. You’ll need to be careful if you intend to fight them quietly, because cutting off comms won’t keep them from hearing a commotion.” The AI responded, sounding almost proud, and Clarke grinned as she holstered her gun and drew her kukri.
It was time to go to work.
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Next update will be for Legends Never Die, then the first chapter of the new Conquest of Paradise!
