“Let them come at us. It’s good training,” Cadmar said, grinning back.
We walked through the forest for about an hour until we hit a dead patch where some fires had ravaged the entrance some time ago. I breathed in the scent of smoky ash and frowned, not because I didn’t like this place, but we didn’t get to share any of the same memories. We weren’t privilege to live a life on earth. We were made to be primitive, made to gather our own resources. The three of us.
She didn’t know the entire truth yet. I didn’t want her to know. Selfishly, I wanted her to stay as naive as that little girl who found us here so long ago. But I couldn’t do that to her. None of us could. We had discussed this before her arrival. She needed to know the truth about this horrible place. About us.
Slowly, the burnt landscape turned into a desert. All sorts of odd-shaped cacti and plants littered the area. I had seen pictures of the vegetation on earth, but the atmosphere here shaped things differently. Judging by the way Adeline looked at their twisty arms and purple-prickly thorns, it blew her mind.
“Wait. I need to collect some samples to bring to the team,” she exclaimed and ran toward one of the cacti.
She was so excited I didn’t want to tell her not to do it, but a bad feeling ran through my stomach. “The team?” I asked.
Zane laughed, but Cadmar gave him a hard enough punch to the gut to shut him up.
Adeline paused near the spiny plant, pinching a pair of tweezers between her delicate fingers. Awkwardly, she bit the edge of her lip and nodded. “A group of scientists. They’re waiting for me on the other side,” she clarified.
Mag growled and twisted his head. “You work for them?”
Lowering her hand, Adeline tried to make sense of what she had said. “I work for myself,” she declared.
“Lies!” Mag roared loud enough to cause the dirt below our feet to stir.
It did not frighten her. She had spent too much time beside him to be worried about his violence. She must have known we weren’t inherent devils. We had been made to react so harshly. The instincts we wielded had sharpened over time, and we did have certain abilities most humans couldn’t fathom. All of this was as unnatural to us as it was to them. It had something to do with the air, with the effects of this place. It started with the hallucinations, but, over time, it turned physical. The one thing still eluding us was how we had lived for so long without aging.
Instead of taking the sample, Adeline put her tools away and walked off in a huff. “I didn’t come here to get berated for my work,” she said, clearly hurt. We had overstepped her boundaries.
I ran up beside her, anxiously trying to keep the peace. We had waited a lifetime to see her again, and, if she left us now, it would ruin us. “Adeline, wait,” I said.
“Who the hell are you?” she scoffed. I didn’t think much of it. She was having a hard go of it, but I would never want to take her from her studies.
“Donovan,” I said.
She stopped, quietly sighing. “Oh,” she said. “The one with the healing herbs. I guess I should thank you. They really do wonders on the bruising.”
“They took me years to cultivate. I’m satisfied they got to be used properly,” I said. Someday, I would show her the greenhouses I’d made.
A small tight-lipped smile revealed she wasn’t as mad as she put on. After hesitating, I reached into my satchel and pulled out another small vial filled with green powder. I ushered it forward, insisting she take it. “I am something of an explorer, myself. I made this for you,” I said. She didn’t know how to react. “Go on. Take it. It’s safe.”
She took the thin vial and inspected it before enclosing it tightly within her fist. “Thank you, Donovan. You have a gentle soul.”
I smiled and felt a level of pride encourage me to do more for her. She was so beautiful, and we were simple ogres. We were pushed into this world but slowly mutated. Yes, we were still handsome, but our bodies were different. Depending on our emotional and mental state, we glowed different colors. Our bodies were triple the size of a normal human soldier. A part of me couldn’t believe she could look at us so normally.
Cadmar pressed forward, pointing toward a set of large and towering rocks. Together, they formed a safe space in the center of the desert landscape. “There it is. Our home for the time being.”
“Just for the time being?” she asked.
He nodded, alert. “We are forced to move around, depending on the season.”
“Gets a bit dicey out here,” Mag said. “You never know what weather will form next. The forces of nature are different here. It’s difficult to discern reality from delusion.”
We walked in silence until we reached the enclosed encampment. Once there, we showed her the large tent we had built out of the hide of a wilder beast. ”Inside,” Mag said. “We can rest up here.”
“What about Zane?” she asked. Zane. My lip twitched as soon as I heard his name.
The three of us looked over at a rusty cage, big enough to fit a few animals inside. Blood spatter had dried across the metal bars as well as the floor. “He gets the cage,” Mag said.
Adeline’s neck stretched tight, and her eyes darted open, wide open with guilt and fear. “But—”
“We won’t hurt him, for now,” he said. “But we hold the right to question his intentions. Do you agree?”