Opening his eyes, Eli sighed as the darkness around him blended with the fading vision that had swallowed his Nana. He sniffed, trying to hold in the tears as his memories fought back against the recent images within his nightmare. Feeling like he had a hole in his chest that would never be filled, he pushed down the guilt.

“Well, that sucked.” He’d hoped that his nightmares might get better after his first solid night of sleep, but the residual panic from his dream still tingled in the back of his mind. He swallowed, almost amused by how solidly his theory had failed. His grandma had passed peacefully over a decade ago when he’d been an inexperienced seventeen-year-old serving in Tennessee. He couldn’t help thinking back to that day when news of her death reached him.

***

Eli had just returned from another patrol filled with interminable boredom but with the knowledge that the fragile peace could be shattered at any moment. Violence always hovered just below the surface, whether it was some armed parent desperately scrounging for supplies to get their family through another day or one of the crazy separatists looking to kill a few Unionists. Already feeling lucky after an ambush had taken out another patrol the week before, he’d been almost giddy with relief when they made it back within the Nashville base.

Then Sergeant Alvarez pulled him aside, steering them towards one of the nearby buildings. Eli thought he might have been in trouble, and they were about to step inside when he noticed the chaplain waiting for them. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize why they wanted to talk with him. He had no idea what was said as, at that moment, there was only a numbing sensation while a billion bees buzzed around inside his skull while he tried to make sense of the world. His last rock was gone, the last piece of his family, and he simply nodded to the kind words the older man said.

After escaping the close eyes of his sergeant, Eli had retreated to a small courtyard near one of the fences. Built along one side of an empty administration building, he’d found it during an early exploration a few months ago when he’d first arrived on base. It was mostly empty except for a couple of wooden picnic benches but was open to the sky, and he frequently retreated here to think and be alone. A couple of clay pots lay nearby with old cigarette butts aging away inside, markers of how people once used the space. Without any nearby lighting to dispel the fantasy with brutal reality, he could almost pretend he was back in his childhood backyard from before the world ended.

Sitting on one of those benches, he shifted as the tabletop’s rough wood dug into his back. At the same time, he looked up at the heavy dark grey clouds resembling a sheet of charcoal filth draped across the sky. Even during the day, the sky was still dark with the heavy ash and shit spewed into the atmosphere from the eruption years ago. The government and news said that things were getting better, that temperatures were slowly going back up, but the cold air on that July afternoon made it hard to believe.

The idea that his Nana was gone, that he’d never see her again, seemed impossible. The thought almost broke him, the familiar hole in his chest only deepening further as another piece of his life was stripped away. He didn’t know who he was or how to go on. Somehow, he felt so alone while on a base full of thousands of fellow soldiers.

A sudden knocking behind him made him turn, and he scrambled to his feet as he noticed a sergeant standing in the open doorway. He was already at attention by the time his brain caught up, and he put a name to the face of the woman. Trying not to audibly gulp, he racked his brains for an excuse on why he was out here near the base’s fence line.

“Relax, private,” the woman said with a soft voice. “Mind if I join you?” Without bothering to wait for an answer, she took a seat next to where he’d been sitting moments ago. She patted the bench when he hesitated, standing there unsure if he should leave. “Sit,” she said, injecting a bit of command into the single word.

Eli sat, but in nothing like the relaxed way he’d been before, with his back straight and eyes forward like he was still at attention. The sergeant next to him only snorted and leaned back, her elbows resting on the top of the picnic table as she gazed up at the clouds. Realizing he wasn’t about to get chewed out, he slowly calmed down enough to lean back while trying to think of an excuse for being here.

“Sergeant, I was just-,” he began.

“Save it,” she interrupted, but not unkindly, as she looked over with a smirk. “I never saw you here, so there’s no need to come up with a reason.” Then she returned to looking up at the clouds again.

He shakily nodded, happy that Sergeant Holcomb wasn’t upset. Not sure what she was doing here, he simply tried to mirror her pose and stared at the sky even as his mind raced with worry.

“It’s funny how the mind works, right?” she asked after a few minutes of silence.

“Huh?” Confused, he glanced over to see her still wearing the same smirk.

Chuckling and shaking her head, she casually gestured to him. “I bet you were thinking some pretty dark thoughts before I got here, the kinds of things many of us face when we’re alone before an uncaring world. But then someone like me shows up. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman, or maybe my rank, hell, you might even recognize me, but the point is, your mind has been totally derailed from the earlier worries, right?”

Dumbfounded, it took him a few moments to process her words before he surprised himself with a little chuckle of his own. She was right, of course. Still, the idea that he’d quickly forgotten his Nana’s death made him feel a strange shame as if he was somehow insulting his grandma’s memory. “I guess you’re right,” he finally managed to say, though the sadness rose with the words.

“There I was, sitting down to dinner when I saw you come out of the chapel,” she said casually with her soft voice. “I saw the expression on your face, the hitch of your shoulders, and I thought to myself, ‘Now there’s a guy whose world just got tipped on its side.’ I don’t know about you, but I’ve found that just talking can help lighten some loads. No guarantees, but I'm here to listen if you want to talk. If not, well, there’s a lovely cloud cover we can stare at until I need to get back on duty.” True to her word, she didn’t say anything more but turned her head to look at the clouds again.

Eli joined her, leaning back as his body relaxed a bit more while his mind wandered back to memories of his grandma. The last few years had been hard for them, even with the government subsidy, but Nana had always ensured they had food, even if it wasn’t always the best. In a world where starvation had become almost common, she’d somehow managed. If only he’d been there, maybe there was some way she’d still be alive.

“How do you go on?” he suddenly asked, almost surprised to hear the words coming out of his mouth.

“Hmmm?” Holcomb turned from her study of the heavens, briefly frowning in thought. “Well, that’s a tough question. Now, if you’d asked my brother, he’d have said I was as determined as a headstrong mule.” She smiled almost wistfully, as if at some treasured memory. “But I’d like to say that I’m a stubborn idealist trying to pretend I’m just pragmatic in a world that doesn’t give a shit either way.” She tossed him a smile as if sharing a joke with him. “How about you?”

Finding himself nodding at her words, he thought about his own feelings, examining them in a way he hadn’t dared try an hour ago. “I don’t know,” he replied, but then an image of his sister laughing at him as he did a silly dance for her came to mind. He remembered his mom rubbing his back when he was sick with some childhood malady or when his dad had picked him up in celebration after Eli finally learned how to ride a bike. Then there was his grandma, who was always there to listen to whatever worries he had and comfort him when the nightmares grew too much and sent him running to her in terror. Ducking his head, he felt a couple of tears tickle his cheeks.

“I guess I’m still figuring that out,” he managed to say. Clearing his throat a few times, he continued, “but I’d say I’m stubborn too. More than that, if there really is a God and afterlife, I don’t want to face my family and admit I gave up. I can’t just toss away all the things they did for me.”

“Good start,” Holcomb said in her soft voice. “But that’s just a start. Anything else?” she prompted.

Feeling a stab of hurt and anger, Eli almost lashed out with sharp words. It could have been her rank or the fact that she was a beautiful older woman while he was an awkward skinny teen, or perhaps it was that part of him that recognized her trying to help, but whatever the reason, he held in the first hot response that nearly erupted. Instead, he contemplated her words and dug deeper into his feelings and didn’t like some of the things he found.

“Well, I also don’t want to die,” he finally said, ashamed of the fear he revealed. He could only imagine the sergeant's contempt at his words since she came from a long line of Holcombs that had served in the US military.

Her sudden snort made him turn to catch her grin. “Good answer, too,” she replied. “I’m not in a hurry to find out if there’s an afterlife myself.”

“Really?”

She must have caught his disbelief as she turned her body, one leg coming up to rest along the bench. “Death is there for all of us someday, and only a crazy person seeks it out. There’s no need to rush since we all know it’ll always be there. Better to make our time here count for something than throw it all away for nothing, just like you said.”

“Yeah,” he replied, finding himself nodding at her words. He did want to make a difference, to somehow balance the shit that had happened over the years. There was a lot of ugly in the world, and a part of him screamed out to smash things in his rage at the injustices, but the piece of him tempered by the loving memories of his family led him along a different path. “I guess I want to make a difference,” he almost whispered, lost in the familiar images from his childhood. Looking up at the clouds, he continued, “I want to leave the world a better place than I found it.” Almost wincing, he waited for the snarky comment.

“Another good answer,” she replied warmly, revealing a broad smile with perfect white teeth in the dim afternoon light.

Silence descended again as they both watched the slowly moving clouds. Something about them reminded him of his nightmares, the shapeless ghosts that haunted his dreams since he was little. Even before Cascadia, he’d had a hard time sleeping through the night.

“Ready to tell me about them?” Holcomb’s voice was almost loud as she broke the fragile silence.

“Huh?” Eli replied, confused once again by the intimidating woman beside him.

“You came out of the chapel, remember?” Her eyes were kind and gentle when she looked at him, her expression open. “I don’t know about you, but I find that just talking about the good memories helps lighten the load a bit. Your call, though. I’m just here watching the clouds.”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” he responded with sadness, remembering his amazing Nana.

“Why, from the start, of course! What’s your earliest memory of them?”

A blurry scene, maybe a figment of his imagination, surfaced. He’d been really little, and his grandma had been holding him in her arms as she talked with some adult. He couldn’t remember the details of the conversation, they might as well have been speaking another language, but he vividly recalled the feeling of safety in her arms. It was like everything would be okay as long as she was holding him.

Somehow, like he was thrown a lifeline, Eli started to talk about his grandma. As prompted, he began with that first memory, which only led to the next when they went to the beach for the first time. More stories followed, and time passed as the two talked. It was strange, but the more he spoke, the lighter he felt. The pit in his chest wasn’t filling up and still ached, yet somehow the colossal weight had lessened. He was in the middle of describing an embarrassing story about a mess he’d made in his Nana’s kitchen when a loud beep interrupted him.

“Shit, duty calls,” Holcomb said, standing up from the bench. She brushed off her uniform, adjusting and pulling it straight.

Suddenly aware of everything he’d said, Eli was self-conscious as he stood. Feeling strangely exposed, he gulped. “Thank you, sergeant. For listening,” he continued as she looked over in question.

As if reading his mind, she simply laughed with a little head shake. “None of that shyness, now – not after what we just shared. Call me Jen, for god’s sake, all my friends do.”

“I’m Eli,” he said, smiling while feeling like the world had grown a little brighter.

***

His growling stomach brought Eli’s attention back to the present, where he lay on his bed with his arm as a pillow while Lackar brightened his room. Glancing at his HUD, he realized they should be serving breakfast now that the sun was up.

“I wonder if they have waffles?”

Less than an hour later, he found the manor’s dining room with the help of his guards pointing the way and entered through the two heavy wooden doors. He paused at the entry, taking in the large rectangular room where more of the strange latticed windows he’d seen on the upper floors were high on the stone walls, letting in some of the day’s early light. The room also had the same lightwells as the rest of the manor, making up for whatever light didn’t manage to sneak in from above. Long tables and wooden benches filled half the space, with the tables arranged in a way that created three aisles that broke up the room into as many sections. The central aisle was the biggest, leading up to a platform that took up the last third of the room. There was a gap of space between the main room’s tables and the platform, which had its own long, wooden table, but there were actual chairs instead of benches. It could almost pass for a throne room if you turned to the side and squinted hard enough.

There were few people around at the early hour, only about a dozen at some of the closer tables and only a single man at the distant platform table. He guessed it had to be Tanca since the guy’s size stood out even across the large room.

A beautiful chandelier hung above the room’s center that resembled a firework of lights. Unlike the other ubiquitous lightwells he’d seen, these small individual lights were different shades of red, orange, and yellow. It seriously did look like an explosion frozen in time, trapped here for him to witness.

“Wow,” he breathed out, appreciating the fixture. He just looked at it for a moment, appreciating the art. He couldn’t help but think of the July 4th or October 12th celebrations back home. Whether it was the old Independence Day or Reunification Day, both holidays brought out the best as his country celebrated its birth and rebirth with sound and fury. He absolutely loved fireworks and felt almost like a little kid again, wondering if there was an ability for fireworks.

He’d stopped and stood just inside the doorway as the light show distracted him, but the silence finally caught his attention. The dozen people in the room seemed off as they looked at him, rooted at their tables, not eating or talking. His guards behind him were little help, though Reva finally motioned towards a nearby server approaching.

“Ummm, hello? Could I get some food?” he asked, but the smaller man froze as they made eye contact. Confused, Eli glanced down a moment to confirm that he was indeed clothed.

Behind the frozen server, Tanca rushed over from the other end of the room. “Eli Tal,” he said. “Would you like to join me at the head table?” Tanca gestured back to the high table at the back of the room.

“Sure, okay. After you.” Eli nodded as he followed Tanca up the central aisle between the tables and benches with his shadows in tow. He could feel everyone else's eyes, but at least now, some conversation was happening.

“…could he want?”

“…the sign in our lifetime?”

“…don’t see what’s scary about his eyes?”

“Keep your head down….”

His two guards took positions along one of the walls as he and Tanca made it to the platform. It was just a big step up, but the single stair served as a clear separator between the two parts of the room. He thought there might be some cultural meaning he was missing, but there was nothing new with that.

Sitting at the chair Tanca indicated, he sat down and immediately noticed that the wooden chair was surprisingly comfortable. Was the wood somehow soft? It was almost like memory material with how it seemed to reshape itself. Raising himself slightly out of his chair, he looked down at his seat in confusion. To him, it still looked like a wooden chair.

“Ha! It’s a strange thing, right?” Tanca laughed loudly. “I always get a laugh when someone first experiences livingwood. Ha! I’m right, no?”

Eli jerked up at the laugh, but there was no maliciousness in the large man’s expression, and he couldn’t help smiling in return. He chuckled a bit, thinking about how he must have looked with his butt hovering with a face full of surprise and wonder. “Tanca, my friend. I think I’d like to see you try a beanbag chair someday. Then we’ll see who’s laughing!” he chuckled, seeing the confused look on Tanca’s face.

“What’s a beanbag chair?”

***

Boruta stood near the edge of his woods. Standing just inside the barrier that only he could sense, he smiled even as the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. The loud roar of power, like a raging storm bottled, would have deafened him standing this close a few centuries ago. Now, only a slight hum was barely heard above the droning insects nearby.

“How the world has changed,” he muttered to himself.

He remembered when greater creatures, the Kings and Queens of their kind, lived nearby. Centuries of monsters growing ever more potent from the untapped vitality in the air, fighting each other for the best and most significant resources to gain dominion over the rest. Few humans had dared to venture into the north, as few had ever returned.

He had been such a man. Hunted by his extended family, all of humanity had turned away from him. No one would help him grow stronger after his crimes came to light. He’d had to flee like a common criminal, only a few steps ahead of the mob screaming for his blood. The Elder Gods had followed to mete out their farcical idea of justice, but they’d failed to defeat him. He had even consumed one of their own, proving that even the gods were subject to his gift. The Gods’ resolve faltered, and so the Accord was created.

None more had dared to seek him out in the untamed lands. Only foolish and unwary adventurers, exploring the deep forests in search of their fortunes, met the Demon of Eld Forest. He’d let a few feeble souls live to report his existence, so his legend grew with his power. Over the years, he’d shed his weaknesses and humanity in his ascent towards his destiny.

Was it his fault that he’d been born with such a powerful gift? How could he not use such a thing? How could the stupid humans understand the thrill of his power, the energy thrumming through his very being as he feasted on another’s strength? He could have toppled the Elder Gods themselves if only a few paltry beings weren’t so short-sighted as to turn on him.

He ground his teeth as he pictured those petty upstart gods. While the Elder gods slowly faded away, their children rose to prominence. More managers and politicians than true supreme beings, they’d sent their annoying people to his forests almost in defiance of the Accord. Like a tiny cut among countless over the centuries, the constant and inevitable human invasions eventually pushed the wilds into retreat.

The remnant powers had fought back. They didn’t go quietly. They were each the rulers of their realms, but even they fell eventually or left for better feeding grounds. All were conquered until only he remained.

His eyes moved to the west, where he’d find his prey. The Spirit Weaver might not be happy as he was supposed to wait for her call. It could come at any moment but could also be centuries. He never knew when he’d see her again as she only came into his dreams according to her whims, but he had to listen to her. She’d already provided some fantastic gifts over the centuries and promised him so much more. Truly, the world was his for the taking.

But how could he ignore the sweet taste of power he’d sensed days ago? What impressive abilities were hiding within that being’s soul? Surely she would understand, and he would explain it when she visited again.

He had to step beyond this barrier to find his desired prey, but those petty gods would know the moment he did. Still, the idea didn’t bother him. His vow was only as strong as those who enforced it. He had bargained with gods now dead and gone – killed or supplanted by their progeny. With the weaklings of today, he would face them all if he had to. It wasn’t like he’d sworn anything to the Oververse, as only a fool would bind themselves so tight. Still, he didn’t think he’d have to face any of the gods since they didn’t seem to walk the land like they used to, and he hadn’t felt any of those pathetic fools nearby in years. The last time had been just a tiny taste from afar, and even that had been decades ago.

He took a deep breath as he stepped forward. The humming increased slightly as a strange sensation crawled over his skin as if an army of ants suddenly covered every millimeter of his body. Still, he didn’t stop as another step followed after another. The humming shifted to a high-pitched tone just at the edge of his excellent hearing after a few moments, just before the strange crawling sensation stopped.

He chuckled to himself as his voice deepened and his body changed shape. “The weak fools can do nothing. Finally, some freedom to hunt.” He smiled as he extended his senses again. He couldn’t actively feel his prey, but he knew the direction. They’d given him a taste of their power days ago. The residual feeling served as a tracker, a kind of scent. It was enough to give him a direction off to the west, but not that far.

The taste, the hint he’d had, was so delicious. It was primal power, and it would be his. “She told Boruta his destiny. Centuries of waiting. Now, it’s finally here!”