Memory of Dust

The night was red, the stars like a thousand flamed arrows in an eternal dive, and the earth a shattered ocean of black.

Roheel stumbled between broken homes bitten down by ravenous flames. A piece of oak stuck out and singed his ankle as he fled disaster.

On his back, Roheel carried the last remnant of his sullen circle, his only friend.

“Hold on!” Roheel pleaded.

“Leave me,” Tarad said.

“Are you insane?”

Tarad mumbled something in protest.

Roheel kept moving. Arms began to ache under the weight of his friend. He ran westward, toward the river where other survivors waited. His feet rushed across the heat. He kicked past charred debris, now little more than hot charcoal.

Roheel reached the open circle where embers floated like torches calling the fires to march their way, the wind their billowing ally. At the far side of the circle, the Statue of Heroes still stood, pink limestone keeping the embers cold.

“Lay me down,” Tarad said, coughing blood.

Reluctantly, Roheel lowered him at the plinth of the statue. “We can make it.”

Limestone protected them from the searing winds and allowed Roheel to check his friend’s wounds. No burns showed on Tarad. Neither blister nor bleb. But a deep gash was evident below his left ribs, and shallow cuts across his chest.

Blood spilled out.

Knife wounds?

Roheel tore off his shirt and pressed the open flesh hard as it stained the warm cloth. But the question could not escape his mind. Who was Tarad fighting?

“Forgive me,” Tarad said. His eyes almost closed.

“Don’t waste words,” Roheel said, almost distracted by the severity of his wounds. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Roheel scoured around. He patted the floor and brushed over dirt to find anything, if only some rope to tie his friend to his back and drag him the rest of the way.

Another person ran across the open circle with flailing arms. Roheel shouted for someone to help the poor man, but the man kept on running.

The screams of women and children were beyond the flames, and Roheel knew that whoever was near was either lost or dead.

It all happened so fast.

An explosion, the likes of which not a soul in Rend had ever witnessed, rumbled the earth and skies near the deep mines of the Kurtru mountains, setting Roheel’s camp ablaze.

He returned for Tarad after noticing him missing from the group of survivors, only to find him gravely wounded, not by flame, but by cold metal. Tarad carried his own blade, but it had no blood on it and was still sheathed in an old, tattered scabbard.

“What happened?” Roheel wished he hadn’t asked.

Tarad struggled to answer.

Roheel continued searching around them when he noticed a woman’s body lying limp a short distance from the monument.

“Hey!” Roheel shouted through the catching winds. “Are you alive?” He scurried closer to the body and found the woman’s face melted down to bone, struck down by a beam of molten wood.

Roheel’s fingers flittered through her belongings. No flask to drink from, nor a healer’s pouch to mend with. Warrior god Hara had truly abandoned them this night.

Yet Roheel prayed as he crawled back to his friend.

Tarad had his scabbard out and tried to carry it in his curled arms.

“What are you doing?” Roheel said.

“Take it.” Tarad coughed and slumped deeper beneath the plinth. “Please…”

“I don’t care about your rusted sword. Let me carry you out of here!”

The Haraban shook his head again, but Roheel would not accept such a dogged refusal, so he wrapped his arms around the young man and grunted to lift him up.

Roheel could only make it a couple of steps past the monument before Tarad tripped him, sending them both fumbling to the ground.

“You bastard!” Roheel shouted. He glared at his limp hostage. “Why won’t you let me save you?”

With little choice in the matter, Roheel grabbed the end of Tarad’s collar and dragged him back behind the safety of the statue.

“What would you have me do?” Roheel said. “I’m not leaving you here!”

“Please,” Tarad said. His face was stricken. “Find Rauw. The enemy. There is another enemy.”

“Did he do this to you?”

“No,” Tarad said. “A man in the flames.”

With no more to beg out of the man, there, under the shadow of their Heroes, Roheel let Tarad reach for his hand.

The man gripped his hand, his eyes sunken. “I’m sorry,” he said, teeth painted blood, “but you’ll have to tell me more about your boring plans some other time.”

Hiding the rage, Roheel blurted out the question. “Who did this to you? Tell me.”

“I—” Tarad winced. “I don’t know.”

“In Hara’s glory, I will avenge you,” Roheel said. His eyes were flared. “Whoever did this will beg for half the mercy you’ve shown them.”

Tarad shook his head, face falling. “No, they will not. I will rest and you will live.”

Roheel’s lips drew a hard line. “I swear to you, on the life of my—”

“Whose life?” Tarad gurgled. “Your life? Like me, you too are weak.”

Roheel bit his tongue and nodded begrudgingly. What was there to argue with a man and his final wish?

“Be better than Haraba, my friend,” Tarad said. “Make it rain.”

Roheel seized him in a hug. “I will…”

Blood continued to pool. So much water drained out of a thin man.

Tarad trailed off, his gaze distancing toward the crumbled lodgings at the edge of the circle, and he gave a sorry smile.

Roheel glanced at the pyre of flames in that direction, seeing nothing there but what once was.

Till the end, Roheel stayed with him, but soon enough, the man’s mind began to lose shape, and soon Tarad’s chest drew in its last breath, joining his late son in the realm of Heroes.

The fires betrayed a cold shadow upon Roheel, blackness warring against the flared wrath of the world ablaze.

I swear to you, Tarad. I will find them all, and I will kill them.

Then it rained, only no rain had fallen in Rend for thousands of years, and this night was no different.

Roheel rubbed ashes to his eyes.

Tarad’s bronze locket still hung from the man’s neck, a piece from the first mineral he and Roheel ever mined in the ochre mountains.

When he finally stopped the rain from flowing, Roheel wiped the few drops which trickled below his jaw. Then, he removed the bloodied chain slowly and wrapped it around his own neck, hot under his chin.

Roheel genuflected, one hand on his knee, and mustered the words spoken in spirit.

We are forged by the earth to be made into warriors and forged by warriors to return to the earth. Greatness Hara, accept my Haraban brother forged, and spare the earth your warrior’s blood.

He picked himself up, and regrets rose with him.