NOVEL NEXT Interlude: I Don't Think We're Alone Here
It had been three weeks since Seeker Tempest had been banished from the community. Three weeks since the Guard had found her stealing food to feed her family, three weeks since she was stripped of all her tech and forced through the grand gates and out into the jungle. She had gone with dignity, despite the tears of her first-mother and the wailing of her sisters. She would not let them see her weep. She would not let them see the fear clenching her heart.
"Your life is forfeit for the crimes against the community," the arbiter had said. "But the community is merciful. Your life may yet be ransomed back, if the gods and their tools smile upon you."
Three weeks in the jungle, hiding from the blade-claws and the fierce-runners and the hive . Three weeks in which her stomach shrunk and her muscles weakened and every bit of extraneous fat was leeched from her form as she fought to stay alive long enough for the gods and their tools to smile on her.
Tech. She needed to find tech. Somewhere on this gods-forsaken island, somewhere there must be something that the Finders had missed. A cache of metals, an ancient gear lever, a random diode. Something, anything, that she could bring back to the community and ransom her life back for herself.
It was what had brought her to the west side of the island, where the most dangerous monsters resided. Things huge and so terrible that they didn't have names because the hunter parties avoided them at all costs. If there was any tech to be found that the Finders had not already uncovered, it would be here.
Three weeks from the community, three weeks of drinking fear and eating adrenaline. Three weeks almost to the hour.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
That was when she heard the gunshots.
They were strange, higher-pitched than the deep basso explosions of the Guard's musketry. And they came rapidly. Her ears quivered as they caught the harmonics from the air, and told her that despite the rapidity of the fire, there were only a few weapons.
The young elf felt hope blossom in her chest.
Tech.
She moved to the side, positioning herself against one of the big rocks in the clearing, letting the sound waves bounce off of the hard surface and enter her long ears. She closed her eyes and moved her head side to side, trying to get a fix on where th gunfire was coming from…
There.
The gunfire had the quiet ripple of the ocean in it. They were on a beach. Maybe a day's travel from here. Less if she moved quickly. More if she moved carefully.
The image of her first-mother's face popped into her mind, emaciated from hunger and blanched from thirst.
She would move quickly.
There was tech there. Tech in the hands of someone not of the community. If she could get her eyes on it, get enough information to bring back to the Searchers, it would be enough to get her back in the walls and shower her family in food and fuel for months. If it was what she thought it was.
That the tech belonged to someone else… Well, that was of no mind to her. Tech was for the community. The old laws had decreed it such. If they could not be persuaded to join the community… Well. The Searchers carried tech of their own for just such occasions.
This was the way of the Island. You served, or you died.
Her path now set, Seeker Tempest shoved away from the rock and started into the jungle once more.