The Tower King

Sora inspected his body and noticed that it was in a very bad state. "Damn, it's going to take us quite a while to be completely healed." he growled while taking leaves next to him, acting as a makeshift bandage.

He was in pain everywhere. His muscles were tense like ropes ready to break, his fingers threw him at every movement, and his flank pulsated with a dull, regular pain, almost reassuring in its constancy. His head rotated a little every time he got up too fast, and his breathing remained short, jerky, as if his sides refused to follow the rhythm.

"You surprise me..." replied Elwen, bandaging his arm which continued to bleed. "I have the impression that my body is heavy as stone."

"Two months..." he muttered. "We still have to hold two more fucking months here."

"What an idea I had to want to follow you into this forest..." Elwen replied while looking at Sora who continued to heal himself. "We almost left our skin on the first day."

Sora sketched a bitter smile, half because of Elwen's words, half because of the pain that radiated from his back with each breath.

"I would have preferred to prove you wrong, you know..." he murmured, somehow tying the leaves around his swollen hand.

The silence fell for a moment. A heavy silence, only broken by the discreet rustling of leaves, the irregular breath of their breaths and the distant, almost ghostly noises of the night forest.

Around them, the shadows stretched out, dancing softly to the trembling light of a small fire that Elwen had managed to ignite with difficulty. He warmed almost nothing, but he kept the darkness at bay, and that was already a lot.

Their camp was nothing like a true refuge: a recess between two roots, a pile of branches for cushions, and their canvas stretched on the ground to isolate themselves from the cold and wet soil. But they didn't have the energy to do better. Not tonight.

"We have to sleep." finally declared Elwen in a low, weary voice. "Just a little."

Sora nodded without responding. He lay down gently, each movement awakening a different pain. The cold was already infiltrating his bones. He tried to tighten his cape a little around him, then closed his eyes.

The sleep took them away without warning.

Not a restful sleep, but a survival sleep. Deep, heavy, almost unconscious. The exhaustion had taken away their pains, their fears, their thoughts.

...

When Sora opened his eyes, a trickle of light filtered through the thick leaves of the canopy. The air was still fresh, wet, laden with scents of earth and moss. The noises of the morning gently took the place of those of the night: a rustling of wings, a distant crackle, the regular lapping of a drop falling on a stone.

He growled as he tried to sit up.

His back made him immediately regret his gesture. His body was stiff, as if he had spent the night stuck in a stone wall. His muscles protested, his joints cracked, and his skin seemed burning where makeshift bandages had stuck to the dried blood.

He glanced at Elwen.

She was still sleeping, curled up against a trunk, her arm injured against her chest. Her hair was sticking to her forehead, and she had pulled a side of her cape over her face to protect herself from the humidity. His face was calm, but marked by dark circles and fatigue.

Sora breathed deeply. He knew that the day ahead was going to be harsh. They had nothing: no balm, no food, no stable shelter.

But they were still there. Alive, and that was surely the greatest victory possible.

Despite the pain, he slowly stood up and took advantage of the ambient calm to take a look at the corpse of the Nocturnal Hunter and noticed, fortunately, that it had not attracted any scavenger during the night. Only a few insects seemed to twirl slightly around.

Sora knew that he would have to take the opportunity to retrieve a few pieces of meat still intact so they could feed, but the simple act of moving was teeming him with pain, so he hadn't even considered moving.

He preferred to wait a little longer, until Elwen wakes up.

Elwen's awakening did not take long. A hoarse moan escaped her lips as she moved slowly, as if every movement was measured, dreaded.

"Damn..." she blew while holding her ribs. "I feel like a horse has trampled on me."

"That's about what happened, isn't it?" replied Sora with a half-grin. "Bigger. And with fangs."

She turned her head towards him, narrowed her eyes in the morning light, then sat grimacing against the tree.

"You don't sleep much, huh?" she said.

He shrugged.

"I slept. Enough to dream that I was being eaten by a bear. It was almost restful compared to reality."

A silence settled. Neither heavy, nor awkward. Rather the one who settles between two survivors too tired to search for their words.

Then Sora broke the break.

"The Hunter's corpse is still intact. No scavengers tonight."

Elwen turned his head, spotting the dark mass a little further away, spread out in the wet grasses.

"We must recover what we can." she immediately declared. "The meat must still be good."

"I thought about it... but my legs decided to go on strike."

She growled a painful laugh, rubbing her eyes. "I'm not in better shape, but if we drag it too much, the meat will turn."

They exchanged a look. Neither of them wanted to. The idea of approaching this creature, even dead, still turned their stomach. But the hunger was already starting to be felt, nagging, insidious. And they knew they had no choice.

With a common effort, they slowly got up, leaning on each other not to wobble.

The path to the corpse was short but exhausting. The smell was stronger than the day before, more acrid, but still tolerable. Sora crouches down with difficulty and begins to observe the monster's sides.

"There." he said, pointing to a part relatively untouched by the insects. "The flesh is still clean here."

Elwen took out his knife, his gun was dull, but enough to cut meat. Together, with slow and awkward gestures, they began to recover what they could. Threads of tense muscles, some pieces taken from the thighs, and even an organ that they did not recognize but that Elwen decided to keep, "just in case."

They had no salt, no spices, nothing to preserve. Just fire and hunger. That would be enough for this morning.

Back at their camp, Sora raised the embers while Elwen handed a piece of meat over a stick. The wood slowly sizzled. A fine smoke rose, resulting in an odor more animal than enticing.

"It stinks a little..." commented Elwen, sticking his tongue out.

"Yeah I know, but it's not supposed to smell good. It's supposed to be eaten."

They exchanged an exhausted smile, and for a few seconds, the world seemed less cruel.

When they finally crunched from the first cooked pieces, barely, to tell the truth, neither of them made a grimace. Their stomach had silenced their palate.

After a few bites, Elwen sighed and leaned against a trunk. "What do we do next?"

Sora slowly chewed a barely cooked piece of meat, his gaze fixed on the weakening embers.

"Frankly?" he ends up saying, the husky voice. "I don't really have a plan."

Elwen blinked, not really surprised. She scanned the forest, to check that no creature was watching them. "Yeah... I expected it a bit."

He shrugged his shoulders, his face hollowed out by fatigue.

"I thought we would have at least a few quiet days. That we could settle somewhere, observe, find landmarks. But with the noise that the fight made last night..." He glanced at the corpse of the Nocturnal Hunter, visible between the ferns. "We had to wake up the whole damn forest."

He grimaced, stretched his legs stiff, then added:

"This kind of carcass attracts. And I'm not just talking about scavengers. There could be much worse creatures, or just... curious ones."

Elwen sighed for a long time. She bit into another piece of meat, then let herself go against the tree trunk behind her. "Well, anyway we don't really have a choice, we must move from here if we don't want to be eaten by I don't know what huge beast."

He swept the environment with his gaze. The trees stretched as far as the eye could see, massive and twisted, forming an impenetrable green sea. No glades, no visible landmarks. Nothing but the forest. Infinite, alien, and silent.

"We should move. Slowly. To the west, maybe."

"The west?" she asked, surprised. "Did you see something interesting in that direction?"

Sora did not respond immediately, he seemed to be looking for an excuse to provide him, but retracted, not finding a satisfying lie. "No, nothing at all. But even if it meant wandering around randomly, I told myself that the west could be an interesting destination."

He paused, then added, more softly:

"It's not a perfect plan. It's not even a plan at all, actually. It's just... move on."

Elwen stared at him for a moment. Then she sighed and slowly stood up, grimacing.

"Moving forward is already not bad. I prefer that rather than staying here waiting to end up in the belly of another monster."

Apparently both of them satisfied with this consensus, they put away what they could, patched up their things with the means at hand, and piled some pieces of meat in a fabric tied quickly. Then, without a word more, they moved away from their little camp, walking slowly, painfully, but together.

Behind them, the fire was slowly dying, and the corpse of the Nocturnal Hunter was already beginning to rot under the first caresses of voracious insects.

They had been walking for almost an hour, or maybe two. Sora had lost track of time. Their progress was slow, punctuated by the crackling of the branches under their steps and the difficult breath of their breaths. Each step was a trial, an effort to push away the pain and fatigue.

The soil was loose, irregular, dotted with thick roots that forced to lift high legs. The slightest misstep made a grimace, the slightest touch a muffled sigh. But they were advancing. Towards the west. Because we had to go somewhere.

The trees seemed to thicken, get closer, as if they were observing their slow progress. At times, the light barely filtered through the foliage, creating moving patterns on the floor. Bursts of gold and green, like so many memories of a less hostile world.

They had hardly spoken since their departure. Not out of lack of desire, but because each word required energy, and they had decided, tacitly, to keep it to walk.

Sora led the way, sometimes stopping to listen or observe around him, despite using his new skill. There was nothing. Nothing threatening, nothing reassuring either. Just the forest, always the forest. Present, silent, sometimes noisy for no reason. A bird flew abruptly from a tree, snatching Elwen a discreet startle.

She grumbled something between his teeth, but continued to move forward.

"We should find a place a little more open." she ends by saying, out of breath. "Just to take a break."

Sora nodded without a word. He too felt his forces leaving him. The improvised bandages barely held. His clothes clung to his skin, sweaty and dusty. The slightest movement drew an inner complaint from him.

They eventually found a small ledge between two rocks, sheltered by a large tree with gnarled roots. The floor there was drier, almost comfortable in comparison to the rest.

They sit down heavily, like two bags of stones abandoned there by a weary carrier.

Sora closed his eyes for a moment, simply listening. No suspicious noise, no worrying creak. Just the distant song of a few birds and the peaceful rustling of the wind in the foliage.

He heard Elwen lie down gently, with a thousand precautions. "Do you think we are moving in the right direction?" she asked, the drawling voice.

He opened his eyes, watched a ray of light pass between the leaves, and slightly shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know. But as long as we move forward... we move away from what we left behind."

She let out a breath, between laughter and weariness. "Yeah... You're right."

The silence returned. They were not sleeping, but the rest was there, in this simple pause, this absence of urgency. Their bodies were still trembling, but their minds were calming down. Slowly. Both knew that it would soon be necessary to stand up again. Walk again. Fetch water. Find a place to spend the next night.

But for the moment, they granted themselves this parenthesis. A breath of air in a world that refused to offer them.

Sora observed the sky through the leaves, looking for a direction, a sign, something. There was nothing.

And yet, he caught himself thinking that perhaps at the end of this uncertain path there would be something other than fear and pain.

He said nothing. But he kept this thought deep inside him, as one keeps a spark in the darkness. And basically, this simple thought was enough to continue moving forward.