He was falling. I tried to grab hold of him but I couldn’t. I reached out, helpless, grasping at the heat and flames rising from below. He grinned as he fell, his body armor disintegrating to ash, his ivory wings turning crimson and gold. I struggled to fall after him but my body pulled back, upward against gravity. His autumn eyes glistened as he smiled. Falling to the inferno below. That idiot.
I wake up to the sound of distant sirens and the smell of static air. Above me, dawn trickles in through the gaps of broken ceiling, before dissolving into the darkness around me. Groggily I sit up, blinking the nightsights and sleepy eyes away.
A figure appears at the entrance. It’s Asha. Her curly hair and silver wings a shadow against the dim hazy sky. “We need to move now. The sector has started collapsing.”
We fly through the morning sky. Beneath us, a barren desert landscape stretches as far as the eye can see. Here and there, clusters of collapsed buildings lie half-buried in the sand. There is not a living creature to be seen, all having deserted this place many ages ago.
Asha flies ahead, checking her holomap once in a while. “The collapse is accelerating. But if we keep flying, we should manage to make it. Any response from Kei yet?”
I check my transmissions. “Negative, Ash. Electro storms must be jamming the transmits.”
She nods. “Keep checking. Let me know if anything comes in.”
“Understood.”
The world beneath us trembles yet again. The abandoned buildings rattle and groan. Ahead of us, at the horizon, the sky is on fire. Giant pillars of gray smoke rise from the ground, lit from below by a bright flaming orange. As we fly towards it, it grows larger and hotter. Like a monster crawling from the belly of the earth, it roars.
After flying for another few hours, we arrive at the Lower Temporal Outpost, a research facility located near the edge of the sector. Secured with several structural wards, a handful of its buildings float precariously above an ocean of rubble and lava, sinking and crumbling with every passing moment. The smoke is thick, the air is burning, and a heavy hot wind is blowing in from the firefront. I flap my wings and hover, as I scan the area for any signs of Kei.
Bzzt. An incoming transmission. I forward it to Asha as I bring it up on my holo. Kei’s location tracker.
Asha is the first to spot him—atop one of the buildings’ landing platforms, busy tapping away at a control panel—and immediately dives in his direction. I do the same. Around us, another tremor begins to shake the earth. The buildings vibrate but hold themselves together.
We land with a thud on the platform and quickly run up to Kei, who is in the middle of strapping on a backpack. He sees us approach and nods. “Riah, Asha, nice to finally meet,” he greets quickly as he throws us each a backpack identical to his.
I fasten mine on and tighten the straps. And then a few wing flaps to make sure it’s secure.
PYAAANG!! The sound of shattering crystals, and the building begins to shake violently.
“I think those were the wards,” Kei warns. “We must get out of here. Now.”
Asha nods. “Wings up, boys!”
I raise my wings, ‘all-clear’. Kei does the same.
Without a second’s delay, Asha hits to the sky followed by Kei and me immediately after. Beneath us, the building collapses, stones rumbling and steel creaking. The moment I’m in the air, the wind hits me and the weight on my back throws me off balance. But with a few quick wing flaps I pull myself together.
Kei is beside me. He taps his wristband a few times. “I already cast a few weight wards on these loads. But it may take a few moments for them to stabilize.”
I nod. “Don’t worry about it.”
Ahead of us, Asha glances back to make sure we are close. The air is messy and we are fighting the wind. Somewhere behind us a giant fireball erupts, the heat blowing past us as we fly away. Asha points ahead at an opening amongst the dark gray smoke clouds.
Kei and I signal her, ‘understood’.
We soar, flying as fast as we can, away from the collapsing earth behind us. The crumbling ground, crushed by the overwhelming burden of its own weight, falls downward. Downward, to the deep fiery depths of this dying world.
There was a time, when I had a friend. We were mere kids and had nothing to worry about. The sky was still blue and the land still green and alive. It was a clear day, the sun shining, and I was lying on my back watching a pair of thunder hawks fly, while my friend sitting next to me played a tune on his strings.
At some point, he got bored and joined me to stare at the sky. There was only one bird left in the sky by this time, the smaller one with speckled feathers. It too eventually circled away out of sight.
I glanced at my friend lying on the grass beside me, his brown hair rough and short. Then back at the empty sky. “Gale… Why do some things die while others don’t?”
He turned to look at me, amused. “That’s a weird question to ask.” Then he sat up, still looking at me. “Riah, are you thinking about death?”
I blinked. “Whaa…?” He loved doing this. “Um, no… but yeah… if you put it like that…”
He chuckled. Then turned his eyes back to the sky. “What is death, Riah?” He took a deep breath. “What do you think it would be like to die?”
“Huh?” I had never really thought about that before. “Hmmm…” A lone cloud drifted aimlessly above in the blue sky. “I don’t know… Maybe it’s like, everything just… ends?”
“Everything just ends?”
“Yeah, like everything just stops. You know, like when you fall asleep.”
He thought for a moment. Then smirked at me, smacking my head with one of his wings.
“Nope, not at all.” Shaking his head, he looked smugly upward, as I pushed away his annoying fuzzy feathers, glaring. “I think dying would be like the opposite of living. No fun. No happiness. Nothing to love. It would be dark, empty, and lonely. It would be like losing what you enjoy most in life. It would be like losing what you love. It would be like…” He looked around, thinking, wings quivering slightly behind him. “It would be like…” He glanced away, then back at me, a silly smile on his face. “… losing you.”
I scowled, and pushed my hand into his stupid grinning face.
“No, dude, seriously.” Laughing, he struggled to push me back.
“That’s stupid,” I complain.
He reached out, messing up my hair, grinning. “It’s not.”
I looked away and sighed. “Well, it’s not like we’ll ever find out anyway. It’s not like… not like, we can die.”
I was wrong.
