Kyle West - Extinction

“Does he really want us to…?” Anna asked.

“Come on.”

I grabbed her hand, and we walked into the canyon. The lakebed sloped down to where the Wanderer waited, his face masked in shadow.

I felt as if I were approaching a god. Maybe I was.

As we neared, the shadow no longer covered his face.

At last, we stood before him. He wore a small smile, and there was no evidence of his wound from before.

Anna and I would have our meeting with the Wanderer.

No one said anything for a long while. The Wanderer’s eyes glowed white within his cowl.

He was the first to speak.

“There is little time to speak, Alex. We both know the end is near. As you might have guessed, the Elekai were attacked. This morning, we tried to fly to Los Angeles. But Askala guessed our intent. She caught us on the open fields, and many Elekai fell. Almost all the Elekai rest in the pool.”

“What about Askal?” I asked.

“Yes, he is here, too,” the Wanderer said. “I suppose in one of the further caverns.”

“How did that… thing… get in here?” Anna asked.

“It was not only from above that we were attacked,” the Wanderer said. “Several burrowers found their way into the caverns. That one disturbed my meditation in the Sacred Grove.”

I thought “disturbed” was too light a word for what the Wanderer had suffered.

“How long will it take for the dragons to heal?” I asked.

“For some, not long at all,” the Wanderer said. “As for the rest…they will be ready in time for the final battle. That is, if there is a final battle to be fought. Los Angeles must be saved first, but I dare not let the Elekai fly there. They will not be ready.”

“Then how are we going to save the city?” Anna asked. “That’s why we came.”

The Wanderer looked at her with solemn eyes. “I will come with you. With luck, I may be able to turn the tide.”

“What?” Anna asked. “How?”

“You’re riding on our spaceship?” I asked.

Somehow, it was hard to imagine the Wanderer doing that.

“Yes,” he said. “I’d rather fly on a dragon, but there isn’t time for that.”

The Wanderer was probably the only person who could honestly say that.

“But…how are you going to stop the Radaskim?” Anna asked. “It’s just you, and there are thousands of them.”

“There is only one way, for which I must pay the ultimate price. I must release the hidden power of the Elekai. It is the only chance, I think, to save the city.”

Hidden power? The ultimate price?

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Are you…”

The Wanderer’s eyes seemed to answer the question that I left unasked.

Whatever the Wanderer had planned, it would cost him his life.

“The Releasing…it involves my giving up my power. It will allow me to directly control the Radaskim dragons. I’m unsure how long it will last, or even if it will work. It’s the only chance I see.”

“And it will kill you?”

“Yes.” The Wanderer’s eyes seemed to focus on something far away. “I can do this, because there is now another, to take my place…”

It was then that I realized he was talking about me.

“Wait…you want me to become…” I didn’t even know what to call it.

“My time to lead has passed. Askala has grown too powerful, and she has forced our hand…” The Wanderer gave a bitter smile. “It is the same, on every world. She forces our hand before we’re ready to play it.”

I had no idea what the Wanderer was talking about. All I knew was that he wanted me to fill his shoes, and that was something I could never do.

“You mean — I have to lead the Elekai when you’re gone?”

The Wanderer nodded. “Yes.”

“Why not one of the dragons? Why does it have to be…?”

I shook my head. There was no way I was up to this.

“This is your world,” the Wanderer said. “This is your fight.”

The Wanderer gestured upward — above the rim of frothing ichor, the nearest dragon’s head was visible.

The Wanderer continued. “They were the first to lose their world, millions of years ago. On each world, we make a home like this for them. We’ve saved the genetic blueprints for every species located on our home world, Askalon. You see the trees, the plants, the life of Askalon within these caverns.” The Wanderer turned back to me. “The Askala have already fought their war, but through the xenovirus and the Elekai, they are preserved, for as long as we exist in the universe. But the time of humanity has come, as it has come for every race discovered by the Radaskim.”

I guessed I understood what the Wanderer was saying. This was our war. Our fight. And if the Wanderer was going to die, I was the only one left who could take control.

“If it’s the only way…” I said. “I’ll do it.”

“No,” Anna said.

The Wanderer turned to her, his face questioning.

“I don’t understand why Alex has to die. Isn’t there another way?”

The Wanderer looked down at us. He said nothing at first. After what seemed an eternity, he spoke.

“Alex was chosen by the Elekai,” the Wanderer said. “He was chosen by me. And Alex accepted the call.”

“That doesn’t answer anything!” Anna said, frustrated. It was all she could do to keep herself in control. “Why him? And why does he have to die?”

“Anna…”

She didn’t seem to hear me, instead focusing on the Wanderer, demanding an answer from him that he couldn’t give.

The Wanderer waved us up the path. We looked at each other before following him. As we walked, the ichor closed behind us. It wasn’t long before we stood on the white, crystalline shoreline. The dragons continued to slumber in their healing trance.

“You ask me why he is to die,” the Wanderer said. “The process of converting Askala requires a giving up of the spirit, similar to what I am going to do. When you ask me why he in particular has to die, you are forgetting something important: in the end, we will all die, sooner rather than later.”

Anna didn’t respond. The Wanderer had a good point: it seemed unimportant to focus on the death of a single person when, most likely, we were all going to have to face that death.

All that the Wanderer had told me before came back: on hundreds of worlds over millions of years, the Radaskim had invaded and the Elekai had resisted. The Elekai always chose a champion to fight the Radaskim. That champion, on each of these worlds, had always failed, in the end. The Radaskim were always too powerful to be resisted, crushing all who stood in their way. Earth was just a tiny planet in a vast universe. What was one death compared to all that?

“There are many things I do not know, Anna,” the Wanderer said. “Many things I will never know. I do know that Alex must face Askala, that he has been chosen by the Elekai to destroy her. He can only do so by infecting her. And yes, it involves dying.”

“But, why the sacrifice?” Anna asked. “Can’t he just infect her and get away. Or…”

“The…transformation,” the Wanderer said. “It is hard to imagine how such a thing might be accomplished without death.”

“Wait…” Anna said. “Transformation? What transformation? You mean Askala, or…”

“Askala will become Elekai. I don’t know what that will do to Alex, but it certainly involves his death.”

“So, is there a chance that it won’t?”