Hugh Howey - Molly Fyde and the Fight for Peace

“I still think she was warning us to not go there,” Anlyn shouted above a ferocious gust of wind.

Gil lumbered up beside them, still short of breath from the long and hurried hike. “Who warned you of what?” he asked.

“You should go with Anlyn,” Coril said. She folded her map and tucked it into her supply belt, right behind her thermos. Reaching up to her shoulder, she unstrapped her sunshield and brought it around in front of herself. Her egg graspers were attached to the back of it. She pulled the device out of its clips and held it out toward Gil.

“Take this.”

Gil looked at the graspers, which were just a long set of telescoping rods with a trigger on one end and a padded set of clamps on the other. He reached out and accepted the graspers, then glanced at his Wadi lance. Coril held her hands out for it.

“I’ll need it back,” Gil said, so quietly they could barely hear him over the wind and the howling of the canyons.

“I’ll even clean the blood off it for you,” Coril said snidely. She took the large weapon from him and pulled it toward herself. Anlyn couldn’t help but notice how it dipped down and nearly touched the canyon floor, the heft of the thing taking Coril by surprise.

“What about the sunshield?” Gil asked.

Coril looked to the path leading off toward the egg canyon. “Do you really think you’ll need it?”

Gil peeked down the canyon as well. He shrugged. “Maybe.”

Coril sighed. “Alright then.” She handed over the shield.

The three of them stood still for a moment, and Anlyn’s mind raced as she tried to sort out what was about to take place. This was not how she had imagined her Rite going. Gil turned away from Coril’s glare, pulling on Anlyn as he went.

“Hold on a second,” Anlyn told him.

“C’mon,” said Gil, urging her toward the egg canyon.

Anlyn pulled her sunshield off her back and rested its edge on the ground. The top came up to her waist, and the thing was only two hands wide with its panels retracted. She kept one hand on it and reached around to unclip her thermos.

“Take this,” she told Coril, holding out her full vessel of water.

Coril glanced down at it, then back up to Anlyn. “Are you really not coming with me?” She didn’t move to accept the thermos.

Anlyn felt her shoulders sag as her cousin’s disappointment swirled around her on an eddy of wind.

“Who do you think you’re gonna impress?” Anlyn asked. “Do you really think this will change anything? Do you think a single door will crack for you if you do this? Because they won’t. What few paths you do have will just slam shut.”

Coril frowned. Gil tried once more to tug Anlyn away.

“I don’t give a flying Wadi about any of that,” Coril finally said. She stepped closer to Anlyn and pushed away the thermos. “I don’t care how they measure me by this. I really don’t. I simply mean to measure myself .”

She clasped Anlyn’s arm. Her face flashed a glimpse of seriousness before her famous smile came back to wash it away. “Good luck on your Rite, Cousin,” she said.

With that, Coril lifted the heavy lance in both hands and trotted away, aiming for the shadowpath on the other side of the tall wedge.

Anlyn watched her go, fearing it would be the last time she ever saw her dear cousin alive.

“C’mon,” Gil said. He pulled Anlyn toward the egg canyon. “Don’t worry about her,” he shouted into the wind. “Nothing bad ever happens to Princess Coril!”

Anlyn reluctantly turned away. She followed after Gil as her large cousin strode toward the dayline and the wide path of shade snaking along the base of the canyon wall. She unclipped her egg graspers from her sunshield and tried to remember where she was—what she was supposed to be doing. Looking back, she saw Coril had already rounded the wedge of rock, disappearing up the canyon her aunt had shown them. She felt a powerful urge to run after her, to either bring her back or to join her, but not knowing which was the right action somehow paralyzed Anlyn into doing neither.

So instead, she simply followed Gil down the dark path ahead, past that line in the rock where eternal day abutted an endless night.

The pitch black of Anlyn’s unconsciousness was shattered by a brilliant flash of light. She awoke to find herself lying flat on her back, the same tumultuous war from earlier roiling above as darting ships and blooming explosions popped in the distance. Nearby, the gleaming and curvy ship that had rescued her from the vacuum of space began to rise up, pulling away from some sort of a landing pad that Anlyn had been left to one side of. The Bel-Tra’s ship lifted in complete and eerie silence, and noticeably without the flare of chemicals belching from any sort of thruster. It just floated higher and higher, departing as mysteriously as it had appeared.

The stomping of heavy boots thundered all around Anlyn, chasing away the quietude. Figures appeared in her peripheral. A group of men—Humans!—garbed in dark suits formed up around her. One of them shouldered a large weapon of some sort; he raised it up toward the departing ship and Anlyn heard something click.

There was a swoosh and a spit of fire before a lozenge of metal popped out of the weapon. The projectile paused, seeming to struggle against gravity, then took off in a flash, spiraling up after the Bel-Tra’s ship. Beyond the craft, Anlyn could just barely make out the shimmering curve of a dome of some sort, whatever material was holding in the atmosphere around the landing pad. Even in her dazed and confused state, she felt a pang of fear for the Tra as the craft seemed to be pinned between a hard barrier on the one side and a dangerous projectile on the other.

And then, with what was either a miraculous display or a desperate and suicidal leap, the Tra’s ship disappeared. It winked out with all the suddenness of a hyperspace jump, despite the threat of matter and gravity all around.

One of the men above Anlyn shouted something—something in a tongue that was alien and yet familiar. The rocket continued to chase after the missing ship, finally slamming into the dome and erupting in a ball of orange hellfire.

“Gotammeet,” one of the men said, as phonetically as Anlyn could place it. As the fire drained away and the smoke cleared, she could see the dome itself hadn’t been scratched. The men in the strange cloaks—with clinging bottoms fitted to each leg and tops that met in vertical seams left open—turned from the dissipating fire and looked down at her.

Their reactions were sharp and immediate. All four men jumped back, eyes wide. What were obviously weapons became trained on her, and the men began shouting back and forth. Anlyn couldn’t tell if it was her they were shouting at, or each other.

She tried her best to sit up, but her stomach felt like one giant bruise. She raised her hand. “Sheesti Looo,” she said in Drenard, knowing it would be ineffectual.

One of the figures pushed the others back. He fiddled with something on his belt, and suddenly the fabric of his suit began to shimmer like a tunic made of honeycloth. He came forward with his arm out, his palm reaching for Anlyn’s outstretched and much smaller hand.

“Sheesti Looo,” she said again, this time with more relief than fear as the weapons were returned to the folds of the strange and open cloaks. She sat up further and pressed her hand into the Human’s—

Something electric jolted through her body with the contact. A burning fire shivered up her arm, into her chest, and down through her thighs. It filled her with a trembling power, a surge of agony higher and harder than any pain she’d ever known. Her body became paralyzed, her muscles seizing up.