Lost and Forgotten: Xiir ~ Tuesday 12/06/4208

The wind whipped through the trees overhead. It howled and screamed like an angry ghost as it pelted the travelers below their canopies with snow and ice. Cheeks burning from the harsh cold, the four of them stopped for a moment. Ducking under the lowest branches of an ancient pine they sought respite from the relentless winds and the white snow. 

Xiir took up point, back to the wind, while the others huddled beside her and the trunk of the massive tree. Korelleon fumbled a gadget out of his pocket, frustrated that whatever intended help it meant to have offered them proved useless this far into the icy north. He stowed it away again and looked about, shielding his eyes with a metallic hand.

“We’re on course, as far as I can tell anyway.” He had to almost shout to be heard over the shrieking wind.

“That’s nice. We have, like, what? Six more hours of this?” Thade responded through the gloved hands he used to hide his face. The smaller buck was not as accustomed to the cold as Xiir was.

Eldrazi, the youngest of the group, took up the rear. Like Xiir, they stood in their feral form, ears pinned to keep out the cold. “Quit yapping. You’re the one who asked us to help you.”

Thade peered out over his hands to accost the young ‘buck with a glare that was anything but intimidating. “You know two things can be true at the same time, right? I can ask you for help and not like the circumstances.”

“You could also just keep them as ‘inside thoughts’ too” Eldrazi scowled over their shoulder.

“Well, forgive me if I don't like being a popsicle, Mr. Freeze!” Thade said through an annoyed laugh and crossed his arms. “I just can’t understand why a child would venture out this far into the wilderness.” He  continued. “It’s so cold and lonely out here.”

“All the more reason to hurry, and stop dawdling.” Eldrazi said, seemingly in agreement.

Xiir and Krell exchanged knowing glances. Krell sighed, letting his head rest into his spouse’s dark fur. They needed to get moving again. If they allowed themselves to get too comfortable they’d likely attempt to pitch camp here. Xiir reluctantly pulled away and lifted the canopy of the pine with her nose. With a grumble from Thade they tucked their noses into their gear and set out, back into the swirling white. Xiir swept her long black tail behind her, using it to keep track of the 3 behind her without having to take her eyes from scanning their surroundings.

Midday brought a bloom of kinder weather. The snow settled and the sun attempted a heartfelt attempt at shining on them as they trudged through the snow. At some point, the snow drifts climbed higher till the two humanoid companions trudged through waist deep snow. Xiir, in an effort to save them time, lifted Krell and Thade onto her back. She and Eldrazi continued on foot. The wind began to howl again as they finally came within eyesight of their destination. It had been so long since Xiir had seen the structure that had been the center of her people’s civilization.

The ringed fortress had once been a glorious display of strength and dominance over the land. But the stoic splendor of the great stone walls had long since worn away in the centuries she had spent asleep in the caves. That part was still hard to wrap her head around. One day the world had been cold, and she had to fight for every meal, and when she woke up, crawled from a crack formed in stones that had buried their caves in miles of stone. And everything had changed. Ttatkor was no longer the same home she had once known. The flora, fauna, civilization as it had been were gone. Smaller, friendlier things now ruled the world. Her clan had been offended by this affront to the status quo. Xiir had been enamoured. 

“You good?” Krell asked, placing a hand on her shoulder.

Xiir nodded. “Yeah, It’s just been a while.”

Looking down onto the fortress from their vantage point, it seemed like a fairytale scene. The sun filtering through the cloud cover. The snow falling in large flakes. All set up like a picture book page. They made their way into the valley where the fortress rotted. Thade, now filled with newfound excitement over this discovery, was buzzing away with details and theories he’d heard that made Xiir bark in laughter at the absurdity of them. The snow thinned as they traveled up the slope that would carry them to the busted gates into the square.

Aside from the crunching of the snow under their paws and hooves, it was silent. A bird cried somewhere far in the distance. Their breath wafted around them like little ghosts. Xiir could feel the energy shift. Something wasn’t right, and it wasn’t just her that seemed to catch on. Eldrazi was alert, standing still as a stone, their eyes darting to every dark corner, ears flipping this way and that despite the sheer cold, head on a swivel. 

“You feel it, don’t you?” Xiir said just above a whisper.

Eldrazi swept their tail in response. 

Krell, noticing a change in his spouse’s behavior, thumped his hand into Thade’s shoulder. Excited ramble interrupted, the delta buck took note as well, and clapped a palm over his mouth. They stood, waiting for whatever was watching to emerge. When the wind picked up again the Alphas hackles lowered. Whatever it was that had come over them had seemed to relinquish as if swept away by the tempest above. Neither were too convinced it wouldn’t return however. 

Thade spotted movement near a doorway as they had rounded the winding road towards the longhouse he’d been calling a castle. Stopping to examine it they realized it was a chunk of a blue scar, caught on the splintered wood of a door left half standing. Krell attempted to boot up another gadget only to be disappointed yet again. He handed the scrap of material to Thade, unable to feel it due to his solarmech. Thade kneaded the fabric between his fingers and made an affirming nod.

“The materials are too new to be from the same period as everything else here. It’s gotta be the kids.” 

Xiir sniffed the doorway, fur on edge again. “Something was here.” She looked into the shadow of the former warriors’ hut. “I think this is new damage.”

“With all the rot around here, the kid could have probably done it.” Thade responded.

Eldrazi caught Xiir in his silver-eyed stare. “Wasn’t the kid. ‘Something else.”

“We should check inside.” Krell urged.

Taking hold of what was left of the door, Krell landed 3 swift kicks and caved in the rest of the way. Under the force of the white steel hooves the weathered oak door never stood a chance, no matter how ancient and fortified it had been. Out of the wind, Krell and Thade pulled out of their hoods to listen. Xirr relished the act of stepping into the hut in her feral form. They just didn’t build structures big enough to accommodate alphas anymore. Well, of course. We stopped existing for eons, why would they? Eldrazi followed behind, keeping his eyes on the doorway. The search yielded further proof of the child’s presence in the form of shuffled footprints carved through layers of an eternity’s worth of dust. Following them back through the hut they discovered a broken window. A small spatter of blood lay on the floor, dripped from a jagged edge of the dusty pane. They backtracked, following the outside edge of the hut till they met the broken window and the small impression in the snow, now half covered by the falling snow. Eldrazi sniffed the ground and jerked their head up. The group turned about, unable to catch whatever it was that made Eldrazi lower his head and take a protective step closer to Thade.

Whatever it was had returned.

Steeling their nerves, the group continued. Following the half buried footprints they found themselves at the steps to the long house. Every so often they caught glances of something moving ust out of the corner of their eyes. Something imperceptibly large, silent and quick. The entrance to the longhouse was little more than a hole, dug, chewed and broken into the wood by years of critters and scoundrels. Krell followed Thade through the tight gap. Though insistent he go last, Xiir pushed Eldrazi in after before donning her own humanoid form to wriggle her way through. 

The air inside the longhouse was stale, and carried the sour stench of decay from somewhere in the shadowy recesses of the building. The wooden floorboards creaked beneath their feet as they moved through the rooms. Krell’s electric torch guided them safely around the holes in the floor and over debris that had fallen and blocked passage to some of the rooms. The stairs to the lower floors had collapsed, and a hole in the ceiling let in the last shards of setting sunlight and a downpour of ice and snow. 

Thade was crouched under the hole, examining a small bloody footprint when they heard it. A subtle whimper. So soft and muffled it may have been a trick of the wind. Just the sides of the great longhouse sighing in its age. But it came again, a little more clearly. And grew in intensity as Xiir stepped closer to the overturned table until she stood, peering over it into the frightened face of a small buckleo child. She gasped, and covered her face in her hands, exposing a long gash along her forearm.

“Xiir, what is it?” Krell asked, daring a step closer to his spouse.

“It’s ok, little one. We’re here to get you home.” Xirr crouched to be more level with the child as they peeked an eye out over their arms. A moment later, the child flung themselves into Xiir’s arms so quickly the motion almost knocked her over. Xiir pulled the tiny ‘buck close, wrapping as much of her coat over her bare limbs as she could. 

“It won’t let me leave!” The tiny buckleo sobbed into Xiir’s tawny hair.

“What won’t?” Krell stooped beside them, pulling a med kit from his bag and bandaging her arm.

“The monster.” She pointed to the window. “It’s been trying to get me.”

The stillness that hung in the air was haunting.

“Don’t worry, princess, we’ll get you home safe and sound!” Thade said optimistically.

Eldrazi rested his head on top of Thade’s and grumbled in agreement.

Bandaged and fed, Xiir stuffed the child into layers of protective coats and scarves before hoisting them onto her back.

“The real question is where do we make camp?” Krell asked. 

“Why can’t we just head back?” Thade asked.

“You forget that thing stalking us out there?” Eldrazi asked. He was circling the longhouse’s great hall, looking for structural instability, eyeing the hole in the ceiling nervously.

“Going back to the village in the dark is out of the question,” Xiir passed a granola bar to the child. “We wait till morning. It just comes down to what room. El, what are your thoughts?”

Eldrazi stopped sniffing the ground with an almost sneeze-like sound. “Here’s good.”

“What?! With that big ass hole in the roof?” Thade gawked.

Eldrai nodded. “Obvious entrance. If the thing’s smart, and it is, it’ll try to avoid the obvious route.”

Thade blinked, clearly unconvinced. “There are like a dozen rooms that don’t have holes in their roofs, man.”

“And all of them have one exit.” Eldrazi said matter-of-factly. “We have 9.”

Xiir nodded approvingly of the young ‘buck and nodded to the fireplace. “Then let’s get started.”

Thade scrambled to his feet. “Are you guys insane?! Ok I can kind of understand the exit thing, but fire’s just going to draw it right to us!”

Krell bustled past him, carrying the driest scraps of wooden furniture he could find. “It already knows we’re here.”

Thade looked around at the three of his cohorts. He clasped his hands under his chin and closed his eyes for a moment. “Y’all better not get me killed.”

Night set in with a bitter chill as the 5 ‘bucks gathered around the fire. Thade and the child were expected to sleep through the night, with the other three taking shifts. But as the blizzard bellowed and the odd creaking noises settled in, nobody was able to sleep. The stillness of the night felt too eerie to relax in. And by the time that calm where sleep felt achievable, dawn was only a few hours away. On another side of the mountain, the sun may very well be shining. Every so often it became hard to tell if the noises they heard outside were the storm or something else. The wind died down just long enough for Krell and Xiir to catch it. The unmistakable sound of an intake of breath, a gutteral rumble and clicking from up above.

A face, shrouded in darkness peering down at them from the hole. The flickering firelight glamping off bared fangs and turning the beast’s eyes into a pair of sinister stars in the inky blackness of the night. Xiir and Eldrazi took position in a flash.

The head swiveled, jaws snapped. A long red tongue slid hungrily over the fangs. And in a flash the beast disappeared, a scaled tail slithering out of view. 

The child clutched onto Thade’s arm. The heavy footfalls of the beast shook dust from the roof and rafters above. While the adults readied their actions, a sudden blast of frost barreled down the chimney, dousing the flames. The group leapt back. Thade sweeping the child up into his arms and scrambling for his electric torch.

A loud crash announced the beast had torn through the roof and had entered the great hall. A hiss escaped the darkness. Thade, while pleading with his device, made a cry of triumph and flicked the switch of the torch, a brilliant beam of light shot out, shining into the beast’s dark face. It reeled back in surprise, a thunderous cry echoing throughout the abandoned fortress.

Eldrazi and Xiir set upon it, wasting no time for the creature to regain control. They leapt at the beast, strong jaws snapping and finding purchase in flesh. The beast growled and flung itself back and forth in an effort to shake them loose. It raked its massive claws against Xiir’s side, casting her across the room. She slammed into the crumbling shelving, collapsing a bookcase and table in her wake as she tore back to her four and launched again at the dark beast. She felt the welling of rage boiling in her blood. From her face, ears and claws erupted plumes of violet flames. She reeled back her head, and summoned to her jaws the handle of a weapon, a vicious battleaxe borne of the same violet flames. She swung it down hard onto the monster’s shoulder. Flames sparked off its skin and it hissed in pain. She landed on her four in time to dodge another powerful bow from its claws, and swung upwards, colliding into its jaw with a meaty thwack. Eldrazi sprang over the thing’s back and bore his fangs deep into its wounded shoulder.

 An agonized howl escaped its throat. And it slammed its massive head down on Xiir’s, scooped under her with its thick tail and flung her back. It lurched forward again, trying to rip El from his perch and failed. As it reached over its shoulder, claws dangerously close to Eldrazi’s face, a shot rang out. Krell’s plasma gun recoiled as the blast of blue energy struck through the creature’s leg, a trail of smoke rolling from the tip. He took aim again and fired, this time plunging a wound through its abdomen.

The monstrous creature let out a blood curdling cry. It thrashed, flinging Eldrazi and Xiir to opposite corners of the room. Crashing through one of the long tables it sent shards of wood clattering across the floor. The child sobbed into Thade’s arms as he ducked into the hall, clicking off the torch to stay out of sight. While the beast flailed, Xiir and Eldrazi circled it, Krell steadied his aim. Xiir and the jet black beast locked eyes, and between its jaws a blue glow was building. She leapt to the side, careening into Eldrazi and causing them both to fall as an icy chill showered over them. They’d narrowly missed the frozen breath attack the squirming thing had unleashed. The great maw of fangs opened wide and Xiir deflected the icy storm with her flame weapon, the force of the cold against the flames forcing it to dematerialize in an instant. The monster was gaining its footing, righting itself and staring down the alphas, reading another onslaught of frozen fury. Krell’s plasma gun sounded off another round. This shot hit the beast square in the eye and sent it sprawling onto the floor again. As the great monstrosity reeled on the floor, its scaly tail whipped out. Swiping Krell from his feet. Xiir sprung up onto the broken table and vaulted over the thing that was made of gnashing teeth and lashing claws. With Eldrazi on her heels, she scooped up her husband, holding back only a moment for the young buck to collect Thade and the child before they fled through the decaying building. Xiir dove, her golden horns smashing through the glass. She landed in the soft snow, her whip-thin tail colliding with El’s muzzle, and she blinked in relief knowing he’d made it out behind her.

Seconds later came a wail of rage as the horror burst through the wooden walls of the longhouse in desperate pursuit of the escaping ‘bucks. The great limbs heaved as it fought to move its wounded mass, the stringy black fur tangled under its chin damp with blood and saliva. Its claws and hooves tore deep into the earth below the snow, propelling it forward with each lunge. Its exposed fangs snapped in eager anticipation. The beast’s speed picked up, gaining on them in the downslope away from the fortress. But as they began to ascend the rocky path out of the valley and into the dense woodland of the mountains, it began to falter. Either from the pain or the effort of moving such a large frame so quickly, the thing quickly began to lose steam.

Unable to keep up, the beast roared a final time, slamming its claws into the snow. Bellowing out a note of pure anger that made the hair on the backs of Xiir’s neck raise in alarm. She pushed on, filled with adrenaline and the flames of her enraged form cut through the white landscape like a violet beacon. Her tail whipped Eldrazi’s shoulder, slapped Thade’s boot. Reassured that her companions were still close behind she surged forward up the rocky slope, Krell’s metal hands tight on her fur and scruff. The sounds of the beast lumbered behind them, slowly drowned out by the growing distance and the wind.

When they finally came to a rest, Xiir and El dropped to the snowy ground, sides heaving as they caught their breath. The flames of her rage had been doused by exhaustion. And Xiir rested her head on her paws. Thade and Krell took up roost, the sun was still maybe an hour out, and the two had made it a point to set up shop in an open area with a high vantage point. While they quickly shuffled through their packs, passing each other gear and taking turns looking through the scopes to catch any sign of one beast or another, the child sat between the two feral ‘bucks. She pressed a hand onto each of their sides as if she had the power to calm them and their racing heartbeats. And maybe she did. As she sat humming to herself and running her small pawed hands through their fur, they were able to ease into a steady rhythm.

“Hey, Zee.” El spoke between gulping breaths. “What was that back there?”

“Heck if I know. I’ve been asleep for centuries.” Xiir replied, she stretched her paws out in front of her to relieve the tension in her withers.

“No, I meant the fire.” Eldrazi clarified. He sniffed at a shallow cut on his leg.

Xiir chuckled. “One of the benefits of being an Alpha, you can summon them.”

Eldrazi tried to hide the curiosity in his face, but his eyes gave him away. “Neat. Think I could do that one day?”

Laughing, Xiir answered. “I dunno. But I’d be happy to train you if you can.”

“Sweet.”

The child patted Xiir’s shoulder excitedly and jumped to her feet, pointing excitedly. “Look! Look up there!”

The group turned to see the sunlight break over the mountain, light hitting the top of the trees and slowly creeping down to meet them. As it swept over the foret, a group of approaching ‘bucks were illuminated. They hollered excitedly as they spotted each other. Before long, the four companions and the child they’d set out to rescue were settling back in the village. The child reunited with her family, warm and happy once more. Xiir and Krell let their heads bonk into one another as they watched Thade and Eldrazi bicker over the details of their harrowing journey and epic battle in the Alpha’s fallen fortress.

“Get a load of these guys, huh?” Krell laughed, waving a hand in their direction.

“I know, right? Can you believe they’re calling it ‘The Lurker’? How lame is that?” She chortled.

“About as lame as ‘The Great Slumbering.” He teased at the name she’d coined for her clan’s hibernation in the caves.

“Hey! Watch it you!” She knocked his horns with her own.They laughed, snuggled together on the couch watching the younger bucks tell the story as snow softly fell outside.

And when the research teams would return in the morning, they’d find no trace of the creature they faced in the dark. But somewhere deep in the mountains, in a forgotten valley where a great nation once slept, a beast as dark as the night licked its wounds with dreams of revenge blooming behind its dead-star eyes as it drifted into an unholy slumber.