And I’d missed him.
How long would it be before another rider came along?
An hour? A day? A week?
Any one of those was too long for me to wait.
“Wait!” I shouted.
The word didn’t come out the way I intended. It was more of a groan, my tongue struggling to form the words.
The clip-clopping grew fainter.
No! He’s leaving!
It didn’t matter what noise I made. It only mattered that he heard me.
I yelled again. It was a fuzzy groan at the back of my throat.
The arlath came to a stop.
I couldn’t make out the rider from this angle but I imagined him turning in his saddle to identify the sound’s origin.
I curled my body up and made the noise again.
The rider might have thought he was mistaken with the first sound I made. With the second, he must realize it was genuine?
But it was just as possible he thought it was some form of creature native to the forest or river. There were many dangerous creatures in this part of the world.
Stars danced before my eyes and darkness turned my vision fuzzy around the edges.
Not now. Please! Not now.
If I didn’t get his attention, I was doomed.
I heard the rider’s boots on the hard dirt-packed road as he climbed down from his saddle. He approached the top of the incline and peered down it.
I smiled, relieved he had found me. At least now I had a chance to survive.
But the rider kept on looking. Worse, his eyes passed right over me as he scanned the rest of the muddy embankment.
Couldn’t he see me? Was he blind?
No, he’s not blind, I thought. I’m caked in mud and there’s nothing to distinguish me from the dirt.
I groaned again. This time, I wasn’t trying to get his attention with noise. It was with movement. I couldn’t do it without a high-pitched growl escaping my lips.
I paid for the movement with a lance of pain up my back.
That darkness squeezed my vision, turning it to the size of a pinhead.
“Now, where did you come from?” the rider said.
He’d seen me. He’d finally seen me.
Would he help me? Would he get me somewhere safe?
I didn’t know. And I was unlikely to find out.
My eyelids were already drifting shut.
And I was gone.
My dreams were nightmarish and infected with fever.
The cart ride was rough and comfortable. It jostled me awake several times, but I was glad of it. Anything to escape the memories of fireballs being hurled toward my face and boulders of rock cracking beneath my feet.
When I opened my eyes, the sun glared at me, accentuating the headache blossoming at my temples.
Then I would fade unconscious and awaken again sometime later.
I choked.
I gasped and bolted upright—I was only capable of a few inches—and spat out the liquid in my mouth. I rolled over onto one shoulder.
“Easy there,” a man’s voice said.
It was the arlath rider from the riverbank. I guess he must have helped me after all.
He patted me on the back before raising the plastic container in front of my eyes.
“What… What is it?” I said, my voice an ugly rasp.
“Only water,” the rider said. “I would feed you soup but you can’t keep it down.”
The man could easily overpower me if he wanted. I doubted he wanted to poison me.
I let him give me the water. It tasted refreshing as it spilled down my throat. Some leaked out of the hole in my cheek and ran down my neck.
“I’m headed to a town called Urcim,” the man said. “It’s home to the Urcim tribe. I’ll drop you off at their medical center. If they have one.”
“What happened?” I said, struggling to mouth the words. “Changelings.”
The man took a seat on the cart’s edge. His legs dangled over the side.
“They came out of nowhere,” he said, “and attacked every colony at once.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Every Titan colony? There were hundreds of them. Surely, they couldn’t strike them all at the same time? Reports suggested they didn’t have the military for such a big operation.
I thought they’d only attempted to kill me. After all, remove the emperor, and you had an empire without a head.
But the Changelings were far more ambitious than that.
“Do you know… anything else?” I said. “More news?”
“I’ve been on the road since the attack happened,” the rider said. “The last thing I heard was…”
He glanced at me and shook his head.
“No,” he said. “You don’t need to hear that yet. It’s better you focus on getting stronger. This news can only weaken you.”
“What is it?” I said.
The rider wet his lips and let out a sigh.
“The worst thing imaginable,” he said. “The emperor may be dead.”
He had genuine hurt in his eyes. The emperor had a special place in every Titan’s heart. He was supposed to represent everything good and true about Titan culture. He was what everyone was meant to look up to, what they were meant to emulate.
A good thing they didn’t know the real me.
“Rest,” the rider said. “With any luck, we’ll be at Urcim by nightfall.”
I fell in and out of consciousness after that, resuming my usual routine.
I could move my arms now and my legs were no longer unresponsive. I was consumed by a terrible itching pain across my entire body. I wondered if I would ever fully heal and become the Titan I had been before.
The Changelings.
They did this to me.
I ground my teeth and swore to the thousand suns and the Creator himself that I would have bloody vengeance.
One day.
I thought I was getting stronger each day that passed but as we approached the entrance to Urcim, I was suddenly overcome with an unbearable weakness. Then my body began to shake. It was uncontrollable. My head banged against the cart floor.
The rider pulled to a stop and immediately leaped into the cart bed with me.
“Help!” he yelled. “I need help here!”
The local Titans
