August 1st, 2815

Master Hughes awoke long before he opened his eyes. Light burned through his eyelids and he scrunched up his face. His head throbbed. His gut roiled with the all-too-familiar scorn of a hangover. He clenched his teeth and curled and extended his fingers to bring back feeling and warmth. A much more sickening burden left his shoulders slouched and his head unable to lift. He squinted through eyes that felt swollen and blinked hatefully at the daylight. He scattered crepuscular rays through his fingers and exhaled a sour sigh at another day. A decidedly worse than usual day.

"Alyn," he whispered, his chest clenching with the pain of his own disgust for himself. Had it been a drunken dream that she had returned to him? Had it all been in his head? He moaned and pressed his palm against his brow. An unfamiliar cloth shifted over his torso and he creaked his puffy eyes open to investigate.

A blanket. That meant that he wasn't alone.

He looked around, but all there was was emptiness. The desert stretched for miles. Smog filled the sky and filtered summer sunlight to a gloomy hue of mixed orange and gray. Patriot was watching over him, but from where he sat, he saw no one else.

Yet, a fire burned in front of him, casting a gentle heat that, with fingers stiff and lips blistered and blue, Hughes appreciated. It felt safe, but regardless, it gnawed at his nerves like gnats. He heard movement inside his caravan and jolted to his feet. The blanket fell from around him and with a shudder, he reached for it and wrapped it tight around himself. The throbbing in his head could not stop his advance. He nearly convulsed at the sight of her standing there, as startled to see him as he was to see her.

His glove clapped over his mouth, fingers scratching over his whiskers, and he shivered. He quaked. A wave of turmoil rose inside of him and threatened to escape, and for once in his life, he didn't stop it. Tears welled in his eyes and he clambered into the wagon with the grace of one much feebler to stand before her. But she looked so afraid.

"Alyn," he whispered. The pressure in his chest was too great and he choked. He swallowed and took a deep breath and pressed his hand to his forehead.

The girl frowned and took a step back, raising her hands. "Go and sit down, sir. You've still got plenty of junk to sleep off."

"Alyn," he pressed. While one hand clutched his blanket, the other hovered inches from her shoulder. "I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I--" He took another breath and a solemn few tears leaked down his cheeks. "I wish I could take it back. I'm sorry, I hurt you. I'm terrible. I'm a mess. I..."

She shook her head and stepped further back when he reached for her neck. "Don't touch me."

His wrinkles creased into one great painting of pitiful desperation and he held out his hand, upturned. "Please. Please, Alyn. I don't want to hurt you. I--I'm dead cold."

Alyn hesitated. Her nose wrinkled and she looked up to him with caution. After thought, she took hold of his fingers and gasped. "Like ice, sir! That ain't right."

"Alyn," he breathed again. He started reaching out once more and this time, she met his eyes and her warning glare found only sorrow. Pursing her lips, she loosened her scarf and glanced off, eyes averted to something that she wouldn't see as volatile. She couldn't look at him. Her nose was turning red.

"All right," she mumbled.

His cold, rough fingers scratched against her neck, and he choked again on that crushing feeling. He traced his own handprint and as she shivered, he withdrew to press his knuckles to his colorless lips. "Oh God. I've never... I mean, I... I could never..." He bit his lip, shut his eyes, and tilted his head back, and the tears rolled down his cheeks. "Oh, God. I promise I wasn't always so... I wasn't always like this! It's all the time on my own with just my miserable self, and it's the potion... and... and the alcohol. Blast!" He cupped his hand over his forehead and let out an anguished wail. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, please forgive me," he wept, tracing the scar of his own handprint.

Alyn swished air from cheek to cheek and glared down. Her sore nose pounded. She rubbed her bandaged cheek and fidgeted with her sleeves. "I seen you cry a lot yesterday, and you ain't the emotional sort, really. I know yer sorry."

"And I know I can't take it back." He brushed his fingers gently against his tears. "But I... I can help." With the little glinting puddles standing on his fingertips, he traced over the scar once more.

Alyn flinched away and smacked his hand. "All right, back off."

Hughes, with a nod, stepped back. He bowed his head and lifted the blanket to dry his face.

Alyn's brow knit and, confused, she rubbed at her neck. She dried it with her scarf and felt it again, but there was no pain. As though the scorched handprint had vanished.

"You should go back to Northwood," Master Hughes said. "I'll take you, if you'll let me."

The girl scowled. "I won't. I ain't turning back. I'm going with you to the city, Master Hughes. There's a disease that's gonna spread and kill people if nobody does anythin' about it."

"It is not your responsibility, Alyn."

"So why are you going?"

Hughes grimaced and smothered his face in his gloves. He turned to a shelf and took down his box of potion vials. "Because it is mine," he muttered.

"How d'you figure?"

He dug into his pockets. Every pocket on his person. Then he looked at her, unfocused. "Did you see my medicine? For the migraine?"

She threw her arms up and smacked her forehead. "You swallowed it all on your drinking spree, ya dumb galoot!"

He stared, eyes blank, jaw slack. "All of it?"

"Yeah!" Alyn put her hands on her hips. "It's a wonder you're still alive."

"Ohh," he moaned. He picked a vial from the box and knocked it back. He replaced the emptied vial in the box, cursing to himself, pushed the box back onto the shelf. He turned to leave.

"I'm making your coffee," Alyn called after him. "And I filled your flask with water, so you'd better drink it while you're warming up."

He waved his hand dismissively and started to step down. A man's voice startled him, and for an awful split second, his foot forgot it was midair, between wagon dismount and ground, and he shouted out as he fell. In the moment before his head hit the caravan, he saw a familiar face that stole the color from his flesh like a nightmare.

***

Abraham Walters sat respectfully in his temporary holding cell, poised as elegantly as he could manage. He was eager to get out. When his release would be was yet to be determined, so he remained polite, he remained agreeable, and above all, he remained smiling. The city of Ban-Ken regarded smiles with unspoken respect, for all the greatest men of the society never seemed to stop showing their teeth, while the lowly only seemed to scowl.

He had been allowed into the city's customs earlier that morning and had handed over his Eternal I.D card. The card identified him by name and title, but was expired, and no longer active in the city's expensive computer system. This had led him to his temporary confinement, while customs officers attempted to recover his identity from past records.

He twiddled his thumbs and patiently waited. It certainly wouldn't be long, he thought. The city's systems ran unparalleled.

***

Three hours dragged by before Master Hughes lugged himself to his feet. Alyn noticed right away. She lowered her swords and observed, then glanced awkwardly off when he trudged behind a rolled up section of chain-link fence. She feigned two lunges, one with either sword, and looked again after another few minutes. He made his way, very slowly, back into the camp with one hand pressed to the back of his head and his eyes halfway closed. He didn't look any better than he had. If anything, he was paler.

Characteristic irritability twitched in his whiskers and brow, which, Alyn thought, at least meant that he was feeling more like himself. The moping, cowering Hughes had retreated.

"Alyn," he raised his voice. "Is there a man here, or did I imagine it?"

Alyn quickly leaped to his side. "He helped me to get here and to watch over you, sir. You hit yer head pretty hard, there. How's sir feeling?"

"Terrible," Hughes snapped. "My head hurts and I feel ill. Where is the man? Has he gone?"

"Serves you right, anyways," Alyn said. He sneered half-heartedly.

"The man, stupid girl. The man. Is he gone? What did he want?"

Alyn frowned. "Don't call me stupid, else I'll go join him instead. At least he was nice."

He pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "Answer my questions. Please."

She cocked her head and raised an eyebrow. "He was staying to make sure I was all right, but he's gone now. I told him if you strangled me again, I'd put a sword through your cahones. Why do you care?"

Master Hughes winced and his brows knit in anguish. He put both palms against his forehead, fingers brushing through his messy graying hair. "Don't say that. I won't hurt you again—don't say that."

She folded her arms and wrinkled her nose.

"All right, look. Never mind any of it." He lifted a finger to point at the caravan. "We should not stay here. It is time to move on."

Alyn puffed out her chest. "All ready to go, sir. I loaded the caravan and cleaned up while you was sleepin'. I knew you'd want to get moving."

Hughes slowly nodded. "You will be driving."

She frowned. "I don't know where to drive to."

He sighed, unenthusiastically. "The Tree Farm ruins."

"Where's that?"

"Just turn right when you get to Ban-Ken's barrier wall. If you keep to the wall, you will reach the ruins. I doubt there will be much left of them."

"There's a refugee camp."

Hughes' eyes briefly clouded over and he winced. He shook his head and started towards the caravan, hunched as though struck. His hands folded over his bowed head. "It's only rumor. Only rumor."

"No, because—"

"Rumor!" Hughes snapped, and nearly pulled his hair out. He stopped and pointed. "Turn right when you reach the wall and stay in its shadow. Understand?"

Alyn followed his finger and uncertainly nodded. "I got it, sir. You go lie down and try to feel better, now, yeah?"

Only rumor? she thought. But, he's spoken of it before.

His lip curled. With effort, he clambered into the caravan. "Wake me when we get there."

"Yes, sir," Alyn said uncertainly. "Will do."

He pulled the canvas flap down over the back of the caravan, shutting her out. Alyn loosened her scarf, relaxing. She exhaled and itched her burn scar. He was irritable, he was secretive, but he wasn't, in nature, violent, she concluded. She did not expect him to endanger her again.

She shuffled around the caravan, kicking up the dirt, and hoisted herself onto the steering platform. She scooped up the reins and shifted them in her hands. "Awlright, Patriot," she began, and gave a flick of the worn leather ropes, "forward ho."

Boredom sunk in quickly. The child groaned and lay back on the bench. Ban-Ken and the Tree Farm ruins were much farther than she had anticipated. She couldn't fathom it. From their little camp, she had been able to make out the wall and, somehow, it had tricked her into believing it was near. Alas, with time and travel, the wall grew larger and larger, but remained tantalizingly far. The smog grew thicker as the day went on and the distance crept closed.

The wall disappeared for a time, hidden in the polluted din. It appeared again as evening fell. Two fires were lit on either side of Ban-Ken's gate, which stood closed with iron bars.

Alyn gaped, her neck craned in the attempt to take it all in. She stood on the bench and looked far to either side and upwards. She had never seen anything so large, nor so ghastly. Its grimy stones barely showed through the menacing shadows cast by its tremendous height. The smog was denser around it. As she looked up, she could not find its end. It disappeared in the thick gray-green.

Alyn suddenly felt queasy. She lowered herself to her seat. Twenty minutes prior, she could barely see this structure. Now, it loomed frighteningly near. If she looked up, the darkening sky and the stone wall were swallowed by radiant pollution, which was flecked with pale green light that she did not understand. The wall seemed to sway dizzily in the dry winds.

Patriot's trot slowed. She steered him to the right.

Her head pounded. She could feel the blood pulsing through her broken nose.

"It must be three—no, four! Five!—times the height of the orphanage..." she breathed. "And I wonder how long it goes 'round for..."

Ban-Ken's wall circled the city with perfect symmetry. Though the wall's exterior had deteriorated from its original state after its completion nearly one-hundred-and-fifty years ago, not one stone was out of place. Winds and sandstorms over the decades had eroded the stones over the decades and polluted film from the low-hanging clouds coated them in inch-thick glaze.

Remaining light from the sky soon faded and left young Alyn shuddering in the chill of a black and lonely night. Patriot's ears were flattened in concentration, barely able to see more than a few feet in front of himself. Alyn jumped at every bump of the caravan, but found too much comfort in clutching the reins to leave them to fetch the flint and steel from the dark inside. She trembled, and her wet eyes flicked in a panic in every direction. Irrational fears arose in the dark. The eerie fog and the towering wall preyed at her vulnerable mind. The lantern, cold and unlit, swung overhead.

The scraping of a tumbleweed bounced past, and Alyn shrunk into herself. A bandit? Surely, a bandit. A chill ran down her spine and she shivered. She hummed meekly to herself, but the tune scattered in the dry breeze, her voice cracked, and the intent to comfort herself only increased her discomfort.

A thud sounded from inside the caravan. Alyn squeaked and buried her chin in her scarf. More thunks and crashes followed. She squeezed her eyes shut and gripped the reins tighter.

"Shit," Master Hughes swore. Alyn deflated with relief. "Shit, Alyn. Why haven't you got any lights on? Can't see a damned thing." His hand fell over her shoulder. He roughly pushed her to one side of the steering bench. "Move."

"M-Master Hughes!" she exclaimed, delighted to have his company. She felt safer, somehow.

He climbed onto the bench and reached for the lantern. He unhooked it and lit its candle with flint and steel from his pocket. Placing it back, he squinted to look ahead of them and took the reins from Alyn. Her fingers cramped.

He flicked the reins and the horse picked up his pace.

"How long have we been traveling?"

"I don't know, sir, but, it's been real unpleasant. This place gives me the creeps. There's all sorts of noises, and sometimes it's suddenly cold and then warm again, and the smog is really thick in places and, and..." She noticed that he wasn't listening. Her tongue fell flat.

He fished for his fob watch and held it nearer the lantern's light. "Barely seven o'clock. Used to be eight when it got dark around the wall. The smog situation must be much worse than what I last saw of it, though I don't see much of it, now."

"It was worse just a few minutes ago. I had to breathe through my scarf." Alyn shuddered.

"The Tree Farm must be near. Maybe two or three more miles," Hughes estimated, his head tilted to study the dirty cloud cover overhead. "It will start to clear up, get a little lighter. The air at the farm will be cleaner, I think."

"You've been there before?"

She noticed a twitch in his eye. He kept looking ahead. "I just know a thing or two about it."

"Like how the refugee camp is only a rumor?" She raised a brow.

"Did I say that?"

"Yeah," Alyn drawled, "when you obviously know it isn't."

He sighed and wiped his brow. "I am in a perpetual state of confusion, these past few days, I'm afraid. I can't think straight with my head pounding all the time. I don't know what I did with those migraine pills."

"The pills? I already told you, sir. I found the bottle empty. I think you took them all while you was drinking, yesterday."

He grimaced queasily. "Oh."

Alyn slipped her hand into her sleeve to massage the goosebumps that tickled her arms.

Hughes shifted to a more comfortable position on the bench. There seemed to be a lot of shifting between them. "Did I do that to your nose?"

The cold, low-hanging fog clung to them. Their still, stale breaths stirred wisps.

"No."

They both tried to cover their patches of exposed skin.

"Then, who?"

"Let's move on."

Hughes pursed his lips.

Uneasiness trickled through their veins. The macabre setting wore nerves thin. The lantern's light only went so far. The wall's shadow was overwhelming.

Alyn shuddered again.

"I don't like this place," she whispered eventually.

"No one with half a wit should," Hughes agreed, foreboding. "But, there is nothing to be afraid of, here. Nothing could survive this close to the wall. There isn't light enough at any hour of the day, and too much exposure to this fog is toxic," he explained. His voice was wasn't so harsh when he spoke quietly. "The sooner we're out of here, the better, but nothing will harm us in the meantime. Patriot knows that."

Alyn nodded, looking to the horse. "What if we moved farther from the wall?"

"Too exposed," Hughes answered. "It's best to stay here in the shadows. We won't be followed, here."

"Anyone out there could probably see the lantern," Alyn pointed out.

"Yes, they could."

Her brows pinched with worry. She bit the inside of her cheek. "You said there was nothing to be afraid of."

"Why?" Hughes questioned, peering down. "Are you afraid?"

Alyn's face and ears flushed. "What? No," she lied. The idea of being followed did not sit well.

Hughes chuckled and glanced away.

Alyn felt her cheeks burn. She adjusted her frayed scarf and tugged at her hat.

There was silence between them for some time. Alyn felt only more uneasy in the silence, but Hughes appeared content to carry it out further. The girl slowly shifted closer.

"It's cold," she muttered, but it wasn't really. She shivered for other reasons. She nudged him awkwardly.

He raised a brow. She nudged him twice more before he placed his arm around her. She gratefully curled at his side and there convinced herself she was protected. His warmth had returned. It enveloped her, giving her the comfort that she needed to still from her nervous trembling. She gradually calmed.

She started to speak a few times, but simply had nothing to say. For once in her life, no questions came to mind. Sentences didn't spill from her tongue.

Upon a sudden, Hughes sat up straight. "Light," he breathed gruffly.

Alyn looked up and out at nothing but darkness. It was less intense, and the fog had thinned to less than half of its previous thickness, but there was nothing that could be called light as far as the eye could see. Only lighter. Ahead, she could make out a barely visible gradient of lightening shades of shadow. As though they were coming to the end of a long tunnel. "Master Hughes, sir?" she said. "There ain't no light but our own."

Hughes fell back again, eyes wide as he stared into the distance. "There was. Firelight. I saw it, just for a second."

Alyn looked again. She strained her eyes. "No, sir. Nothing but dark, dark, dark. It's lighter out there, but still dark."

"It's half-past seven. All of Kentucky is going to be getting dark," Hughes grumbled. He brushed her away, back to her own end of the bench. "I know what I saw. We must be close."

"You sure about that?"

"Of course, I'm sure, stupid girl." He snarled and flicked the reins. The visibility was improving. "Ten minutes, give or take, and you'll see silhouettes, mark my words."

"Sillow...what?"

"Outlines of things."

"Like what?"

"The ruins, people, anything. Something. Mark my..."

Patriot suddenly reared up. He whinnied and kicked the air. Alyn cried out and her heart fluttered. Hughes was suddenly alert. He stood. The back of his hand blindly fell against Alyn's chest. "Get me my sword. Now."

"But, I—!"

"Now!"

Alyn, despite certainty that she would not be able to lift his sword, scurried from the bench and into the caravan. Blood rushed in her ears. Her heart pounded.

Hughes searched the darkness for whatever it was that had distressed Patriot. The horse's nostrils flared with loud snorts, and his hooves pounded the earth. Hughes gripped his pistol. Frightened, Alyn dove down to Hughes' display case and wrenched at its latches. She pulled away the cover and felt for the straps to loose the great green blade.

"State your business," came an unknown voice.

The girl stiffened and whimpered. She risked a glance out the steering platform window, but it was too dark. She saw no one.

"Come out where I can see you," Hughes growled.

"State your business," the voice repeated.

"Leisurely stroll," Hughes crowed, spreading his arms. "Enjoying the evening smog."

"Your voice smiles. State your business."

Alyn heaved the end of the Master's great-sword out onto the bench. Hughes checked the barrel of his pistol, then grabbed the hilt and lifted it easily. He stepped off the platform and onto the sand. "Come out, or I'll come to you. You won't like it if I come to you."

"Sorry," said the voice.

Something small and round appeared at Hughes feet. Alyn poked her head out to look at the sound of a fizzing fuse. She trembled. Hughes jumped back and fired a shot by accident. After a day of heavy drinking beforehand, his reaction time was not admirable. The caravan shook as his back hit the steering bench. He winced and tried to scramble blindly back onto the platform.

"Alyn, cover your—! Your..."

He bit his tongue and held his head and swayed. In mere moments, he slid limply to the dirt. The caravan rocked. Alyn squeaked and covered her mouth in her shock. A cloud of indistinct gas swept towards her, showing orange in the lantern's light. It smelled of something sweet.