Ashlanders Chapter two.
The electric lights flickered in the cold white rooms of the abandoned medical facility. The Ashlanders had found the tunnels to an abandoned dome deep in the underhive. It was crammed full of bits of technology that Scrap-Iron kept pulling out and squeaking over in her high pitched voice. For a while it seemed like they were living a charmed life.
Till it all went horribly wrong. Watersinger and Greydawn were yelling from the room next door.
"I told you you shouldn't have trusted them! No hive-roach can be trusted. They only care for what filth they can pull together", yelled Watersinger, their spiritual guide, and waterwitch. Her favor with the God of Ash had brought them to this place.
"How could I have known?". Yelled back Greydawn, their leader. "And I remember you blessing the plan at the time. Why didn't your visions warn you?", he snapped back.
"I am the BLESSED of MALAL, the God of ASH!", Watersinger argued back. "He grants his vision only to those who are strong... not those who follow fools!"
"You are not the only one blessed by Malal!", Greydawn yelled back "I didn't ask for this! The other seers chose me to lead."
"Then perhaps you should start!"
The two continued, their voices bouncing around the inside of the dilapidated metal corridors.
They had met an Esher Gang "The Spiders", at the local trading post. The eschers had seemed friendly enough. They all took a liking to Greydawn with his blond curls and his bright blue eyes. They kept joking with taking him back as good breeder stock, if he would only behave himself.
That brought up the conversations about excher males, and their unwantedness. Graydawn proposed a deal. Walks-the-path had discovered a mushroom forest, in a tunnel behind some cooling vents. Greydawn would show them where it was, but he wanted the male young-lings of the Eshers to return with him to the ash wastes.
It was a reasonable deal. A valuable commodity traded for a relatively unwanted one. The esher's leader Mary Jane, hashed out the details with Greydawn and Watersinger. An hour later they spat in their hands and shook.
But the deal had gone bad.
They had shown The Spiders the location of the mushroom forest. It wasnt huge, only a few rooms, but it was enough. On the way back to the tranding post, The Spiders turned on them.
It was an ambush. Without Greydawn barking orders they would have all been killed. Davon, the ganger they had pulled out of the rubble in their first fight, wanted to join with them. In an effort to prove themself to the team he had gone down to negotiate alongside Greydawn. It had earned him a stub bullet between the eyes.
They had put up a good fight. But a Spider had sneaked around behind them and put a plasma pistol into Finds-the-path's back. Grey dawn had watched in horror as their tracker had fallen well over fifty feet into the trashpiles below. With that, Greydawn signaled a retreat. The Eshers did the same.
Somehow, Finds-the-path had lived.
Back in the other room, Blaze looked down at her patient. She had been caring for Walks-the-path for the last few days. "You will need to keep him bandaged and hydrated apprentice", said Coldsight, her mentor."
"But Coldsight, how do I do that?. Walks-the-path never removes his ash-suit. I have never seen him without his mask."
Coldsight reached down and touched the sleeping Ashlander's hood. "Walks-the-path has been part of the tribe since before I was born. Who knows why he hides his face. He has his reasons. Respect his privacy. You will figure out a way."
Later that night, as everyone was asleep, Walks-walks-the-path awoke. "Water.." he whispered. "water...".
Blaze groggily got up, and walked over and poured him a cup from the filtrator Scrap-Iron had made. Stumbling back in the dark, she sat on Walks-the-paths's cot. She held out the cup to him, but he was too weak to take it.
"I don't know how to give this too you... " Blase whispered. "Your going to have to take your mask off to drink."
Walks-the-path-shook his head negatively.
"Id leave it with you, but you cant do it on your own." She held the cup in front of his lens covered eyes.
Walks-the-path shook his head negatively again.
"Look everyone is asleep! Its dark! No one else will see. I don't care if your a mutie. I don't care if you are ugly! If you don't drink you will die!"
Walks the path just lay there, breathing raggedly, expressionless behind the dark grey lenses of his ash suit.
"Look will it help you if I tell you a secret of my own? Something you can hold over me?" She watched him for a response. Finding none she leaned in next to his ear.
"When we were waiting for the Prentiship Ceremony, they had me in Watersinger's tent, waiting to appear before the elders. I had to GO!. Watersinger didn't have a pot in her whole tent! Who lives like that? And I couldn't make a puddle on the floor!. So I... " She looked around and whispered back into his ear. "I made water in her sacred pool".
Walks the path was still for a second... and then he began to shake.. It was a silent laughter that shook him in the darkness. Each laugh made him grunt in pain. "And then when she came back to get me! She said 'I have to purify myself'.. and she.. she washed her hands in it. And her face..."
Walks the path let out a heaving grunt, and held up a weak had to signal "no more".
The two giggled in the darkness.
"She would whip the skin from my legs if she found out, even today. So.. you know.. its alright. I promise I wont tell anyone. Come on.. you will die!" She shook the cup in his face making sloshing noises.
Walks the path looked up at her. "You must not tell.. they.. would not understand..."
Blase nodded in agreement and reached back and slowly unhooked the seals of his Ashsuit. She didn't know what she was expecting. She thought he may have been deformed, or burned in a toxin-pool or something. A mutie? Scales? But all her theories did not prepare her for the truth.
As Walks-the-paths mask came off, it revealed a face of uncanny handsomeness. His short hair was as red as blood, and his skin the purest of white. His high cheekbones set off two dark eyes. But it was his ears. His leaf shaped ears, that swept high up the side of his head and ended in fine points. Blaze held the cup to his lips, and Walks-the-path drank slowly and carefully.
"Shea nudh Asuryanish ereintha Asuryanat", he whispered when he was done.
Blaze helped him slide his ash-suit mask back on. "You sleep now". She said. "It was too dark in here anyway. I didn't see nothin'".