Chương 15: Good Riddance

Solstice kept walking, forcing his pace faster than his body wanted to give it. He followed the colors clinging to Uron and salt, letting them sketch the shape of walls he couldn't actually see, width and length mapped out of light instead of stone. His thigh kept bleeding. So did his shoulder. He gritted his teeth against both and kept moving anyway, because stopping wasn't a real option, not down here, not now. He dug out the last speck of Pale Salt from his coat and ate it, then kept going.

Before long the colors thinned, spreading apart like the walls themselves had opened onto something wider on both sides.

'The crossroads. This has to be it.' He went right without letting himself think twice, following words a dying man had spent his last breath giving him. His foot caught something solid in the dark. A dweller's corpse.' Murren came through here too.' He kept walking. A faint shimmer of pale blue caught his eye across the cave, the same glow he'd seen bleeding off ice shards in caverns behind them. It gave him just enough to see by.

Beyond it, dimmer still, orange and yellow light licked the wall, and beside it Murren knelt with his one remaining hand jammed into a narrow gap, working at it. Solstice's footsteps gave him away. Murren spun up onto his feet, hand raised. What he found was a boy bleeding from two places at once, close enough to falling over that it barely counted as standing.

"Oh." Murren's voice came out ragged.

"You survived." Solstice took in the bite marks and scratches carved across him in return.

"Where's the other brat? Dead?" Murren's mouth twisted.

"Used him as bait to get yourself out, didn't you." Solstice didn't answer. The cavern swam in and out around him. One wrong move and he'd be on the ground. Murren sat back against the dying light.

"You and I aren't so different, you know. When I was your age." A weak laugh.

"I can see it in you. That same caution I used to wear." A beat.

"Though something about your eyes still makes my hand itch to hit you."

"We're nothing alike." Solstice wiped blood from his mouth.

"You only want us to be alike so you feel less pathetic about yourself." Murren studied him for a beat.

"Bleeding out and still running your mouth." He pushed himself upright.

"Fine. I hate you, you hate me, doesn't matter. We're both dead unless we work together." He nodded at the gap in the wall.

"Too small to fit through as it is. There's light past it." Solstice said nothing.

"Expand it with your Domain. Do that, and I'll call us even."' This guy. We're alike? In what — that we're both cautious? That's the best he's got.' Solstice let the silence sit a long time, mostly because he was fighting to keep his laugh contained. Noise brought dwellers. He hadn't forgotten that even now.

"And why should I do that." His voice came out even, not a single stutter, despite what his leg was screaming underneath him.

"Don't you want to live?" Murren gestured at the gap.

"You need this. You need me. Expand it, or rot here." Solstice was chuckling now.

"You seriously think I need you?" He tapped his own temple.

"You've got it backwards, frozenbitten bastard. It's you who needs me." A beat.

"Did you really expect me to believe a word of that? That we'd be even, after everything?" He let the laugh crack fully loose.

"You're a bigger idiot than I thought." Murren's jaw tightened.

"You're mocking me, brat?" Solstice took a step forward, blood trailing with every motion.

"Even if I did believe you—" a beat "—unfortunately, I can't." Murren's eyes narrowed.

"You can't."

"I can't." The laugh finally cracked loose at the edges of his mouth.

"My Domain isn't Expansion. You still haven't realized that haven't you?" Murren went still. Then his face twisted into something ugly.

"You're lying to me. I swear to every god left up there, I'll butcher you."

"I wish I were lying. I'm not." Solstice lowered his head, shoulders shaking.

"Are you laughing?" He pressed a fist to his mouth.

"No." A muffled breath escaped anyway.

"Trying not to."

"You rat. Fine. Guess you're my bait instead of the tunnel."

"I can just fit through that gap."

"Not if you're still breathing, you won't." Murren's arm snapped forward. Particles gathered fast in the air. Solstice threw himself sideways through the dizziness, and the wind slash tore past him instead, shredding a piece of the red scarf clean off. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. His thigh screamed. He grabbed a loose stone and hurled it, catching Murren square in the chest. Murren coughed.

"Looks like you're dying, Scarface."

"I'LL BUTCHER YOU! FORGET THE BAIT. I'LL EAT WHAT'S LEFT OF YOU."

"Careful. The dwellers might hear that." Another wind slash gathered, and this time Solstice watched the color build, red bleeding through the threads the way it had every single time Murren had used his Domain this whole trip. The tell he'd never noticed until he'd had a reason to look for it. He dropped flat, cheek scraping stone, wind screaming above him. He grabbed another rock, and before he could throw it, Murren dropped.

Coughing tore out of him in violent bursts, one hand cupped over his mouth like something solid was fighting its way up his throat. Solstice stood.' There it is.' Fine dust sprayed loose with every cough, pale and translucent. Not salt. Something that had come from further inside him than that.

"Having trouble breathing?"

"You... bastard."

"You're wrong about us, Murren. We were never the same. Not even close." Murren kept coughing.

"I'm smarter than you." Solstice wiped a pinch of the dust from his own fingers, studying it.

"More patient. More observant. And unlike you, I actually pay attention to what I put in my body." Murren's breathing hitched. Solstice's eyes dropped to the canister still hanging from his belt.

"Do you know how much salt you've eaten since we walked into this mountain?" Murren stared.

"The dweller that shouldn't have existed." A finger raised.

"The roaches." Another.

"Every vein we cracked open." Another.

"And every handful I gave you myself." His gaze came back up.

"Nonstop, this whole time."

"So?" Murren's jaw hardened.

"So you should've started feeling it by now." Another cough ripped through him, and this time Solstice watched closely as dust spilled between his fingers, fine and pale, unmistakably not salt.

"That's why you're coughing." Murren froze. Solstice stepped in closer.

"That's why you get weaker the second the rush fades. Why you can barely stand until the next mouthful. Why your own body keeps demanding more of the thing that's killing it." Murren's hand trembled.

"No."

"Your organs are crystallizing." The cave seemed to fall away around them. Solstice tilted his head, something close to amusement in it.

"Every burst of strength you bought yourself with a mouthful of salt gave the crystal inside you one more place to grow." Murren's breathing had gone shallow and fast.

"You thought I kept feeding you salt because I needed you strong." Solstice looked down at the dust scattered across the stone.

"I needed you to keep using your Domain."

"Funny, isn't it. A cautious man, and you never once bothered to learn how your own salt actually works. Let alone a Saltbearer." Murren's face came apart.

"You were never getting stronger." A faint smile.

"You were getting closer to the moment your own body finally killed you." Horror bled into Murren's expression, fury and regret and something rawer underneath both. His hand rose toward the goggles.

"Water." His voice cracked open.

"Give me water. It should slow it, water should slow it down."

"Begging now? After you left us to die back there?"

"I need to survive. I have to..."

"Shut it. I don't want your sob story." Solstice's tone stayed almost bored. Murren's face twisted into something feral.

"YOU BASTARD." A cough.

"What do you know? WHAT DO YOU KNOW? You're a worthless Nameless nothing. My life is worth more than yours. You're beneath me, and you dare do this to me?" Solstice only looked at him.

"GIVE ME THE WATER! You wouldn't have made it this far without me! Because of ME!" Another cough.

"To live."

"That's it? That's your whole reason?" Something twisted behind Solstice's ribs. He laughed, bitter and short.

"You're mocking me for wanting something simple?" His eyes hardened.

"Tell me what's so shameful about wanting to live. About waking up without wondering if today's the day thirst finally wins. About not counting every drop before you swallow it." He laughed again, drier this time.

"I don't need a grand purpose. I've never believed in those."

"I just want to live."

"And if that means becoming the most miserable, deceitful, selfish thing this frost bitten world has ever produced." He held Murren's stare without a shred of shame.

"Then I'll be him. Gladly."

"You're a monster." Solstice reached out and tore the goggles free from Murren's forehead without another word.

"A promise is a promise." He put them on. The dark sharpened instantly around him.

"You're already dead to me."

"WAIT! JUST LEAVE ME THE WATER—" A cough swallowed the rest. Solstice took a one final glance to Murren. His lips curled upwards." Good Riddance."

"IM SO— sorry! Okay?" Solstice was already bending toward the gap, feeding his good arm through first.

"I'm begging you. Please... brat." He kept pushing, chest fighting the narrow stone at every breath.

"DON'T LEAVE ME HERE, YOU BASTARD." He kept going.

"CURSE YOU. CURSE EVERY PART OF YOU." His hand broke through to open air on the other side. Pain screamed through his shoulder and thigh both, his whole body begging to stop, and he forced himself through anyway. To live. He came out the other end. Murren's screaming had already gone faint behind him. Solstice steadied himself and kept walking, limping hard, the world darkening at the edges even through the goggles. The colors had stopped answering him. He turned sharp right.

Wind hit him first, sharp and cold, wrapping around his whole body at once. Then the world opened. A pale, sunless sky stretched out beyond a mouth in the mountain, wind strong enough up here to nearly knock him flat. An exit. He stood there a moment longer, staring through the white haze rolling across the distance, and found it. A settlement, glowing orange and red, tiny shapes of people moving between the lights.

"To live," Solstice said. The goggles slid crooked across his face as the ground tilted beneath him. For the first time since the mountain swallowed him whole, the wind on his skin hadn't come from anyone's Domain but the sky's. His eyes rolled back, and he went down.