Before me, the land lay. Scarred by the chaos that reigned so recently. But we must rebuild. Across the remains of the nation, it has been a slow process. Refuges turning into fortresses, and fortresses turning into walled cities. That is not my ideal, but it also isn’t something I can really complain about. After all, I didn’t stop this in the first place. I chose this world, by inaction. And I’ll do anything to fix it. No matter the time frame. Friends, families, hell an entire damned city, died to give us this chance to rebuild. I will not let them go to waste. I need to find someplace safe. Someplace to build a proper city.
The plain here, scarred by the chaos, is vast and not overly housed. It seems like much of it either was once farms, or was entirely unlived upon. If I can find the right area of these plains, then, I can find a good place to start. A large farm near water. So I do what my past has taught me so well how. I do what I hope to be able to stop doing soon. I wander.
Walking the scarred plains is harsh. Every day a reminder of our failure. But that does not stop me. Because I know that our failure is the reason I have to do this. If the current state of the world, based on those insular fortresses turned cities, is left unchecked, the world will never recover. I have seen what they were like. Are like. They distrust outsiders, and they do not interact with one another. I understand, of course. They are afraid. They don’t have anyone they trust to protect them. But civilization should not be based on fear. It needs greater ideals and ideas, if it is to truly be great.
My last bout of wandering pays off. A patch of plain, about a New York City’s block away from a river. And, from the looks of the soil, this was once tilled land. A farm. Picking up a handful of soil, I smell it. Letting the smell travel through my nose and into my heart, I pick apart the health of the dirt. It is dead, or at least dormant. Nothing left to grow. This is the problem with chaos. The land would be perfect, otherwise. I sit down on the tilled area and think. The leaders of our band, they taught us some things that might work, in theory. Depending on exactly how soil lived and died. It’s times like this I wished I’d studied more in my old classes. But, I didn’t. No matter. I could try a few methods out, and if that didn’t work, I could still simply move on. Find a different spot. A spot less cursed.
Setting up my tent, I get some rest. Considering what most of the rituals require of me, rest is important. My dreams are dark and filled with memories I’d rather not remember. In the morning, I awaken with the sunrise. Sliding out from my tent, I slit my wrist. Taking the blood that flows out, I pull down three, two-finger thick, vertical lines on my face, one over each eye and one starting at my hairline and moving down across my nose and mouth to my chin. Holding my hand over the cut, I begin a chant of reknitting. My wrist pulls itself back together. An old trick we learned for stab wounds.
Kneeling on the ground, I hold my hands out, palms facing the dirt and separated by only the slimmest of space. And I begin a similar chant, for pulling disease out of a person. In theory, it should take the vile and pull it away from the body. And in the small area just beneath each of my hands, it does. The dust and evil coagulates at my palm, a juicy substance. Holding my palms closer to one another the substance forms a sort of ball. I can’t afford this being anywhere near here. I know what it does to soil, but what might it do to water, or a person? I carefully put the ball into one of my old specimen jars. Taking up the small patches of cleansed soil, I sniff it once again. It is not as dead, but it still seems lacking in life. Holding the scoops of soil in my hand, I try what Stanton and I used to joke was the ritual of caffeine. A sort of jumpstart and brief hyper acceleration of someone’s bodily processes. If the magic interpreted the soil as a body, perhaps it will work on the soil as well.
Taking another sniff after the jumpstarting is complete, it smells better. Not ideal, but close enough. Good enough to start growing things on the land, at least. Letting the soil drop to the ground, I look around. If I’m going to do this to the whole field, I’ll need more power. That kind of power only comes from three things. A god, but we killed most of those. I think. And even if we didn’t, they don’t like any of us that much. A group of magey-types the size of a small hamlet, but I don’t have any on hand. Or blood. A lot of blood. With a sigh, I know what I have to do. Taking out a couple more specimen jars, I flick open my knife. It’ll take a couple weeks worth of daily drains, but I should be able to get enough blood to do it. Eventually. And Ideally I won’t starve to death in the process. Because, while I can survive without food and water longer than most, that’s not the same as surviving it forever.
Before I could commit to my first slice, I hear a thundering behind me. Turning around, I see a group of people on motorcycles riding right at me. As they reach a distance, they stop. “What are you doing out here all alone, miss?” one of them asks.
“I don’t want any trouble,” I reply, raising my hands.
A second smiles. “Don’t you know it can be dangerous traveling alone?”
Turning to face them, I smile back. “Of course. That is why I stopped wandering.”
They see the caked blood on my face and make an assumption. “You one of them bastards that wrecked everything? One of those cultists?” the second asks, almost spitting on the ground at the cult’s mention.
My smile falls and I give them a sad look. “No, but I didn’t stop them until…” I drift into thoughts on the city, on the feeling as nothingness nipped at my heels after my friends and I realized the only way we would be able to do the impossible is if we were willing to do the unthinkable. “Until it was too late,” I finish.
“What do you call that, then?” the first asks, gesturing towards and around his face.
“A face,” I say, avoiding the question. I doubt these people care about the distinctions between old world factions. Not enough to matter, anyways.
They get off their bikes and start towards me. “Well, this whole area belongs to us,” the second guy says, “You want to stay, you gotta pay rent. You just passing through, you gotta pay the toll.”
I shrug. “I have nothing to pay you.”
The second one smiles, saying, “Oh, we’ll think of something.” They ready their machetes and hammers. Objects that were once tools and now only weapons. Exactly the problem with the current state of things.
Bowing my head, I smirk. “Thank you,” I half whisper, centering myself.
Weapons and tools. They have always been two sides of the same coin. Just as death and life. As I carefully drag the bleeding corpses of the would-be bandits around the land like the world’s most gruesome pull behind fertilizer, I can’t help but think about that. It feels almost as though nature itself gave me these bandits to aid me. To prevent me from dying, so that this land could live. Almost, because I know better than to think nature is on my side. As each body stops dripping blood, I pull it over to a pile and take up the next. It takes all eighteen bodies and the better part of the day, but the soil in the area eventually is sodden. The smell of the blood is overpowering, but I know that this isn’t enough. Opening my backpack, I pull out the seeds. I won’t plant them everywhere, I know I can’t pull that off without going into a coma, but a small patch of corn and potatoes on one corner of the bloody field, near my tent? That I could manage. The seeds are easily spread in lines at that corner. Even easier to cover with other bloodsoaked soil. And soon enough, I am ready.
The moon overhead to guide passage, and hopefully ensure I don’t die in the process, I move to the exact center of the patch of plain. Kneeling, I reach my hands out once again, palms hovering just above and facing the dirt. I begin the chants. One after the other this time, rather than taking a break. I weave the rituals together, burning away the wickedness I pull out from the ground to help kickstart the growth and rebirth within. As death and life, poison and medicine, are all a matter of degrees. As the process reaches a crescendo, I can see from the corner of my eye the seeds I planted sprouting forth. I can also see other plants bursting from the ground. As though years ago when the chaos came, seeds fell on barren ground and have just been waiting for the opportunity to grow. That doesn’t matter. I begin to feel light headed. That doesn’t matter. I push through. My stomach writhes in pain. That doesn’t matter. I keep the chant going until the soil under my knees is dry. Until I finish burning through all the blood I fertilized the land with.
I don’t make it quite that far. I think. I’m not entirely sure, but I pass out during the chant. My sleep is dreamless, and arguably not sleep, but when I reawaken, it is once again daytime. And the plants have grown. I take a sniff of the soil. It smells faintly of blood, but mostly of living soil. My chant worked. I do not know whether I finished my chant. I have seen it before, the chant taking hold of someone, even when they can no longer continue. It has never happened to me, so I’m not sure if I could. But perhaps. Or perhaps I did enough for the soil to recover on its own. Either way, it is not my worry. My worry is the pile of eighteen corpses, and what their rotting might do. Cause problems with the water. Bring their friends for vengeance. Scare away travellers who might help. Any way I look at it, the bodies are a problem. I have a limited time to deal with it, so, after glancing into the river to make sure the mark was still upon my face, I hold my hands around my head and do that caffeine ritual to speed up myself. Just a quick jolt of energy, but enough to get me through dismantling half of the bikes. Taking the mostly full gas cans, I dump the gasoline on the bodies. Then, with a flick of my fingers, a spark lights the pile ablaze. I watch for a moment as the fire grows, and then shake my head. Ideally, that will be the last time I have to do something so crude.
Walking back to the river, I scoop the water out by hand and wash my blood from my face. I have a feeling that my story isn’t over. While this is hopefully the end of my wandering, I know that ends and beginnings, like many other things, are simply two sides of the same coin. And this might be an ending, but it’s also the start of something else. Something that will hopefully be better than my last endeavor. For me, and the world.
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