Vengeance Throne (The Callistra Chronicles #2)

SEVEN

Chapter Seven

Falon no longer recognised the Isles. 

It wasn't that the environment had changed: the skies were as heavy as always and the air still smelled vaguely burnt. The main village along the coast side looked everlastingly weary, while the poorly built huts slowly sagged in on themselves with the more the weather raged on. Even the crops appeared the same, though the toxic sludge was worsening the conditions, having each harvest return slimmer and slimmer. Soon, perhaps the humans would have to relocate for unblemished soil.

Their liveable area may have been shrinking, but the Isles always felt the same.

It was the people who had changed.

"Here."

Falon looked up, seeing a pale, elderly man with a white beard trying to pass her a swath of cloth. With some delay, she realised that he was giving her a blanket.

"Thank you," she murmured, holding her hands out to take it. It wasn't until he hobbled off, his hunch severe enough to have him doubled over naturally, that she wondered if she should have offered to let him keep it.

"Excuse me!" she called out.

The elderly man turned around again. Falon stood up and met him this time, taking his elbow to guide him somewhere more comfortable.

They were within the village's main building, though it was more or less a gigantic tent: a central pole held up a huge expanse of calico fabric that protected the occupants inside from the elements. It had become a makeshift refugee centre, and the elderly man was bustling around to keep everyone calm. Those who had just returned from Khotadi had nowhere else but here to wait while messengers ran to nearby settlements, searching for news of their families. Falon, too, was waiting for news, though she couldn't find it within herself to sit on the floor patiently as the dozens around her were.

Falon led the elderly man to a nearby seat. She crouched beside him, waiting for him to get comfortable.

"What's happened here?" she asked quietly.

The man looked at her quizzically, his heavy eyelids blinking with effort.

"Child, how long have you been gone for?"

Falon tried to think. She tried to remember.

"I don't know," she replied honestly. "Years, at least."

And though she had been young before leaving, she knew how they lived. She knew that survival was their base rule and they only helped one another if there were benefits to come out of it. She knew that on the Isles, even if they had nothing else, no food, no water, no shelter, they had control over themselves.

Something that she lost when she was traded into Khotadi to feed her family.

"The Isles have seen to some changes, yes," the man said, wincing as he tried to straighten his back. "It is no longer sensible to think we can survive without coming together."

Falon blinked. "What does that mean?"

The elderly man was smiling into the distance when he replied, "It means that we remembered who once ruled the world." His eyes had glazed over, watching Falon but not seeing her. "We remembered that it was humans who were Earth's occupants, and when the world changed, we convinced ourselves we were inferior to the fae and the witches."

"But—" Falon trailed off, seeing the elderly man's sharp look. But they were, she had wanted to say. They had no magic. They had no technology. They were barely better than animals, scavenging for food, surviving by the day, and procreating while young in their last ditch efforts to leave offspring who would only continue to suffer.