Homecoming

Chapter Ten

Nine men left. Three return. Only two I recognize.

Commander Horton, sadly, isn't one of them.

The guy I had since been admiring. The guy who was supposed to teach me a few more things about combat and about life, in general. The guy who had been nothing but honorable and whose character and skills all of mankind could benefit from. He's now gone. He had bitten the dust with a literal hole in his heart.

In his place is some stranger. A gangly, middle-aged man whose long, wavy, grey hair, receding hairline and overgrown beard are reminiscent of King Robert Baratheon's. He is a bit on the scrawny side—a stark contrast to the fictional king's more plump build—making him more of a Walder Frey, only younger and with bushier facial hair.

Versorium, his name is. Or, at least, it's what the Villagers have been referring to him as. Turns out, it's the only word he can pronounce. Our own Hodor, in short.

No one is sure whether he is a mentally-challenged man like the gentle giant character, someone suffering from dementia or another Ante in disguise. With everything that has happened, we can't be too sure about anything anymore.

Although it's premature to make a judgment by only seeing him from afar, I would bet on the latter, since he was basically found inside the basement of the mansion where the battle with those beasts—and the slaying of the commander, among a few other men—ensued. Sure, he was gagged and tied to a chair, painting him as a prisoner of the enemies and not their ally, but I was a prisoner of my own kind, wasn't I? Who knows if he was using all of it as a ploy to evade death, only to (literally) stab us in the back again?

We, humans, should be smarter than this, taking note of the fact that we can never be as physically and telekinetically advanced as they are. That is, if we ever intend for our race to outlive this era of hostility and chaos. Gullibility and obliviousness have no place in this new world. Recklessness, much less so.

"Versorium, eh?" I ask Johann, as we sit here on the dusty wooden floor inside one of the unoccupied houses along the road. "I wonder what he means by that."

With his back leaning on the concrete wall and his head tossed up to gaze at the night sky through a huge tear on the roof, he stays hushed as if he heard nothing. Both legs folded up and arms suspended on his knees, he responds with the faint sound of his breathing.

I look up to trace his gaze, to see what those peepers have been so busy about. Nothing there but the usual: a crescent moon surrounded by the stars across an expanse of dark blue hues, indigo and pitch black. Nothing even remotely extraordinary. No shooting star or hot air balloon or some anomalous, hovering, blinking lights others would automatically suspect as an alien spacecraft. Nothing.

As I straighten myself up from reclining, I turn my regard back to him and attempt to strike up a conversation another time. "Like that electric compass sort of device, maybe?"

Still nothing.

How detached can he be?

He seems consistently unfazed by being stared at. From what I can see through the soft brightness of the moon and the flickering flame from the lamp combined, he doesn't even dare twitch a facial muscle. Remarkable, since I could never not be bothered by having a pair of eyeballs at me for longer than a glimpse—not after this kind of looks has mutated from one of admiration to that of disgust and/or pity.

Instead, he maintains his gaze to the sky and his lips zipped up. If I haven't seen how parted those eyelids are, I would have mistaken him as already sound asleep.

It must be late, after all. Maybe around nine or ten.

Being forced not to have some watch strapped around my wrist because of constantly breaking them during fistfights at school, I have learned to rely on my innate sense of time. On a normal day, my estimate would be precise. But this isn't normal; nothing is anymore. There have been instances when days are wildly longer, and others when they are far too short. Today, especially, has been a long one—and that's after the long-ass night of the burial, the kidnapping and the trial.