AKAME ASSASINATION (41)
"Oh, I know you, right?" The figure leaned in, the dappled forest light finally revealing her face. It was smudged with dirt, her clothes torn, but her smile was wide and genuine. "I'm glad you're alive. Really." Catherine beamed down at her.
Nala blinked up, memory swimming. The girl from the fight in the plains. The one who had been with Akame. Their parting had been... less than friendly. But the cheerful, unburdened expression on Catherine's face held no trace of that conflict.
Catherine didn't wait for an invitation. She clambered down the rope ladder she'd rigged and stood in the pit, extending a muddy hand. Nala hesitated, suspicion warring with confusion.
Catherine stared for a moment, then her eyes slid past Nala to the boy slumped on her back. She leaned in, peering at Gil's unconscious face. "Gil? Is that you?" she asked, poking his cheek. "This is no time to be sleeping."
With a strength that belied her slender frame, Catherine grabbed Nala's arms and hauled her upright. The sudden motion made Gil's body slip from Nala's grasp, landing with a soft thump in the muddy, leaf-lined bottom of the pit.
"He'll be fine... probably," Catherine insisted with sunny optimism.
Nala's face fell, a pang of clear regret flashing in her eyes. She immediately bent, trying to pull Gil's dead weight up again, but her arms trembled violently. Exhaustion, old injuries, and the strain of carrying him this far hit her all at once. Her breath came in sharp, shallow gasps; she was spent.
Seeing her struggle, Catherine stepped in. "I'll carry him," she declared, flexing an arm with a determined nod. "I have a sudden boost in energy." It was true—the rage-fueled awakening in the pit had left her feeling strangely invigorated, her ghostly body thrumming with a new, solid purpose.
Nala stared, bewildered. This kindness, so freely given after their violent first meeting... it mirrored the selfless reliability she'd seen in Gil. It was a foreign concept to her now, after weeks of her father's helplessness and the tribe's growing fear. She had given up on others fixing her problems. Yet here it was, reflected in this strange girl's eyes.
A hot, unexpected pressure built behind her own eyes. A sob hitched in her silent throat, and tears traced clean lines through the dirt on her cheeks. She didn't even know why.
"Um... are you okay?" Catherine asked, letting go of Gil's arm. He slid back into the mud with a soft plop. "It's okay... you don't need to cry." Catherine shifted awkwardly. Comfort was not her forte; her social skills had atrophied somewhere between dying and coming back to life.
But Nala didn't need comfort. She swiped at her tears with the back of her hand, a sudden, fierce determination hardening her features. She took a steadying breath, then pointed a firm finger at Catherine, who blinked in confusion.
Nala tried mouthing words, shaping them carefully with her lips.
'Nala.' Catherine heard the name clearly in her mind. 'Can she not understand sign language?'
But Nala's lips weren't moving for that sentence. She wasn't speaking at all.
'How is this going to work now?'
"Hey Nala," Catherine said aloud, completely misinterpreting the telepathic intrusion as successful lip-reading. "I'm Catherine. That means we can be friends now."
Nala's eyes widened in relief. 'So she does understand sign language! Thank goodness.' She began signing rapidly, her hands a fluent, silent conversation.
Catherine, in fact, did not understand a single sign. She just smiled and nodded, receiving Nala's thoughts as a quiet, background murmur in her mind without realizing their source.
With combined effort—Catherine's renewed strength and Nala's stubborn determination—they managed to haul Gil's limp form out of the pit and lay him on the path. Catherine easily hoisted him onto her back, adjusting his weight.
'Why did you dig a hole?' Nala signed, the question clear in her mind as they started walking, Gil now Catherine's burden.
"Oh, a couple of weird-looking guys put me and Akame in there," Catherine explained cheerfully. "They then tortured me day in and day out for over a week." (She had been in the pit for approximately two days.)
"It was horrible, horrible, I tell you. The indignity! Treating someone of my standing with such impudence!" (No actual torture had occurred beyond the attempted assault and a slap.)
"But using my superior genius, I was able to escape! I didn't know which direction to go, though, and ended up going 'round in circles. So I decided to cover the hole they trapped me in with leaves. That way, when they came back, they'd fall right in, and I could see which way they came from. Smart, right?" Catherine finished, looking immensely pleased with herself.
Nala stared at her, a slow realization dawning. 'Oh... she's one of those kinds of people.' The thought was weary but fond.
"What do you mean by that?" Catherine's smile vanished, replaced by an indignant pout. "That's just rude."
Nala, a master of deflection, signed another question, her mental voice cutting through Catherine's faux outrage: 'Who trapped you here?'
"Umm," Catherine scrunched her face, thinking. "People dressed like you... I think? It was really dark." Her vagueness wasn't helpful.
As they moved carefully along the narrow forest path, a sudden, deliberate CRUNCH of dead leaves underfoot made them both freeze.
They looked up.
Standing ten feet ahead, blocking the path, was Orinx. His expression was grim, resolved, a man on a final, unpleasant task. But when his eyes landed not on Catherine or the unconscious white-haired boy, but on Nala—alive, dirty, but very much not dead in a monster's gullet—all that conviction drained from his face, replaced by sheer, gut-wrenching horror. His heart didn't just sink; it plunged into an abyss of doomed realization.
People in the village left. They always did. Whether for a better life "out there," for a different clan, or simply to vanish into the vastness of the savannah, nobody could say for sure.
Orinx woke one morning to an empty hut and a village that sounded, as always, joyful. The sun was the same. The distant laughter of children was the same. But the air inside the family manyatta was different—still, and carrying only the scent of decaying earth and the dried cow dung of its walls.
"Brother?" his younger voice called out through the emptiness. "I had such a marvelous dream."
He stepped outside, his smile wide, ready to share it. The smile died instantly.
Zena stood there, not as his vibrant older brother, but as a statue of grief. His hands were clenched over his heart, knuckles white. His eyes, usually so sharp and calculating, were raw and red from tears that had carved tracks through the dust on his cheeks.
"Brother... what's..."
"She's gone."
Their mother. She was gone. She had left them.
It wasn't as though she was the happiest. But then, who in the harsh clutch of survival truly was? Their fragile happiness had been a shared burden, a mutual leaning. Her presence had been a foundation. Now, it was ripped away, and the two boys were left wobbling on unstable ground. Who would they lean on now?
'I don't really understand, but my brother changed that day,' the present-day Orinx thought, watching memory-Orinx's world crumble. 'He became determined to break the society we'd known for twenty years. To tear it all down. I don't get it. I really don't.'
What reason could possibly justify such a scorched-earth vengeance? 'Brother always kept things from me. Even in his scheming, I was just a tool, a follower. He didn't need me for his plans, only for my hands. He was driven by a fire I couldn't see, and in the end, the younger brother is the one left looking up, trying to understand the older brother's shadow.'
"Hey, were you with the guys who kidnapped me?" Catherine shouted at Orinx, though her tone held more curiosity than true anger. "It was dark, and I couldn't see."
Orinx barely registered her. His eyes were locked on Nala. His hands, trembling slightly, rose to sign. 'Nala. I'm glad you're okay.'
'How's... the village?' Nala's hands flew in response, her expression worried.
'It's...' Orinx wanted to lie, to say it was fine. But the lie wouldn't form. His shoulders slumped. 'It's not fine, Nala. Nothing is fine.'
'How's my father?'
'There will be a war. It's going to happen. Today.'
Nala's eyes hardened, not with despair, but with a fierce light. 'Oh. Don't worry. I've brought people who will help us.' She gestured with her chin to the unconscious Gil on Catherine's back and to Catherine herself.
Orinx stared at her, his face a conflict of hope and profound weariness. What was he fighting for, after all?
"As long as the world exists like this, there will never be anything good to fight for," Zena's voice echoed in his memory.
"But then, what's the point of all this?" Orinx had asked.
"There is no point. I just don't want everyone else to live a false life."
Orinx's hands moved again, heavy with finality. 'Nala. We're going to leave the village. Me and Zena.'
'WHAT?!' Her signs were sharp, disbelieving.
'Yes, but it's not—'
'What do you mean? Are you abandoning us?' Her fingers fumbled in her distress.
'No, that's not it! We... there's nothing left for us there anymore. My mother, your mother... they left. Every day I wake, it feels like someone else has quietly gone.'
Nala stepped forward, her small frame radiating an intense conviction. 'Then we make it a place they can come back to!' she signed furiously. 'It's a home! Their hearts will always be there, like mine and yours. I'm not angry at anyone. All I care about right now is saving my home. Saving my heart!'
"Damn it!" Orinx's voice broke as he fell to his knees, the truth of her words landing like a physical blow. She was right. So devastatingly right that the nihilistic fortress Zena had built in his mind began to crack and spiral.
Nala rushed to him, kneeling in the leaves beside him, her hand patting his back in a clumsy, earnest gesture of comfort.
'Let's just try our best,' she signed, a soft, determined smile on her face. 'And leave the rest.'
She was so cheerful. So full of a hope he'd thought extinct. And his brother had been willing to let her die. To let her home, his home, be consumed by fire and blood for a hollow revenge.
He nodded, a new weight—a good weight—settling on him. With a tug, she helped him to his feet.
"Hey, Gil," Catherine whispered into the unconscious boy's ear, a soft, knowing smile on her lips. "It's just like you and me, right?"
Orinx had a new conviction. Meeting Zena would have to wait. First, he had to save his home. He had to save his—
SNAP.
It wasn't a sound. It was a cessation.
One moment, Orinx was standing, resolve firming in his eyes.
The next, he simply wasn't.
There was no blur, no warning growl. It was a void of perception. Nala and Catherine blinked, and the space Orinx occupied was empty. A fine, red mist hung in the air where his torso had been. On the forest floor, in a slick, shocking trail leading away from them, were the remains of his lower half, severed with impossible, surgical neatness.
Something had moved through the space he occupied with such speed and precision it existed only as an afterimage of carnage.
The creature—if it could be called that—didn't stop. It continued on its trajectory, a streak of distorted air and horrific momentum, plowing through the thick tree trunks perpendicular to the path as if they were tall grass. CRUNCH-SNAP-THUD. A corridor of shattered timber exploded into being.
Nala's brain, trained for danger, still short-circuited. The sensory input was too fast, too brutal.
Catherine didn't hesitate. Survival, a newly awakened instinct, took over.
"MOVE!" she screamed, throwing her shoulder into Nala, shoving the smaller girl off the path just as the stampede arrived.
They weren't alone.
From the same direction the first horror came, more poured. A tide of nightmares given flesh. Some lumbered on powerful legs, crowned with massive, sweeping cow skulls. Others scuttled with insectile speed, human skulls grinning from torsos of blackened ash and sinew. Some had leathery wings that tore through the canopy; others wielded heavy, bony tails that smashed aside anything in their path. They were a hybrid avalanche of bone, muscle, and malice, all moving with a single, terrifying purpose perpendicular to the girls' path, shredding the forest as they went.
Nala stumbled, caught herself, and against every screaming instinct, looked back.
She saw the devastation. She saw the red smear that was Orinx. She saw the wall of monsters, a living cataclysm ignoring them for now, focused on a destination ahead.
Catherine refused to let her look. She grabbed Nala's hand, her grip iron, and yanked, forcing them to run down the path, away from the obliterating tide, Gil bouncing on her back. "Don't look! RUN!"
But Nala, just for a second, saw it. The creatures weren't chasing them. They were a wave, and they were heading straight for the village clearing.
Her heart, which had just found a sliver of hope, turned to ice.
What was happening?
TO BE CONTINUED!