The ship landed at the edge of the Forest of Gru. It's landing pads deployed with one leg under each of the wings and the third underneath the bulbous head of the ships cabin as it hovered for a few seconds smoothly descending on top of its desired landing area. The ship was a thing of beauty as its curved silver body contrasted with the plain grass covered knoll they had landed on.

  They exited the back of the ship through the hatch door that opened up and out. Kildra had already turned into her mist form and infiltrated Chen’s mouth and nose with a small sigh of content only she could hear. Of course as she always did lately, she waited until Chen started to say something to move in, and of course like clockwork he started to cough, gag and swat his arms around. It was a small contentment, but it was hers. Chen gave a swear in the Tekniak language. Kildra still did not understand where he knew it from and had to assume it was from his past life before she raised him. A ramp could be extended, but Chen simply jumped off the stoop landing with a small bounce from the meter high fall.

  Punching on the data pad built into his jacket sleeve he put the ship into autopilot mode; the ship waited until the two of them were clear of the launch area than spun up its turbo engines, hovered in the air for a moment to align itself to its new heading and engaged it's turbo jet nozzles located in it's small compact wings. This started its forward motion.The turbo blades continued to pull it up into the atmosphere. Yaw, or the side to side movement of the ship, was controlled as well by these movable nozzles.

  The ship would than fly into the stratosphere breaking the sound barrier a few times over, eventually climbing into the exosphere, where our atmosphere meets space, than reposition itself with its ion thrusters to angle in toward an open landing port on tower 4 in the 7 Towers section of The Last City. If all went to plan, in the next two hours it would reach Schronienie, as it was properly called and refuel to wait on standby for the signal to return for them.

  "This place seems so familiar to me. Like from a dream." Chen said as he looked around the knoll they were walking up.

  "Yea, we haven't been here for so long; look the actual terrain has changed, so much more moisture than I last recorded. The Ph levels are so high now too. I bet those natives have a really bad case of athlete's foot right now" Kildra chatted into Chen's ear.

  "We've been here before?" Chen asked, "I don't remember ever being here, let alone in the last 50 years."

  Kildra gave it a moment before she said "Yes, I raised you from your grave somewhere around these parts."

  Chen had never heard anything about where Kildra found him and reanimated him from. In the 217 years they had been together not once had she mentioned the location or the circumstances that surrounded that fateful day, nor had he ever really thought about it. He had died and been brought back many times over the decades. It was as natural to him now as breathing. But, now that he was in the actual area, he yearned to know more, so much more.

  Kildra sensing the settling awkwardness tried to kill the topic by saying "But that’s a conversation for another time Chen. Let's move on."

  "Wait" Chen said as he stopped on the knoll they were climbing. "Well, was it a family grave? Were there other plots around? Did you catch my surname by chance? Kildra?" Chen urged her to answer but she said nothing.

  They were now moving in silence through the opening where the knoll met the outer forest. The Forest was hot and extremely moist, the humidity was making Chen break a sweat. He walked further in and could smell the ozone emanating from the trees, with a bit of an iron smell to round out the scent -- how familiar yet alien it was to him. Clouds of mist seemed to roll from one bank of trees to the next. The foliage on the ground was wet as if after a rain, and the trees seemed to be covered in sap. Vines littered many of the floors open ways. Chen put his hood on over his head.

  A Remembrance

  Kildra was quiet as she recalled everything in digital clarity. She recalled the prior events that unfolded which brought her to a clearing in that forest almost 264 years ago with Gilda, her "Charge" as they called Heralds back then. Gilda had named Kildra as a joke during the war with the Chakalexy. "My little killing robot is a miniature me in every way, so I henceforth name her Kildra!" Gilda had said to the cheers of her long dead soldiers. That was long ago but the name stuck.

  The villages along the main road had all mentioned strange happenings were amiss in the western forest, yet to be named the Gru. ‘A road appeared out of thin air’ they had said. As such, travel itself wasn't safe with evil bewitching and treacherous sprites about. Gilda made her living as a merchant guard protecting merchant trains going from village to village. A hard but well paid life. And in her own self interest, and due to a willingness to break up the monotony of her now mundane existence, she decided they would go and see this magic clearing.

  Kildra was inside her Charge, as she was most of the time, helping Gilda see in the dark by tuning her pupils to the ambient light of the half moon in the sky. The clearing itself opened up with the light of thousands of fireflies dancing in the night before the dead man on the pyre. After fighting against the Chaka for years on end, Gilda did not like insects and enjoyed squashing them as much as possible. The thought of so many insects flying in such a small space made Gilda sick.

  The pyre sat in the middle of the perfectly round clearing of trees about three miles in diameter. The two and a half kilometer walk took them thirty minutes to get to the pyre itself. Strange black flowers had their petals open and seemed to be floating in the air gust that Gilda occasionally felt. Pilgrims camped out all along the circumference and parts of the middle of the clearing in the hundreds, always staying away from the forest itself.The pyre looked like a large tree trunk, or more like that of many thick vines or roots encircling themselves into an oval shape until the pyre was formed.

  The man that lay on the pyre was ancient, at least 280 years old, with dark black skin, that was offset with snow white hair that ended in short curls on his brow. His long corse white beard sprouted at his face almost covering his mouth, which seemed to be smiling a smile of peaceful rest. This was definitely a man of the Golden Age.

  Back then living to 300 was considered a full life. Of course that’s thanks to easily accessible advanced medicines and gene therapies that everyone was treated with in their embryonic life. A drastically stark comparison to Dark Ages that had followed where a realistic goal was that of reaching 50 years, if you made it past your 12th naming day that is.

  Gilda stood staring at the man and smiled at her fellow "World Union'r", as she called them. The woman, was petite at just shy of 1.6 meters tall and, for one who usually could never stand in one place for long, stood perfectly still in contemplation.

  “Did you know him?”, Kildra asked her from inside her ear. Gilda nodded a curt no, as she whispered “He was from our generation, something we can't say much of anymore. I mean, if I had a normal life span, then I should be on this pyre by now too.” A sadness filled Gilda as she stared at the man.

  Gilda tried to hold herself up confidently and with purpose, besides her feelings. Her hair was worn in a bun, and as usual her bangs just touched the top of her eye brows. Her eyes naturally squinted, ending in sharp points on either side. Her mouth had a slight pout with a small compact chin with wide cheekbones. Men admired her light tan complexion from a far because she was beautiful and exotic.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  If she weren’t fully armed with a short sword on her right hip, body armor and shoulder holstered sidearms under that long leather jacket, she could have actually been approachable.

  She looked around and saw the unnaturalness of it all. The clearing, the pyre, the vines. People in small camps celebrating with libation and food. Effigies of the man had been set up and burnt within some of the camps as people danced about them. In some camps nudity was the call of the night, and others solemn hymns could be heard. Gilda was not sure what could bring all these various people to one place for one mans death. Even more important to her was what greatness could get the forest itself to open a clearing to send the man off.

  She told Kildra to come out and scan the body, who with no surprise objected to the idea. Kildra grew her personality organically through experiences and that personality was no less that of a shut-in due to the war -- something that she never managed to get rid of even after all theses centuries. She simply hated exiting her Charge into the outside world as her true form. "C'mon Kildy. Just a quick scan and then back you go. OK?" Gilda said as gently as she could but gentle was not Gildas style.

  "It's not really necessary I can scan him from in here" Kildra demurely insisted. "Yea and give me radiation poisoning while you’re at it right? Why do I need to override you every time I need you to get out and do something!?" Gilda barked back.

  "No, please. I can heal you after! Please!" Kildra said in a weak voice.

  Ever the officer, Gilda did not like her orders disobeyed. Gilda stated her override code and clearance id, and then finally the commands she wanted her Wisp to perform.

  "Withdraw. Lazarus protocol. Profile. Archive on complete."

  Gilda had long ago memorized a majority of the commands, even some of the technical ones meant for diagnosing the unit. In fact all members of her “Charge Brigade” were required to know a set of basic commands in order to handle any malfunctioning Wisp they may encounter on the battlefield.

  A fine mist started to come out of Gildas mouth as she closed her eyes and tilted her head down toward the dead man as if nothing were occurring. Kildra stayed in the mist form as she crept over the man and engulfed him in her essence. Full body scans from the outside were being performed. Mist flowed into his nostrils and continued DNA scanning from the inside out. Sampling, analysis and test were conducted on him in accordance with the Lazarus protocol. They still didn't know his name so Kildra filed it under Chen, Gilda's brothers first name. She added the surname Deau, a take on a name historically used to represent an unknown person. DNA mapping of all 7 types was completed within minutes. Now that Kildra had a grafting profile of the man, she hurried back into Gildas body the same way she had left it. If anyone saw the Wisp show up, scan the man, and then retreat back into the beautiful small Asian woman -- no one made a show of it.

  This was Kildra’s first profile of someone other than a Charge soldier, and she was now capable of resurrecting him any time she chose. Well, maybe not "resurrect" him; rebuild is a more accurate word. Sap from the trees had already kept him well preserved for what she had guessed 3 to 4 weeks by the time they got to him, so there was no revitalizing those tissues. No she would need to rebuild him from scratch. A task that would never happen, because Gilda was her Charge, and a Wisp could only be bonded to one person at a time, and only the bonded could be resurrected.

  They made camp by the trees. The horse, named Samson, was battle trained and stayed by his owner. Kildra gave her summary of the man to Gilda in the quiet of their shared mind.

  Gilda, tired from the profiling and the long day proceeding it, laid down on her bedroll and closed her eyes as her partner gave her report "Brain topography is in line with general specifications except a small anomaly indicating he had brain surgery as a young child due to blunt force trauma, maybe an accident. He had a weird radioactive isotope in his bloodstream, but that could have been from the sap that was used to mummify him since the same isotope seems to be radiating from the forest too." Half asleep at this point Gilda agreed with a humming of her voice. Forest radiation she thought, how far back did this go for the dead man? "Interesting, can you see if you can back date him. See if you can see if his DNA had that at, say age 32. I'm going to sleep, wake me at dawn ok?" Gilda said as she drifted off to sleep.

  Well before dawn, a large fire ignited where the pyre was, waking the entire clearing. People had later said the fire started by itself, but Gilda wasn't so sure that it wasn't a wayward flame from someones campfire. In the air, pollen from the vines exploded in a display of beautiful multicolored cotton like swirls that floated and burned up as they made contact with the pyre. Kildra was afraid that the forest would soon burn, but was happily proven wrong.

  After the initial shock of the fire, a celebratory mood had enraptured the people as a minstrel began to chant an impromptu song accompanied by his small guitar.

  Old Gru Noblemind

  Could hear these trees,

  Whispers carried on the breeze.

  Speaking to him through the night,

  In rustling leaves and firelight.

  How thoughtful could a forest be?

  Old Gru's tale is there to see.

  The forest watches him depart,

  Sees the fire, feels his heart.

  In the flicker of the flame,

  Old Gru and forest are the same.

  A Sonnet of Another Sort

  "Now you're atypically quiet." Chen finally said after about a minute of silence.

  "So, these thieves we're after. They must have a Skip ship or something to make it over to Euro and back. That’s got to be a long ride too at least 8 hours each way. We definitely need to see if we can at least locate that ship. Even better, if we can disable it before we leave it would put them out of business altogether." Kildra continued as if their awkward silence had never happened.

  "Reconnaissance Kildra, remember? We go in, reconnoiter and then get out." Chen said in a whisper that only Kildra could hear. Wisp couldn't read minds nor could they read the electrical pulses in the Heralds brain because it would result in a painful feedback loop to both the Herald and Wisp due to their bonding. It was better to just speak aloud to the Wisp.

  "I'm just saying that we could destroy them Chen! We can get our stuff back; you can even keep anything that's interesting. It's not like I wouldn't resurrect you if you died, that’s what makes you a super soldier Chen -- you can't die. Not with me around!"

  "No man's an island Kildra. We may have our gifts but the Consensus has grown, and we need to follow protocol to allow it to prosper and function properly. Let's not have any incidents like... like before, with the wilding family." His tone grew hard and distant.

  "They attacked me Chen! We told them to stop; we told them to Chen and they attacked me. You'll remember that the next time you try to make me look like the villain here!" Kildra said with a whine of innocence.

  "They threw rocks are you while you were mist, just after they caught you going through their things in that cabin of theirs. You had no right to do what you did to them. I had already calmed things down. Seeing them like that... I never wish to see a thing like that again Kildra."

  "Chen, they attacked me. And it was arrows not rocks, and they didn't know those arrows would pass right through me unharmed. I defended myself. " whispering she continued "I am a Wisp, you don't attack a Wisp..."

  "Gods Kildra! You're practically invulnerable" Chen said with a hard whisper "you defend nothing but your pride! Now shh, we're getting closer to the tracking beacon."

  It was good that the receiver vibrated in response to the close proximity to the beacon because recalling the sight of that massacred family, and his later burial of them was starting to make him nauseous. His anger was starting to rise over. His concentration wavered just for second as a vine on the right of him moved ever so slightly.

  They moved forward ducking behind a large tree for cover. Ahead of them they could see a small natural shelter about 200 meters away where two people were huddling next to what looked like a dark object next to them.

  Taking out a pair of miniature binoculars from his jacket he could see that the smaller of the two, a blonde woman was tending to the other, a not-too-injured man, trying to apply an ice pack to his forehead.

  "The data suggest that is our signal over there on what seems to be a camouflaged cart. I sent some probes out and besides the forest's weird radiation signature they seem to be the only other radiation signatures around for a kilo, except for you of course." Kildra said in a chirpy upbeat tone. "Lets get them Chen!" which explained why.

  "No. We'll need to track back to where they came from. Looks like they are going west from the way the cart is positioned and those broken branches behind them" he said as he pointed east.

  Vines lay on both side of Chen, and as he looked down he saw movement.

  Coming up in Chapter 3:

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