Emer had gotten used to wild weather; the Chaos infection had disrupted the environment quite thoroughly, and of late, it had been stuck in intense, sticky heat that Emer really only expected during the end of his planet’s summers back when things were normal. It was as if the very world had the same awful fever that Emer had watched ravage his people, until he was the only one left. But the heat wasn’t what had him worried.
No. That was the strange purple storm in the sky.
Certainly in his years of travel carrying messages and secrets to distant worlds, Elkurud had seen many, many strange phenomena. Skies lit in a million colors and storms that ravaged entire worlds. In all truth, he’d probably seen a purple sky lit by lightning before, given the wide range of places he’d been.
But there was something different about this. Something wrong. It made Elkurud’s hair stand on end and his feathers fluff, and when the ominous purple sky—definitely not something native to Elkurud—finally broke into a lighting storm, he holed himself up inside a half-ruined building to wait it out.
The fierce intensity of the lighting strikes had him keeping an eye out for fires in the distance—he’d want to run as fast as he could manage if one started. Certainly, he hadn’t survived all these years just to die to an unlucky strike—especially not when he still didn’t know what had happened to Cyrus.
Sometimes, the memory of his fiancé was the only thing that kept Emer going. The knowledge that Cyrus might be out there, somewhere—might even need his help again. Might be waiting for him.
Though as the years stretched on, as Emer saw fewer and fewer people, as Elkurud seemed to slowly march towards its final end, he had to admit that the prospect seemed less and less likely. No one was meant to live as long as he had, or at least no one Emer knew. Sure, Elkurudans could live for a few centuries, but this was…well beyond that. Well beyond any reasonable lifespan.
He really, really did not want to guess how long it had been since he’d spoken to another person. Sometimes, the isolation threatened to shatter him; the unending loneliness as much a threat as the Chaos that poisoned his world.
Sometimes, Emer did sort of wish the fever had taken him too, so that he wouldn’t have to wander this wasteland of a world.
Those thoughts were usually fleeting; Emer Donlevy had never been one to give up, and he wasn’t going to start now. But they came, when the empty days stretched long.
So in some ways, the storm was a relief. It was a break from the never ending silence, something new and strange to ponder. And when the first one blew through and Emer felt safe coming out of hiding, he was surprised to find that the atmosphere felt strangely…electrified.
That was sign number two that something was very wrong. And, moreover, he could still see storms in the distance, moving towards him. That same strange, vibrantly purple sky…
It felt like a threat. And one that Emer alone was ill equipped to handle. But what was he going to do? There was no one else to turn to. Everyone was dead, and no messages had made it to or from Elkurud for…
For a very, very long time, a number of years that Emer refused to quantify lest he finally crack.
It was a while before the storms came back—the changed weather made it hard to track days, and Emer found himself sleeping often to ignore growing hunger pangs, so his estimates felt messily unreliable. But when they returned in force, he was not near some ruined building he could hide in. No, that would have been too easy.
The second round of storms caught him out in the open, in a field hunting for anything that even vaguely resembled food, and his nearest shelter was much too far to run to. He’d seen it building, rolling in, but he’d thought he had more time, that he’d be able to find something to eat and then make his way back to somewhere safe before the storm broke.
He had been disastrously wrong.
The first lightning strike hit with a crack of thunder so loud it set Emer’s ears ringing. He staggered, horrified—storms could be loud, certainly, but this was something else. Whatever this purple sky represented, it was a danger like nothing he’d ever known.
The second strike was closer and, somehow, louder—he reached up to cover his ears automatically, as if folding them down would help anything at all. A third strike made him stumble and fall to the ground, and he felt a sort of distant fear begin to settle in his chest.
This storm might well be the end of him, somehow. At minimum, he was definitely in more danger than he’d been in for a very, very long time. Perhaps since the infected had been active on his planet, stumbling around and attacking anyone that came close enough.
With the fear, though, came a sense of fury, too. He hadn’t survived this long by giving up when things got messy. Certainly he hadn’t by laying down in a field and waiting for the storm to pass or lighting to strike him.
He got to his feet and started running. Shelter was far, yes, but it existed—and if he could reach it, he could ride out this storm, too. Just like he’d ridden out every other catastrophe that struck his world. Just like he would ride out whatever came next, until he found a way to get off his planet, find Cyrus, and fix what had been broken.
However long it took, Emer was not going to give up. He’d found that becoming Sailor Elkurud was difficult, ever since the purple storm rolled in, but he reached for that power anyway, hoping the additional speed and agility of a Senshi—even one much weakened by time and Chaos’s pernicious influence on his world—would keep him one step ahead of the storm.
He even felt like he was doing well.
Except that the fourth lighting strike was silent, and it hit him.
And as he felt it, as he began to slip into unconsciousness after the strike, he felt something else, too.
A call.
Pulling him…somewhere. Away from there.
Elkurud reached back to it, and let whatever that strange magic was carry him away.
[wc: 1095 words]
