Father Desmond Crane's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Desmond reached the cavern mouth as the sun cut low across the rocks. He ducked inside and pressed his back to cold stone. His breath came fast. He touched the shard through his coat, still warm, still humming. Then he heard the click again, close this time, from the ridge behind him. He looked down at his sleeve and saw a small black bead stuck to the cloth near his elbow. The scout had tagged him when he threw the spear. The bead pulsed once, soft red. Every second he wore it, the others could find him. He tore at the sleeve with his teeth and pulled the bead free. It stuck to his thumb like sap. He scraped it on the rock and it clung. He heard boots on gravel outside, two sets, coming fast. He ran deeper into the cavern, one hand on the wall, the shard banging his ribs. The passage bent and opened into a narrow slot where water trickled down a canyon wall in thin lines, pooling at the base among tufts of grass. Desmond knelt at a pool and shoved his thumb under the water. The bead did not come off. He grabbed a flat stone and scraped harder. It split, then peeled, and floated free on the surface, still blinking. He heard the two Vael enter the slot behind him, their scaled armor scraping stone, antennae ticking. He picked up the blinking bead on the stone and hurled it upstream into a deeper pool where the trickle ran loud. Then he pressed himself flat behind a shelf of rock. The two scouts came through with weapons raised. One stopped at the pool where the bead pulsed under the water. It clicked to the other and pointed. They crouched at the pool, backs to Desmond, and began to fish the signal out. Desmond did not move to fight them. He slid along the wall in the other direction, out through the slot, back to the cavern mouth, and up onto the ridge above. He walked until the rocks hid him and then he ran. The bead was gone. The shard was still warm at his ribs. His sleeve was torn and his thumb bled where the stone had cut him. He did not know how long it would take the Vael to understand the pool was empty of him. He knew only that the trail he had cut was still there in the sand, and that he had bought himself hours, not days. He turned toward the far wastes and the workbench where his wings waited, and he kept moving while the light held.