Olly Olly Oxenfree

Run. Run!

Deerlegs didn’t know how long she’d been running. She hadn’t been paying attention, it was just vital that she keep running.

She didn’t know exactly where she was going, just that her feet were carrying her far away from the acros that had met them at the entrance of the tunnel. The sharp sound of teeth scraping against metal, the horrible wail that Halberd had made. The sounds echoed in her head over and over again. Over the sound of her rapid, limping footsteps; over the sound of her claws tearing gouges into the eart, over the sound of her gasping breaths, over the sound of blood rushing in her ears.

She didn’t know when the cracked concrete and long-dark street lights gave way to dry, coarse earth and hardy scrubland shrubs. She hadn’t seen the moon reach its highest point in the sky, now starting to sink back towards the horizon. She hadn’t even really noticed Embargo trying to call out to her, trying to tell her to slow down.

He’d been able to smell fresh blood on her some time ago. Her wounds had opened again and they needed to stop, or at least pause for a moment, but she was so scared he wasn’t even sure that she could hear him. His voice was muffled by the corners of the bundle of armour he still carried. The weight of it strained his jaw and neck long ago, but he held onto it. It was important to Deerlegs. If they got anything useful out of this experience, it would be this.

But he had to make sure that Deerlegs actually made it to the end of their journey first. He tried to call out again, his bleat still muffled. Deerlegs didn’t make any sign that she’d heard him.

She only stopped when she tripped, crashing and sliding across the dusty earth before she finally came to a grinding stop. Her breaths were rough and ragged, her eyes wide as she stared ahead at nothing. She started to try to get up after the shortest pause, mindless in her actions.

Embargo dropped his cargo, finally, and rushed to Deerlegs’s side. His own flanks were heaving - this was the longest that he’d ever run, and now that they’d stopped he realised he couldn’t really feel his feet. They’d gone numb from the constant droning impacts against the hard ground.

“Stop,” he urged her, his voice rough. He nudged her with his muzzle, grappling her to try to keep her from getting up and running even further. She protested, her voice almost too ragged to make comprehensive words, and struggled weakly to get away as he bade her again to stop.

“It’s okay,” Embargo panted, “we left them behind. All of them. They’re gone, they couldn’t keep up.”

Deerlegs continued to try to fight him, to get to her feet so she could keep going, but now that she’d come to a rest she almost couldn’t make herself get up again. She could feel her pulse across her whole body, pounding in time with the brutal pace that she’d set since they left the city as though she were still running across the scrublands.

She made a broken sound and turned her face into Embargo’s neck, her every breath shaking as she tried to comprehend what had happened. He offered calm, soothing words as he too tried to catch his breath, at the same time trying to listen for any other carnivores that might be in the area, or Atlanteans that might somehow be in the area. He couldn’t hear anything but Deerlegs’s ragged gasps and whatever creatures were awake this late in the scrublands. Owls, insects, wind rustling through the tough vegetation and small animals moving through the thorny undergrowth and over sandy soil. Sounds that were becoming familiar to him, and which were home for Deerlegs.

“Listen,” he murmured. “You’re safe, you’re almost back to Highcliff.”

Highcliff. The word burned a hole in Deerlegs’s heart. Yes, she wanted so desperately to be back at Highcliff, back home, but they were returning as failures. The seeds she hoped to get from the oviraptors wouldn’t plant anything but carnivorous plants that would swallow the island and poison Highcliff. Whatever techniques the oviraptors knew to make them grow so vigorously across even the most inhospitable land would remain forever unknown to her. She hadn’t served Highcliff at all, she was coming back empty-handed and would be an even greater strain on resources while she recovered from her wounds.

She howled in anguish and shoved Embargo away, enraged and painfully grieving in a way that could not be expressed with words. She felt like she was going to explode, like she could tear a hole through the sky. She hated them. She hated all of them. The Atlanteans and their Queen were coming and there wasn’t going to be anything that they could do to stop them. It was useless to try to fight.

Embargo watched silently as she grieved, his own heart bleeding for her. He’d only seen such displays from the dacen when one of their number fell to the acros or albertos and even then, it was largely subdued. The knowledge that they would all eventually be taken by a carnivore, death, or sickness was a simple fact of life, yet Deerlegs was here raging as though she was going to fight fate itself. It hurt to watch.

It was only when Deerlegs started to calm that he stepped forwards again, offering her some comfort. Deerlegs leaned against Embargo again, still shaking with rage but quiet this time. As the adrenaline of their flight started to recede, she was realising again how much her body hurt. Her feet, her legs, her hip, her tail. Her tail definitely hurt the worst of all.

Her breath came in short, hitched gasps as she slowly continued to calm down, finding comfort in Embargo’s presence. She was exhausted. They both were.

But he was right, they were almost home. She turned her muzzle upwards, studying the stars. They’d journeyed South to get to the long-dead place where the tunnel had opened the earth, which just meant that they had to follow the North Star to find their way back to the coast. Back to Highcliff.

“We can go this way,” she rasped after finding her voice again. Her voice had gone rough and gravelly with pain, sadness adding weight to her tone.

Embargo dipped his head and helped her again to her feet before returning to where he’d abandoned the armour bundle. Deerlegs watched with an empty gaze. He’d carried it for her this far already; it’d be a waste of his very kind-hearted efforts to tell him to leave it there now.

Deerlegs started them off at a gentler pace. Her body couldn’t take much more than walking speed, limping heavily again. Embargo was halfway worried that she’d done permanent damage to the muscle with as hard as she’d been running, but what point was there in bringing it up? What choice did they have except to run? If there was permanent damage, it was because they had been forced to keep moving, not because she had made the choice to do so. There were very few choices that they'd been able to make for themselves since they entered Atlantis.

Even now, they couldn’t stop. Though they had returned to the surface, they were still in danger - the appearance of the acros was proof enough of that. The scrublands were familiar, but they were also open and exposed. There was little shelter here, and what large rocks there were to climb, Embargo wasn’t sure that Deerlegs would have the strength to make it up high enough to be out of harm’s way.

They had traveled a good distance across the scrublands when the first hints of daylight started to lighten and warm the eastern sky. Sharpteeth might not be bedding down just yet, but at least the approaching dawn meant that the pachys would have an easier time of seeing one if it was intent on approaching.

Deerlegs rested against a rocky outcropping near the bundle of armour components while Embargo climbed it, scouting ahead for any potentially lurking dangers. The path ahead appeared to be clear, and he could almost hear the sounds of waves breaking across the distant rocky shore. He could also smell something, but it was not the salty spray of the sea that made his stomach turn.

Blood. Deerlegs could smell it as well, when the breeze shifted as the sun’s earliest rays started to cause the air to stir. Blood and Atlanteans. Embargo almost couldn’t make it back down to the ground before Deerlegs started off towards the scent.

The scene that they came upon was grisly. The source of the smell of blood was painfully obvious, as was the awful stench that accompanied a body left in the sun too long. A pair of pachys, likely mates, lay broken and bloody and strewn about on the sandy soil. Deerlegs felt her stomach sicken and turn and she might’ve been sick if there were anything in her stomach to retch up. She didn't recognise them. They didn't belong to Highcliff, but it turned her stomach all the same to see the result of the Atlantean's manifest destiny.

Embargo’s muzzle wrinkled. This was a sight he was all too familiar with, yet something was different. Wrong. These bodies hadn’t been picked at by carnivores, they’d just been left to rot. No carnivore just left a body behind like this. It was death without purpose, useless expenditure of life and energy. It was cruelty.

There weren’t Atlanteans here, now, but their scent was. It was old at this point, at least a day. They were long gone.

Deerlegs had come to the same conclusion, yet it didn’t stop her from starting to shake with fury again. This would have been them, if they hadn’t managed to escape the banquet hall. They would be laying on the floor, their bodies destroyed and leaving behind empty husks. This could have been any Highcliff pachy that the Atlanteans came across. This could have been her parents, her siblings, her friends.

The sooner they got back to Highcliff, the sooner they could spread the word of the Atlantean’s evil, the better.

Deerlegs didn’t want to leave the dead here like this, exposed, but she didn’t know how they would have wanted their bodies to be dealt with. Between her own weakness and the stench of the area, she wasn’t sure that she could move them, though she wanted to. She swallowed and tore her gaze away, looking to Embargo. He dipped his head, just slightly. They would have to move on, but they would remember these fallen. Their memory would live on in the warning that they passed to the Highcliff pachys.

The pair turned to leave, only to pause again when they heard a faint voice: “We should plant here as well. The shade will be better for the seedlings in this forsaken place, and hopefully give them protection from the light while they establish.” Who knew that the light could make the air so swelteringly hot and leave the ground so dry? They’d lost a few seeds before they realised they needed to bring more drought-resistant plants to this part of the island but now… now they could turn it green. It would be beautiful.

“Are you sure? I heard from Nigel that there was a scuffle somewhere around here the other day involving some of the topsiders.”

“I… hadn’t heard that.” The first voice sounded markedly more nervous now. They both sounded nervous.

It lit a ferocious spark in Deerlegs’s belly which turned into an inferno. Good. They should be afraid. She would teach them to be afraid.

Once more paying no mind to her injuries she charged towards the voices, a terrible sound of fury ripping itself from her throat. The oviraptors - one a tawny coloured one with deer-like spots across most of its body, the other a dark tone with even darker, rippling markings which broke up along its stomach - froze in terror. Both carried seeds, ready to sow into the ground and further spread their poisonous reach across the islands. Across her home. Deerlegs went after the tawny one first, purely because it was closest to her wrathful reach.

“You killed us!” she roared. She smashed against it, tossing it through the air with a flick of her head. She turned on the darker one, feathers puffed and spiked at odd angles, carrying the scent of fresh blood and torn flesh.

“You caged us, you hunted us, you killed us! You killed us!”

With every accusation she threw she kicked, bit, thrashed at one or the other. Hart caught the brunt of her fury, too winded from her initial assault to get away.

“I’ll rip out your feathers until the earth turns red! I’ll tear your bones from your body and use them as a cradle for our hatchlings! I’ll tear your skulls from your skinny, useless necks and leave them for the crows until the sun bleaches your bones white so that even without tongues you can warn Atlanteans to never set foot in the scrublands again!”

She hurled a number of other colourful threats and insults as she fought them, beat them, until Embargo finally stepped in to pull her away. They weren’t fighters, they were beaten long ago.

Deerlegs backed off, eyes smouldering embers of hatred as she glared at the bloodied pair. “I don’t care about your secrets anymore. You,” she panted, her breath coming in great heaves of her flanks between every other word, “will never plant your poisons in this soil again.”

Hart whimpered, a ragged heap of feathers collapsed on the ground. He was smaller than Java, she realised through the haze of her fury, likely not yet fully grown, yet she couldn’t find it in her heart to care. The pachys that the Atlanteans had killed had lives ahead of them that they’d never be able to experience now. These two, at least, would probably live. If they could get back to Atlantis where they could cower and hide.

“We’ll never come back,” Java promised weakly. He was in a marginally better state - he was slightly faster, more nimble than his comrade, and had only suffered a few scrapes from the spikes on Deerlegs’s muzzle and nips from her beak and teeth rather than the full impact of her dome that she’d hit Hart with. It was little wonder that his wife had disappeared - was likely dead - if this was what the topsiders were truly like.

After a few moments of tense silence while Deerlegs and Embargo glared at the battered pair, Java slunk forwards to help Hart to his feet. They had to get out of here immediately, before any carnivores showed up following the scent of blood, and before Deerlegs decided she wanted to finish them off right here and now.

And it was tempting for her to do so. She bellowed at them again when they took too long to flee, and Hart let out another pained sound when Java half-pulled him away from the bloodspattered earth.

Deerlegs watched as they retreated and only leaned against Embargo again when they had gone from her sight. Embargo’s silence wasn’t judgmental, like she half expected it to be. It was just… silence. His usual calm and quiet. That was almost worse, like he had expected her to blow.

Which he had. She was all fire and fury, and had been since the moment he’d met her. The events of the last several days, or weeks, or however long they’d been held captive in Atlantis had been as harrowing as a fraction of his time held captive in the smooth concrete and steel walls of Zone B. He would have been far more concerned if she hadn’t lost her temper and blown up at the first Atlanteans that crossed their paths, even if they weren't the ones that had killed those two pachys they had found.

Cautiously, he preened a couple of the still-raised feathers between her shoulders. It was alright, they could continue on their way back to Highcliff now. They were almost there. He could still smell the tang of salt in the air.

After a few more moments Deerlegs inhaled, then sighed deeply. She was ready to go on, and would have if some small movement hadn’t caught her eye. She bared her teeth, her feather crests raised in full and feathers immediately fluffed with rage, only to stop dead when she realised that it wasn’t an oviraptor that she’d seen.

“What’s your name?” she murmured, her voice rough even though she was attempting to smooth it. She let her feathers settle again, her crests coming to rest on either side of her dome.

A young pachy, far too young to be on her own, had clambered down from her hiding spot among the rocks and thorny shrubbery just out of view. Deerlegs and Embargo both shared the terrible suspicion that they knew exactly what had happened to make her be alone.

“Hollyhock,” the tiny hen whispered in a voice too loud to truly be a whisper. “Are they gone?”

Her eyes were wide and fearful, emphasized by the brilliant, intricate markings that framed her face that neither Deerlegs nor Embargo had ever seen the likes of before. She was night-touched, black markings all but swallowing her legs and tail. She and Deerlegs almost could have been related, with the other makings they shared.

“Hollyhock,” Deerlegs repeated gently. “They’re gone. They’re not coming back, we made sure. Do you want to come with us?”

The featherless pachy glanced over her shoulder, towards the direction that the oviraptors had disappeared, and dipped her head before she scurried over and all but clung to Deerlegs’s ankle. Deerlegs snorted softly, ignoring the jolt of pain that shot up her hip, and dipped her head as well.

“There are lots of other pachys where we’re going.” They walked slowly back to the outcropping where they'd left the armour bundle, Deerlegs doing her best to now hide her limp to not worry Hollyhock. “You’ll be safe. Embargo will keep a lookout. He’s very good at it.”

Embargo grunted quietly and stooped to pick up the bundle again, only to pause when he realised Deerlegs was looking at him with a sad, apologetic look. It was the kind of look she gave him whenever she was thinking about his time in the Alpha lab.

Deerlegs was quiet for a moment, still thinking about asking Embargo what she really wanted to know. What she could have asked him in the first place, if she didn’t want to spare him from having to think about what a painful life he had lived. She had thought the Atlanteans would have an answer instead, but now he was her only option. They were bringing yet another mouth to feed to Highcliff, and Hollyhock had already suffered enough in her short little lifetime. Deerlegs didn’t want her to go hungry as well.

“What did you do to feed yourselves in Zone B?” Deerlegs asked quietly.

Hollyhock stayed quiet, only clinging more to Deerlegs’s ankle now that they’d stopped again. She wanted to be at this safe place, and had no real idea what either of them were talking about.

Still, Embargo didn’t want to speak openly about exactly what they had to do to survive the Alpha lab while they waited for salvation that they didn't know was coming. He sighed deeply through his nostrils, looking up from Hollyhock to look directly into Deerlegs’s eyes.

“Seeds grow best in blood soaked soils.”