Atlas – 11

The midday sun was blazing high in the sky as Aleks took a break. His hands felt rough as he took a sip of the chilled wine he had set out for himself. The area around the cottage was full of broken branches, scattered leaves, and various small pieces of detritus from the storm that had come past the day before.

The abrupt arrival and subsequent departure of the storm cell nagged at Aleks instincts. Having spent the last five years as an agent of the Omega Response Team back on Earth had honed his instincts to pick up on rather unnatural events. Being on a different world altogether made him second guess his instincts that were screaming danger.

“I hope storms like that are not common.” He thought to himself as he tore through a hunk of cheese. Since the storm’s passing, Aleks kept his eyes and ears out for anything that stuck out. Much to his relief, nothing yet had come to pass since.

He finished the cheese in his hand and tossed back the cup full of wine before he floated above the roof, pushing off gently with the help of his power. The suit’s batteries were still storing energy from the surroundings like it was supposed to, but Aleks didn’t want to run it dry because he felt lazy and didn’t want to push off the roof.

The damage to Sol’s cottage wasn’t extensive. Boards needed to be replaced and the shutter that broke needed fixing. Aleks set himself down on the ground when a shadow shot from one end of the clearing. The shadow was quick, and was heading towards him. His body moved before he could fully process what the shadow was, shoving gravity to yank him to his right. The sensation of the ground being to his right overcame him as he was flung at a great speed.

Aleks didn’t have time to look back where he was, as the tree line approached. He changed his trajectory, repelling himself from the ground and also pulling himself up at an angle to prevent being jostled too hard. He shot into the sky, clearing the canopy in an instant. He arrested his flight and held himself steady as he looked around.

Three winged humanoids chased him from below. Their alabaster skin and golden marbling glowed in the sunlight. They closed the distance fast and Aleks had to drop with an increase in gravity sideways to avoid being skewered by their spears.

Aleks reversed gravity just as he was about to hit the ground, feeling the exertion in his body made him grit his teeth. He landed with an audible thud, doing a parkour roll to mitigate as much of the force as he could. He took the momentum forward and bolted straight for the cottage’s door. Using his power to both make himself lighter, and pull himself towards the cottage much faster. The sensation of falling forward hit him as he reached the door. As he turned inside a spear embedded itself onto the wooden door.

Aleks scrambled inside, barring the door quickly and setting a rather heavy gravity pull towards the ground and towards the door frame. The wood groaned and the hinges squeaked with the increased pull, but luckily it held firm.

He ran straight for the map table where the map case was, grabbing the one case that Sol had used to lay out the land to him. The scroll was tucked safely in his arm, and he secured the lid with a small bit of his power. He raised the power indicator for the thrusters on his suit, glad to have worn it out today as the indicator signaled a full charge. The impact of wood creaking and breaking sounded off from the front door.

Aleks dashed up the stairs, the sound of the door finally breaking free and falling with a loud thud on the ground right behind him. He didn’t turn to look as he crashed against the wall on the landing, barreling through the room that he had been using. He lunged for his helmet, put on, then leapt out the window.

As soon as he was clear of the window, he turned off his own gravity and ignited the thrusters in his pack. The maneuver was second nature to Aleks as he soared further. He secured the map case on his back with a little bit of gravity as he craned his neck back to look behind him.

On his tail were the three angels, wings beating hard and propelling them closer and closer. Aleks kicked the thrusters into full output, propelling him forward through the air.  He remembered the general direction that he had to take, but the canopy became a sea of unfamiliar patches of green.

A weapon whistled by his ear as a spear missed his head. Aleks dove back down into the canopy in response, trees and branches rustling as he passed through. He quickly cut off his thrusters, then secured himself in the middle of the thick green. A moment later Aleks heard loud rustling as the angels dove back into the forest. They landed gracefully on the ground, their feathery wings carrying them down with finesse.

Now that Aleks could see them clearly, two of the three angels had a pair of wings, while one had two pairs. An exchange between one of the single-paired winged angel and the double-paired.

The demeanor from the double-paired angel indicated anger and irritation, then a raised voice seemed to cause both single-paired winged angels to flinch back. They bowed their heads, seemingly in deference and furled their right wing over their heads.

“So two-pair is leading this group.” Aleks thought to himself as he kept motionless, observing another exchange. This time the single-paired angels spoke without looking up at their superior, and then took off in opposite directions. The leader took a deep breath before flying up and back through the canopy and into the open sky.

Aleks waited with bated breath, half expecting the angels to converge in on him. As the minutes went by, he was more confident that he may have lost their trail for now. At the ten minute mark since the angels left, Aleks let out a deep sigh. He reached back and grabbed the map case.

Aleks wasn’t quite sure how far off he was from where the cottage was, but he estimated that he wasn’t far from the road that Sol had outlined before. Committing the journey ahead to memory, supplementing his previous memory of it, Aleks tucked away the map and began heading for the direction that he estimated to be the one to lead him to the northern edge of the forest. He turned off the thrusters of his suit, not wanting to make any unwanted noise, Aleks kept his gravity low and pushed off the trees as if he was hoping on the moon.

He was careful to stick to just under the canopy where the tree line would provide him some coverage from someone looking from either the ground level or from above the trees. As he carried on, with the minutes turning into an hour, then another, he wondered whether he had mistaken the direction that he had assumed was the correct one. He checked his heading periodically, leaping above the canopy line and making sure that the mountain range was to his back as he went.

With the day slowly creeping away, dread began to set up upon him that he had taken the wrong direction somehow. However, signs of sparser trees ahead gave him hope.

With a little more eager pushing, the trees gave way to the edge of the forest. Aleks breathed a sigh of relief and gave himself a brief pause. He remembered the day’s journey from the edge of the forest to the city to the north, and the wide expanse in between. There were no markers of any sort to indicate that he was following the right path, and the vastness of the forest concerned him that he might miss the city.

With no means of being sure however, Aleks contemplated his options.

“Either I carry on assuming that I’ll encounter the city, or at least signs of civilization and potentially miss it, or scour the edge of the forest for some indication of where Sol would have emerged from.” That thought gave him pause as he pondered the logistics of her navigating the way. “Does she have a way of knowing where she needs to go?”

Deciding not to waste too much of his time only pondering what his next move should be, Aleks began gathering some wood. Not sure whether he would be able to catch any game once he left the forest, Aleks made a spear went to hunt. A makeshift stone axe worked well enough with the help of his powers, Aleks set up camp on the inner edge of the forest, hoping that this was far enough from potentially being spotted.

He made a Dakota fire, taking extra care to scour the driest possible material to burn. With the storm that passed by recently however, most of the material wasn’t as dry as he wanted. Gutting the pig was much more difficult without proper tools, but eventually, Aleks was able to cut loose a piece of the belly and roasted it over the fire.

Exerting a little technique that he learned in the early days of his career, Aleks let the piece hang in the air, and used two small stones pulling on the hog to cause it to rotate. He felt wasteful having only barely scratched the slaughtered boar. An idea came to mind and he concentrated on the floating hog, and concentrated as much gravity around it as he could.

The smoke and flames danced around in the wind, but then started shifting. The flame reached  high before curling up slightly, while the smoke began to collect around the hog. Soon, none of the smoke from the fire escaped and only thickened around the hog.

Happy with his progress, Aleks began surrounding it with pieces of bark, trying to block out as much wind as he could. With night finally setting in, he floated up the side of the tree, taking with him the smoked hog and set it suspended in the air. Then he settled down kept himself light even though he was touching the ground. The heat from the fire was enough and he judged from the couple of nights he had spent that it wouldn’t be cold enough for him to catch hypothermia.

Sleep took him with relative ease as he watched the fire dance, the crackling flame lulling him to sleep. When the morning sun greeted his eyes, the fire was out cold and the forest was slightly damp. Dew covered most of the area around him, save for a large circle around the fire. Aleks rose and checked on the hog and found that it was still relatively intact.

Aleks put together makeshift cord from bark of nearby trees and lashed the hog’s leg and pulled it along with him as he made his way out of the forest and onto the rolling hills ahead of him.