Delivery Here

My mood shifts from cheerful to worrisome in the blink of an eye. Driving up and over Baylor’s Hill in my grandfather’s steam cart, I witness how Zafi, the Sapphire City of the northern tundra and its great hall of blue iron wood, has been burnt to the ground in the week I’ve been trading, and the warm embrace of her familiar sights––the ones I’ve been longing to see, since the very moment I left her bosom––are absent from the world. 

“K–Korrin?” I say over my shoulder, calm, but broken, and then I bring my old cart to a grinding stop.

While he ruffles himself awake, tugging on his yellow shirt and getting all the pieces of straw off his raven-colored jeans, I tremble at the horrific sight that is before me. My home in the Rolling Hills has been obliterated, along with the other hundred houses lining the small ridge line, all of them turned into a large crater from a well-placed mortar. Who knows? Maybe it’s a…what are they called now…a bomb, one of those iron cages that’re filled with red powder and steel shrapnel, dropped from one of those new age steam-line airships. It would explain the blast radius and how the char marks go in every direction, rather than just a single press from the given inertia. 

Myrtle’s Meadow, the open breath before the Sapphire city, has been turned brown and is now a scarred piece of land, mulching over the thousands of orange poppies, and sparse groups of baby’s breath, dandelions, and daisies until each one of them is turned into churned soil, with roots, and bedrock laying like topsoil. The open market has been reduced to nothing more than snow-like ash, waiting to be blown away with the smallest of breeze. It had once filled the center plaza, a grand bazaar housing different shops, and restaurants, and entertainment houses for the humble people of Zafi, while everything else is a mixture of standing rubble and oversized debris, the buildings that were left to take the brunt of a strong blast force, or resounding percussion, but are still clinging to life. 

I hit the off switch on my cart, and its small steam engine comes to a creeping stop. It allows the rusted hand-me-down to land on the ground with a soft thud, preserving what few years she has left to transport any and all goods across this ravished country. 

“Wha-? Who could have done something like this?” I cover my mouth with both hands. 

“Do you think they know?” Korrin asks.

I turn, and look at him. His shirt brings out the blue of his irises, and they remind me of melting glaciers I saw in a forgotten cave. “No.” I shake the image of the cave from my mind, the image of him from my mind, the image of people dying from my mind. “There’s no way they could've known. No one knew what we were doing…right?”

He looks at me, his eyes hiding secrets.

“What did you do?” I ask, getting stern, not wanting to believe what he says in the next thirty seconds, five minutes, hour, day, week, year. 

“It was late, Hutch. I’d had one too many drinks, and she was–.”

I slap Korrin across the face, and don’t allow him to finish his sentence. There’s a point I even climb over the back railing, the small metal wall separating the hauling bed and my single bench cab, but I catch myself in the act, stop myself from strangling my best friend because, ‘life is more important than getting revenge’. Or, at least, that’s what I tell myself. For when I look at the artifact, when I see the Elven Sarcophagus, forged by Dwarven hands, and then inscribed by human prayers, it gives me hope for a brighter future, a tomorrow where the idea of killing is no longer in existence.

“We have a job to do, Korrin.”

“Who are we supposed to deliver to? Hmm? No one is–.” Korrin catches his emotions in his mouth, and then purges the rest over the side of my cart. 

“I know what they are planning to do with her body.”

“What?” The disgust drips from Korrin’s mouth. 

“I know what they were going to do with her body.” I repeat myself, not wanting to give away any more knowledge. “Let’s just hope the apothecary is still standing.”

I press the start button on my cart and its engine takes a minute to get going. The click of ignition is only the beginning for older models, so it takes a moment to build-up enough pressure to get moving. 

“You’re really going?”

“What? You scared of ghosts?”

“What if they’re still there, scouring the city for this very reason?”

“Then we will have to be extra cautious, now, won’t we?” I look back at Korrin, who is doing his best to cover the sarcophagus with another layer of canvas. “Besides. We have nowhere else to go.”

“Speak for yourself. I got friends.”

“Then you’re more than welcome to get off and head in the other direction. As for me, I’m going to see this through and be the future we both once dreamt of owning.”

I increase the speed of my cart. The once soft hum of its steady pace is now a screaming whine from the amount of stress I’m currently putting on the capacitors. Smoke no longer lingers in the air and there is zero sign of movement in the fallen city, even from this distance. I just hope the apothecary has not been destroyed with the raid. Not only are its resources valuable for the coming journey, but old Man Magus is the only one who carries the Book of the Dead and if I can’t find that book then all is lost.

Flash Issue 11