Paragon

An woman for Earth tries to survive in an alien desert.

Paragon

Valusha’s holy Triamverant Bells tolled the first of three calls, their solemn tone echoing throughout the canyons, summoning any surviving initiates back to the Sanctorum. Solar alignment had made for a particularly difficult Reaping, terribly desolate and arid, and most who’d set out just twenty-nine lunar days ago had given themselves to the wastes, never to return.

Molly Ramos woke with a start, chimes fading on the breath of a desert wind. She dragged herself up onto her feet, lips parched and skin scorched, a hardened thislet branch for balance. It was over. She just had to cross the Sanctorum’s threshold before the Bells’ final tone. Molly squinted, wiping the sand from her eyes. A survivalist, she’d endured weeks in the bush back home, but the deserts of Valusha were another caliber altogether. An Earther, they said it couldn’t be done, but she’d prove them wrong – the first human ever to survive.

The ceremonial Gathering’s roar was still a far-off whisper on the breeze – anxious spectators waiting for their champions. One step, then another, she trudged across burning sand, driven by sheer will. Ninety leagues under scorching twin suns, bitterly cold nights, almost no water, and ferocious predators, the desert had taken its toll, leaving only the knife she began with, her tattered rags, and her grit, which was beginning to fail.

Molly reached the first marker to the Sanctorum, a billowing purple banner. She tore the post from the ground and wrapped the cloth around her, which was allowed, for survival by ‘any means necessary’ was clear from the outset. The searing daylight and biting wind now quelled, she regained the smallest fraction of confidence and pressed on. Up next, the Salted Plains and the second banner, barely visible.

A shadow passed over her, and she was painfully driven into the ground. Rolling onto her back, an obscured form loomed over her, one for which her weakened gaze could not immediately discern but then became Agothar of Argadoshia. The broken antenna she’d given him was unmistakable, and he would have bested her days earlier if their cliff’s edge had not given way. Once a friend, the wastes were ruthless and, in his delirium, he craved her for her water…would even drink her raw blood if necessary. She’d thought him dead, yet he’d somehow survived his own crippling fall. Wide-eyed and exhausted, he brought his own club up.

A swipe at his feet and he was down. Molly rolled onto him, grappling for her life against the initiate meant to slay her. Her blood mixed with his, a precious resource wasted and clotted with soil. He landed a solid punch, and she stumbled then launched into him, returning the blows until he succumbed, dropping to his knees and passing out. Molly gave him a good kick, to be sure.

A second chime. She was running out of time. Glancing briefly to Agothar, she rediscovered the distant second banner and summoned the remaining fragments of her resolve.

Heavier footsteps now lurched ahead. Molly wiped what little sweat she had left and drizzled it into her mouth, only glancing back for a moment to ensure her package was secure – Agothar atop a makeshift travois fastened from the second banner and pole she’d salvaged.

Rounding the last bend, she beheld the entrance – hardened doors guarding the massive Sanctorum, carved into solid rock. The crowd roared from behind its outermost walls when a sudden piercing seared the back of her neck. The clarion wasp withdrew its four-inch stinger and it writhed in her grasp before she squeezed the life out of it, tossing it away, but the venom had been delivered. Its poison dropped her. Still, she dragged on, weak and bleeding the rest of the way.

At the doors, Molly sensed the Bells priming just as she tugged Agothar across the threshold to shouts of thousands.

Victory.



“Molly Ramos was one of seven Victors that Reaping, the first Earther to ever complete it, and the first to ever rescue another, earning her a Paragon ranking,” the Sanctorum guide explained, gazing up at Molly’s statue.

“So, what happened to her?” a purple speckled student asked.

“She recovered and went on to do many other great things – the Halurus Accords, the Tellurian Armistice. Come children, we can’t miss the Belltower.”

In the shadow of her own effigy, Molly Ramos stepped into the light, proudly recalling her victory before returning to her friend Agothar, who’d been waiting for her in the gift shop.