Beloved Exile

I am the beloved exile.
I live to protect my people. They've raised me, they've cared for me, and now I strive to keep them safe. And if that means I cannot be among them, so be it.
I make it sound nobler than it is.
My name is Terry. Not a very noble name, I know. I live with it.
And my task is no great thing. I simply walk the lines with my lantern every night, keeping away the outsiders.
Well, perhaps I am understating the task now.
My duty, in its most basic form, is to protect the waterforest. I have lived here all my life, and I know it's every pool and tree like no other. This is one reason that I was chosen for this task.
Who do I protect it from? Outsiders. Once, all were welcome here, but as the waterforest grew, and we grew more secluded, they began to forget we were here. Now, they come with guns and machines, forgetting that the waterforest is ours, determined to take it for their own. They've shot two already. Luckily, my people lived. And I was appointed to my task.
At first, my duty was simple. To scare the outsiders away. It was simple enough. A red sheet on a thin wire made for an excellent ghost, and with wires all along the paths of the waterforest, I could've sworn that we were safe. But the outsiders weren't to be stopped for long, not for more than a few days. The ghost never came down from it's wire, never presented a threat. If they weren't so nervous in the first place, it wouldn't have scared them at all.
We needed something tangible. Something seemingly deadly, monstrous, inhuman. We needed to give them a face to fear, something to keep them up at night.
And I was chosen for that task.
They'd never seen the ghost up close. All they knew was that it was red, and it flew. So I wear a red cloak on one shoulder, and I fly.
But to be more precise, I walk in thin air. That seems to scare them more.
I paint designs on my face to make me look cursed. Jewels, found in the deepest pools of the waterforest where the ruins lie, only add to that. Mysterious symbols, no more than chickenscratch, made up my curse, and with them, I cursed the forest. Parchment nailed to a tree, a set of symbols painted on rocks and trees over and over and over and over. I sabotage their equipment, and leave the same symbols, over and over and over. They thought it was a curse. They brought in linguists, historians, dozens of people to interpret my markings.
And of course they've brought someone in to deal with me.
And that is why I live in exile.
The bounty hunter didn't seem so intimidating at first. Just another man, just another gun pointed at me. The difference was that this one wasn't shaking. I almost lost my arm to his bullet the first time we met, escaping by half an inch.
Whoever thought that a gun was the best way to deal with a cursed man is a strange person, but perceptive. I fled from him, the first time I'd ever run from any of them. Most of the time they were running from me. But when I ran, he chased me. He followed me as I ran across the lines, keeping me in his sights and firing again and again and again. I thought I was going to die, and my only thought was to get back home.
I would have led him straight to my people had I continued.
He would have killed them. No question about it, they couldn't have fought him. We've been at peace for so long we've forgotten how to make war. It is a blessing that has become a curse.
I did not continue. The bounty hunter could not follow me once I entered the water, but he did follow me once I appeared again in a tree. The water cleared my head. I realized that as long as he followed me, I couldn't return home.
I also realized that if I appeared human for even one moment while this man watched, all would be lost.
So my task became a thousand times more.
My people realized I hadn't come back. They sent someone out to look for me. She was my friend, though I would not admit it. She had always been so.
And she nearly lost her life seeking me.
She didn't know the bounty hunter was there. She'd simply seen me as I ran. She called out to me, and I couldn't respond. I knew he was watching me.
He shot her. She fell from the path into the water, and I didn't know if she was alive.
And that was the first time I'd ever attacked someone.
He didn't know what hit him. He had turned his attention from me to shoot her. And while his gun was still smoking, I took him down. I didn't know I could. My head was hardly aware of what my body was doing, but I knocked him down, broke his gun, broke his arm, fractured his leg. I left him in a heap, barely conscious. And he watched me as I ran to where she'd fallen.
She was not dead. I carried her home. And I told them what had happened.
But something was strange. I didn't know how to fight, but I'd fought. I couldn't carry her weight, but I had. My markings hadn't washed off in the water where she'd fallen.
And the jewels from the underwater ruins glowed.
I have cursed myself. My harmless markings were the language of the ruins. I am bound to the forest now, but I cannot live among my people. I am not myself anymore. I cannot be myself. I must be the phantom, the cursed one. I cannot be Terry anymore. I am exiled from my people and myself.
And now I live in exile.
The curse is a part of me that I can barely control. My anger leads to power now, uncontrolled strength and speed, violence beyond what I can understand. I cannot become angry. I've attacked them many times now, whenever I lose control.
I haven't killed one. Not yet, anyway. But someday, I know I'll lose control, I won't be able to take back my body before the curse leaves my hands stained with blood.
The bounty hunter is afraid of me now. He still shoots at me, but he doesn't follow with that same reckless determination. All of them are afraid of me now. I have become precisely what I needed to be, but I have given up everything to become it.
I am the beloved exile.


Before you ask, yes, Terry is the same Terry from the Defiant stories that I wrote like, a year ago. This is the eventual turn his story would have taken, but I was so unhappy with the way that I'd written it, I decided to give up and start over. Yes, it's darker. Much darker. Hope you like it.

Defiant Chapter 3

“So,” Cain said with a smile that would reassure a vampire, “I understand that it's you gentlemen who saw the phantom?”

Surveyors One, Two, and Three, better known as Jim, Carlson, and Edward, looked at him from their hospital beds. “Um... Yes,” said Jim.

“Who are you?” asked Carlson.

“And why do you have a loaded rifle?” Edward chimed in.

“All in time, my friends. As for now, just think of me as the creepy man with a rifle in your hospital room who's going to ask you questions. You're going to answer them.” Cain enjoyed scaring people, and this was a prime opportunity. “Right?”

After a moment's hesitation all three chorused, “Right.”

“So exactly what do you want to know?” asked Jim hesitantly.

“For starters, where did you see it?”

“In the west side of the forest, slightly south of the hidden trail head we found a few months back. He... I mean, the phantom, hadn't been seen there before, so we figured we'd be alright,” said Carlson.

“Wrong...” muttered Edward.

“You say the phantom is a he?” Cain focused his attentions on Carlson, but Jim answered instead.

“Yeah. Me and Ed got a better look then Carlson did, cause we started running later.”

“Hey, he was scary! Leaping out of a tree in a cloak the color of blood, and then just standing there, staring...”

“Hey, you took off almost before he started coming at us! For all we knew, he could've just been some random dude... In a cloak... Leaping out of trees... With freakish red spirals all over half of his face... Ok, so he probably wasn't normal,” Ed conceded.

“Anyway. He's a guy phantom, or whatever. Not a normal human. As Ed mentioned, he had freakish red spirals on the left half of his face.”

“ Red spirals?” questioned Cain. “You do realize that your story contradicts the wraith-like-tortured-spirit face story we've been getting up until now.” They shrugged. “Ok, back to the spirals. Just that made him not human?”

“Well, that and the flying. I swear he was flying.” Carlson interjected.

“Oh, not the whole 'It flew, It flew!' thing again. Are you sure it was flying?” Cain glared and fingered his rifle as he spoke. “Because this will go much easier if your story follows the laws of physics.”

“Hey, no need for violence.” Edward held up his hands, one of which was in a cast. “We're just telling you what we saw. The guy might not have been flying, but it looked a heck of a lot like it.”

“Ok, start from when you first saw the phantom.” Cain sighed.

“Well... We heard a voice when we were just heading down the trail, minding our own business...”

“And mercilessly mocking Carlson,” interjected Carlson.

“We were not merciless,” muttered Edward.

“Boys?” Cain tapped his fingers on the rifle. “I only need one of you to tell this story.”

“Um... Boys?”

Carlson made a face at Edward, then caught Cain's glare. He shrank back. “Shutting up now.”

Edward smiled. “Phantom tree, Carlson, Phantom tree...” Cain relocated the glare. Edward flinched. “Joining him.”

“Thank you,” said Cain, then motioned to Jim again. “Continue.”

“Well... We were minding our own business, mocking Carlson about believing in the phantom and all...” Jim paused and sent an apologetic look to Carlson, who smiled an I-told-you-so type of smile. “Headed towards where Edward thought he'd heard something. And I'd just said that if we saw the phantom, then I'd believe it exists, flying red ghost all the way. Just then, the thing did a front flip out of a tree ahead of us and landed about 40, 45 feet away, with this billowing red cloak thing swirling around it. Honestly, it was almost sorta cool.”

“And you almost sorta wet yourself,” interrupted Carlson with a grin.

“Look who's talking.” Edward said, dissipating Carlson's smile.

“Guys, now is not the time...” Jim was watching Cain.

“Gentlemen...” Cain's voice carried a warning tone in it. “There's two bullets in my rifle and three of you. As I mentioned before...”

“Um... Yes. Being quiet is a wonderful thing, with many redeeming qualities! Boy I sure do love being quiet, it's one of my favorite things, and...”

“We're going to practice right now! Yes, right now! Why don't we just let Jim get on with telling the scary rifle man the story now.”

“Anyway! After the billowing cloak thing, he just sorta stood there and watched us for a moment, and I told the boys that...”

“Wait, it sorta stood there? How can it sorta stand there?”

“Well, it's just the way he was standing. He looked ready to move, almost like he was moving already, like he was just waiting for us to run before he started chasing us. And he pointed at us, like he was accusing us of something... Of course, when we didn't run right away, he just leapt into the air, about ten feet high, coming towards us, and... Well...”

“We screamed like little girls and ran.”

“Very fast little girls. Manly ones.”

“Yeah,” Jim shrugged. “Pretty much.”

Hey! It's a new chapter! That has been written for like, a month now! Feel free to critique.

Defiant Chapter 2

“Sir?” The young man watched nervously as the bounty hunter pulled a long, black rifle barrel out of the box.

“Yes?” responded the man, in a walking-on-thin-ice tone that made his employer's representative jump.

“We just wanted to let you know that the phantom has been spotted...”

“Phantom?” he interrupted, without looking up. He looked down the barrel, and snapped it onto the rifle as he continued. “You seriously believe there's a phantom.”

“Well, we don't quite know... I mean... Um... Well, yes.”

“A phantom. As in, ghost? As in ectoplasm and the disembodied spirits of dead people? Or is it more of a hobgoblin, some sort of mysterious monster, a creature yet undiscovered by science?” Cain LeStram looked the man in the eye. “Let's get something straight. Whatever is in that forest, it's not a phantom.”

“But sir...”

“Well, I don't quite care what it is,” came another voice. Both men looked up to see a man in a gray suit walking down the shattered sidewalk towards them. “We're paying you to shoot it.”

“Now that I fully intend to do,” said Cain, leaning the rifle against the truck. “You'll have yourself a dead whatever soon enough.”

“Mr. Miller! What are you doing here... I mean, I can take care of this, Sir. You didn't really have to come down.”

“I'm fine, Brant. I wanted to speak to Mr. LeStram myself. You can go.” Mr. Miller adjusted his tie as he spoke. “If you really need something to occupy your time, I'm sure the janitorial staff could use some help.”

“No Sir. I have plenty to do Sir. I'll go now Sir.” Brant backed away before half walking, half fleeing up the hill towards his small black car, which currently looked fairly meek next to the elegant limousine that had pulled up next to it.

“What's with him?” asked Cain, pointing a dirty thumb in the direction Brant had fled.

“Chronic Lackey Syndrome,” responded Mr. Miller with a chuckle. “Symptoms include mindless obedience, over the top respect, and power ties. Fairly common, I'm afraid.”

“Ah.” Cain smiled. “Is it deadly?”

“Not particularly. Completely incurable, though.”

“Too bad.” Cain coughed a bit and leaned against his pickup truck. “But I suppose you didn't come down to talk about him.”

“No. There's been another report of the phantom.”

“Phantom?”

“Yes, yes, I know. It's completely ridiculous. But let's just call it that for the sake of clarity, alright?”

“Hey, you're the boss. You say phantom, we go with phantom. So what did it do this time?”

“Badly scared three surveyors. They reported that it actually came out of the trees and attacked them.”

“You sure it isn't one of the 'it flew, it flew, we saw it' reports that you get so often?”

“Quite. They report that it actually touched the ground, and one claims he saw it's face.”

“Well, the face thing is nothing new, but the touching the ground thing we might want to look into. Nobody's reported that before, am I right?”

“Correct. They're in the hospital building at the main camp if you wish to speak to them.”

“Hospital? Don't tell me the thing actually attacked them.”

“I doubt it. From what I've been told, one or more of them fell while he was running. He's fairly scratched up. I didn't pay much attention to that part.”

“So I'll go have a chat with the surveyors,” said Cain with a grin, “and we'll find out what they saw.” He put the rifle into the back of the pickup and pulled out his keys. “You want me to follow up on whatever?”

“Yes. Please do.” Cain climbed into the tattered leather drivers seat and slammed the door shut, but opened the window when his employer continued. “Also, if you find the phantom, I don't particularly care for it alive.”

“Already understood. You pay me to kill things.” Cain rolled the window up and drove off.

“You don't have to put it that way,” muttered Mr. Miller. “But at least he's direct.”

'Ello everyone! I had this written a long time ago! I just never bothered to post it. But now, you all can read it! And critique it! Or whatever! But seriously, feedback of any sort is appreciated.

Defiant (chapter one)

“Why me?”

“Why not?” Marci smiled as she pulled out another makeup pencil. “We need a phantom, and you're the best one for the job.”

“Is that purple? No. No purple. And no, I'm not. Couldn't you do it?”

“Last I checked, I couldn't do back flips out of nowhere and swim half the waterforest without coming up for air. You're doing it.” She dug through the bag, looking for a non-purple pencil. “How about this one?”

“Marci...” Terry trailed off, then started again. “That's bright pink.”

“So?”

“Well, for one, I don't wear pink. And for two, we want this to be sorta actually intimidating, right?”

“Fine, fine, be that way. No pink.” Marci sighed and looked up at the spattering of treetops high above their heads. Sunlight filtered between the branches and reflected off the interconnected pools of water that surrounded them. She brushed her black hair out of her face and looked back down at him. “So what should we use then?”

“I don't know! This wasn't my idea.”

“Yes it was.”

“The red sheet on a string was my idea. And it worked, too. It's kept them off, hasn't it?” Terry watched suspiciously as she started digging through the bag again.

“And now they've sent in a bounty hunter to kill the red sheet. You know what happens if he kills the red sheet?”

“I don't get shot?”

“No, then they figure out that there never was a phantom, and move ahead with the whole thing, and then we all get shot.” She pulled a lemon yellow pencil out of the bag and began examining it.

“And if he shoots me, that happens anyway.”

“Come on, you can dodge anything!”

“When was the last time you saw me do a bullet?”

She paused, pencil in hand. “Well, ok, you can dodge most of anything. Still a better chance then the red sheet.” Back in the bag went the yellow pencil.

“Fine, fine. So I have to be the phantom. I have come to terms with this. Getting shot now vs getting shot later, what's the difference?”

“That's the spirit!” she said enthusiastically. “Let's see... You'll be wearing red to match the red sheet, so...” She pulled a pencil out again and waved it in the air triumphantly. “Red! Hurrah!”

“Fine. Red. I can deal with red. It'll match the blood when I get shot.”

“Ooh, now there's an idea!” She smiled, making him intensely nervous.

“What, shooting me?”

“No, silly, blood! We do the whole thing in the color of blood!”

“That's slightly morbid...” he said hesitantly.

“You're a phantom, for crying out loud. Phantoms are not particularly happy people. Morbid is what they do.”

“I thought random terror was what they did.”

“Morbid and random terror go hand in hand,” she offered. “Maybe we could make you some sort of corpse with blood all over.”

“Can we please not do blood? Or corpses?”

“Fine. We'll just do the whole cursed-phantom thing that we've been going with since we started the red sheet.”

“Thank you.”

“You're very welcome. Now hold still and I might not poke your eye out.” She put the pencil to his face and started drawing.

“Are you sure...”

“No talking!” she interrupted. “Hold still. And yes, I'm sure you have to be the phantom. I'm also sure of what I'm doing, sure of the fact that it has to be done now, and sure that you'll be fine. If all goes well, he won't even get to see all my hard work. Pity.”

He sat helplessly silent as she drew spirals on his face.

“Hmm... You think I should go with more of a tribal curse thing or an elegant curse thing? Don't answer that. On second thought, hold up one finger for tribal curse and two for elegant curse. How would I even do an elegant curse, I wonder... Wait, I know! Ok, nevermind. We're going with elegant curse. I think I'll only do one side of your face. That'll make you seem only slightly cursed, and if you're part human, he might be less likely to blow your brains out. Not that I'm saying that that'll happen, of course, but if it does, we want to be prepared, right? Right!” She sat back and looked at her work for a moment while he tried not to move. “That should do it.”

He sighed. “I'm assuming I can talk now?”

“Wait, no, it needs something. Stay there for a second.” She leapt to her feet and sprinted up the trail, over and under the huge clumps of roots and around the sharp turns without slowing down. He sighed and looked at his reflection in a pool of water. His white hair framed his pale face, making the red-brown spirals and dots stand out even more. His green eyes sparkled with electric reflections as he made a few faces, just to see what it would look like. Not particularly scary, but then, she'd said she wasn't done.

“Terry!” She sprinted back down the trail, panic in her brown eyes. “They're here!”

“Who?” he asked cautiously.

“Them! The outsiders! They're headed this way!”

“You mean the bounty hunter?”

“No, no, not him, the scouts! The surveyors!”

“We've gotta set up the red sheet,” he stated. “We'll just have to hope we can do it in time.”

“There is no time! Besides, we never set up a wire along here! You'll have to go!”

“What? Me? I can't!”

“You have to! Whatever happened to coming to terms with this?”

“But I'm not ready!”

“You're ready enough, just stay far away enough that they can't see details. They're almost here!”

“I'm wearing green!”

That stopped her for half a second. Then she pulled the sheet from her backpack and practically threw it at him. “Wear this!”

“What? How?”

“As a cloak!” She grabbed it from him, threw it over his head and pulled it around his neck, tying it in a tight knot. “Now get over there!”

“But...”
“Hey, I thought I heard voices!” came a shout from a ways down the trail.

“Go!” said Marci in a whisper one last desperate time before she leapt into the pool. He knew she'd surface some thirty feet away, safe in a clump of roots.

“Fine.” He some of the slack of the red sheet over his head like a hood and started climbing the nearest tree. From a branch high above, he could see the trail until it twirled around a pool of water and disappeared behind one of the ridges in the landscape. Three men made their way along the winding path. He gulped. All three carried rifles.

Terry made his way carefully from tree to tree until he was close enough to hear what they said.

“Oh, look, a root! Scary root, scaaaary!” Guy number one pulled back in mock horror.

“Ha hah, very funny.” Guy number two was not amused.

“Oh no, a tree! It must be a phantom tree! Fear the phantom tree!” Guy number three followed number one's example.

“No seriously, you guys are hilarious.” Still not amused.

“How will we ever survive the attack of the phantom tree? We're doomed!”

“Ok, ok, you've had your fun. Can you please let it drop now?”

“No. But seriously, you need to relax. There is no phantom.” Number one grinned. “A flying red ghost? Please.”

“Hey, there have been seventeen reports of this thing. Seventeen. Not to mention the equipment malfunctions...”

“It breaks just as much on a normal basis. You know that just as well as we do,” Three added.

“I'm telling you, there's something seriously wrong with this place. Never mind the secrecy, the weird shipments, the executive directors dropping by every three days; there's something here. In the forest.”

“What, the phantom tree?”

“You know that's not what I mean.”

“Look, we'll make a deal,” said One. “If we see the phantom, then fine, he's real. Flying red ghost all the way. But if we don't see him today, than he's not real. People are making stuff up. And then you promise to stop freaking out, ok?”

“Fine.”

“Here goes nothing...” Terry did a front flip out of the tree and landed about forty feet in front of them, red cloak billowing around him. He hoped they'd see him.

They did. One and Three simply stared, while Two backed away saying, “Oh no, we're gonna die, we're gonna die...”

Terry slowly raised his left arm and pointed straight at them, wordless.

“Calm down, man, we don't know if this is the phantom or not. He's not flying. He's just standing there.” Three was trying to save face.

If it was flying they wanted, it was flying they would get. Terry burst into a leaping run, taking in nearly ten feet to a stride.

“He's flying! He's flying!” Two turned and did a pretty good imitation of flying himself, flying back down the trail. One and Three, forgetting their mockery for a moment, followed him at a slightly lower altitude. All three were screaming.

Terry followed them for about a quarter mile before he stopped. He watched them flee over a ridge, waited a moment, then turned back. He wasn't dead yet. That was generally a good sign.

“Told you it would work.” Marci poked her wet head out from behind a tree as he passed by. “That was so much better than the red sheet.”

“I still don't like it,” he muttered.

“Neither did they.” She smiled a smile that made him nervous. “The red cloak thing is clearly something we need to keep, and we'll keep working on your curse. I don't think the green will go over so well, though. That needs to be red too, I think.”

He sighed. “I can deal with red.”

I wrote this the other day, so I thought I'd post it. Critique please!
And yes, there will probably be more. Wheee.