The Fruit of Gan’Eden
Maxwell Berman
Sharp pain. The rusty shard, long and twisted, its original purpose long forgotten, jabs into my ankle. I guess we know what purpose it serves now, to make this job a living hell. I pull the piece of metal out of my leg with a wince and lower my scarf to yell for Kana.
“Kana, another one, I could use some fixing up!”
“Again? You need more watchful feet!” I hear from the hillside over.
“Just shut up and give me one of your plant things!”
Begrudgingly, Kana and I meet up a little way up the path while Dybbuk watches from a precarious perch, looking over with amusement at us tucked into a valley between the endless hills of scrap metal.
Our troupe is small, just the three of us, but we get shit done. There’s Kana, a gaunt woman who moves with a dedicated, complex rhythm. Without her, I guess we wouldn’t really know where we’re going, so I’m grateful. I mean, augurs are hard to come by, especially in Sahar-Kir. There’s Dybbuk, a strange little man in a long coat; I have no idea how he keeps that thing clean out here. He’s a little tough to be around, but I think he’s loyal. And by the gods, watching him scamper over piles of scrap metal is a sight to behold.
Kana applies one of her specialty poultices to my ankle, the herbs abating my pain and hopefully any potential infection.
And without a word, we pick up the hunt where we left off. Kana points us in a direction, we spread out and walk.
We’ve been on this hunt for days now, our resources and sanity waning by the hour. Some tree that replants itself around the cosmos is hidden in the Scraplands, calling scavengers and mercenaries to claim its magical fruit. Or whatever. All we know is that we find a plant, get its fruit, and sell it to some sucker in search of immortality. I’ve suggested to Kana multiple times now that we should just find any old plant and sell that, but she insists on divining out the real thing. To be fair, it’s not like there are any other plants in these trash heaps anyway.
We carry on, climbing over hills and hills of garbage. It must be a city’s worth of materials, probably an empire, all lying here, eroding. Worthless, abandoned. Kind of like us.
As we trek into the afternoon, Kana calls out to us, “A storm is brewing. We have less than an hour. We need to find cover. I’ll meet you by that iron pillar.”
Dybbuk and I respond like we have a hundred times before. “Understood!”
Storms in the Scraplands are the stuff of nightmares, and one of the reasons why augurs are so invaluable out here. Bitter winds of rust sweep across the landscape as acid rain torrents from above. We’ve only experienced one other before, and from what Dybbuk says, it was just a flurry. It still completely destroyed our “acid-proof” tents and left us cowering under sheet metal. Now, without any cover, I have no idea how we’re going to get through this one. But Kana always comes up with a plan.
We meet up at the pillar and Kana is already there, sitting down cross-legged at its base. She pulls from her pack a circular lodestone plate and a jar of iron filings. Her divining tools. She places the plate on the ground and pours out the filings, letting them spread and hold across the slate as they may. For her final command to the world to bestow her with knowledge, she reaches her hand to the plate with a practiced, delicate precision. The plate begins to shake. The vibrations of the slate slowly move the filings, which spread out into spiraling, runic patterns. Then, as suddenly as it began, the shaking stops and Kana opens her eyes. Now I’ve never been good at reading the old tongue, but I recognize a few words in the filings’ prophecy. Tear, battle, water. Gibberish.
It's a good thing we have Kana.
Moments after Kana looks at the plate, it’s obvious the magic is taking a toll on her, she might not have long to tell us what to do. But, she speaks. Her words slurring and slow.
“About a mile east… the gash in the hillside… go.” Her eyes roll back and she slumps against the pillar unconscious. But she said enough, we can take it from here.
Dybbuk puts the plate and iron filings in Kana’s pack and secures all of it to his shoulder while I hoist Kana onto my back.
“I guess it’s east then” Dybbuk says before we make our way further from the late afternoon sun.
We know we don’t have long, we can see the russet clouds billowing on the horizon, so we push forward like we expect to be trampled by a herd of wildebeests. And after 10 minutes of our hearts beating out of our chests, we run right smack into what we are looking for. A hill that rises far higher than the others, with a large metal wall curving out to meet us, and in that wall, a crooked gash, like something long ago had slashed at it in anger. It was barely my height, and very slim. This would be a tight fit. An acrid smell took to the air as a hot wind begins to blow over us. The storm is fast approaching.
Dybbuk goes first, shoving his and Kana’s packs through the gap, both landing with an echoing boom in the room of hollow metal. Then his nimble little form slips through with hardly any trouble. Next, the challenge of handing off Kana. We start with her head, figuring that would be safest. I gently start passing her through the crevice to Dybbuk, making sure none of her long hair catches on any sharp bits of metal, before we carefully feed her tall body through the crevice. I think we scratch her in a few places, but she’s safe from the storm now. Finally, I hand my pack to Dybbuk and go to squeeze through. I was never a skinny person, no one in my family is, we were built for moving cargo onto ships, not weaseling through rusty gashes in wretched hellscapes like this. But now is not the time to complain. I shove through the crack, tearing my cloak and the fresh bandages that Kana applied this morning. But I’m through.
The space on the other side of the crevice is dark, and every noise seems to echo endlessly. Dybbuk lights a torch to reveal a long room with a short ceiling, filled with what might have been wooden crates at some point and what are obviously the ruins of three cannons.
So, we’re in the hull of a forgotten warship.
These things were designed to take quite a beating. I don’t think Kana could have found better cover.
I prop up some of the wood against the crevice, then roll one of the cannons in front of it as a barricade. That’ll hopefully keep out the rust. We use the rest of the wood to build a campfire. We might as well stay for the night.
As the hissing and rattling of the storm start to pick up outside, Kana slowly begins to rouse.
“Ah, glad we made it.”
“Well, I’m sure you wouldn’t have wanted to wake up melting.”
Dybbuk butts in from toasting up some nuts on the campfire.
“As much as it may surprise you, Kana,” he says, “we weren’t going to leave you to the storm. You’re too helpful. Speaking of which, I think our muscle could use some help with that ankle.”
It’s a little demeaning, but I personally like Dybbuk’s nickname for me. It’s empowering.
“Oh, yeah, I do. Tore your bandaging on the way in.”
With a reassuring smile, Kana says “I figured that would happen. I’ll redo it.”
And with that, our little band of outcasts settles into a good night. I don’t think any of us have regularly slept with a roof over our heads even before we went into the Scraplands, so it was nice, reminded me of home.
I’m the last to wake up, as per usual. Kana’s quietly eating her breakfast and Dybbuk’s loudly making some more. We all share some good mornings and I grab a bowl of… something. I never ask.
After breakfast, everyone packs up their stuff and I move my makeshift barricade from the tear.
“Um, so how am I going to get through this again? I don’t really feel like ripping myself up more.”
“Oh, I got something for that!” Dybbuk pulls out of his pack a heavy blanket.
“You didn’t have this before?”
“Well, I didn’t think of it! Just be grateful I have it now.”
“Alright, alright.”
I use the blanket to cover up one side of the tear, then press against it as I slip through. Not a scratch. The others do the same.
Kana points us in a direction, we spread out and walk.
This proves a long and tiring day. It seems as though the hills are taller, sharper, not wanting us to continue. We take that as a sign to carry on.
As the sun begins to set, Dybbuk spots a new, tall shape on the horizon. Some architectural wonder, now broken down and disheveled like everything else. He calls out to us, and we all assemble in front of the strange building.
It’s made of a dark green stone. Probably had many elaborate towers jutting into the sky at one point, now only a few shattered peaks dare rise above the rusted hills. The large open gateway of the building looms in front of us, still awe-inspiring, even tilted slightly to the side.
“Is this where we’re supposed to go?” I ask.
Kana replies confidently, “Yes, I think it is.”
Without another word, we march straight into the building as the sky begins to darken. We pass through a series of small, tense hallways before they open up into a magnificent hall. The circular chamber is mostly made of the same green stone as the rest of the building, but certain sections of the floor seem to have been repaired with now-rotten wood. The walls are lined with eroded engravings, of what, I have no idea. On the floor around the edges of the room are raised platforms made of stone.
Dybbuk speaks up.
“It looks like a place of worship. Do you think people kneeled on those platforms? Let’s take a look at those inscriptions.”
We all follow Dybbuk to one of the walls when we hear a cracking sound and freeze.
Kana says, “We’re going to fa–”
And, of course, falling. The stone crumbles, the wood snaps, the temple floor falls away like it was built for a false god. I expect to be falling into darkness, something darker than the auburn twilight peeking through cracks of the temple walls, but no, there is so much light.
I land with a thud about 30 feet down, but the wind is still within my lungs, there is still strength under my feet. The ground is soft, the softest feeling I’ve felt in a long time. I come to my senses staring down at some sort of purple moss, with long, delicate strands that almost seem to reach out and cradle me. This is amazing on its own, but nothing like what I see in the cavern around me.
The cavern is vast, a high domed roof mimicked by the temple above it, covered in the same sort of moss, and in the center, the tree.
Calling it a tree doesn’t serve it justice, and probably isn’t botanically accurate. It’s made of many spiraling bands of some smooth fungus, splaying out into the ceiling like inverted roots reaching for the heavens. And tucked amongst the bands are what I assume are the fruits we‘ve been looking for, large teardrop shaped things that glow with an alien, yet oddly calming, golden light. This light fills the room and fills my mind, it’s as like everything outside of the cave had been out of focus.
“Woah.”
“Yeah, you can say that again,” Dybbuk mumbles.
Kana, however, stays completely silent, and tears began to well in her eyes. We all join in awed silence for a while, staring absently into the realm we had stumbled upon.
That light, staring into it for so long, it was maddening, the soft pulsing in and out. After who knows how long I tore my gaze away with a sharp gasp and a sharp pain in my eyes. Had I been blinking? Had I been breathing?
“Guys, I don’t think we can stay here. Let's just pick some fruit and get out of here, I have rope.”
“No.”
Kana spoke with dedication, the first word out of her mouth since we got down here.
“What?” I reply. “We worked so hard to get here. Dybbuk, come on, let’s pick a few.”
“I’m with Kana on this one. We can’t hurt this.”
“Dybbuk, I’ve watched you chip orichalcum off a live scrap golem, you’re not willing to pick some fruit for the biggest sell of our lives?”
“This is different, this thing is sacred, it’s holy.”
Dybbuk calling something holy was unheard of for him, he’s talked down to the gods on a daily basis. This thing is affecting them, isn’t it? It’s like they weren’t the same people who entered the Scraplands with me. Are they going to hurt me?
Kana speaks up again. “I say we climb out of here, close up the floor, and never return. Leave this natural beauty untouched by humankind.”
They’re going to kill me, they’re going to leave my corpse in the moss and sell my things. I won’t let them. The light pulses faster.
Kana speaks again to me in her same calm, consistent tone, but I know that it’s all a lie, it’s all deception. “Listen, I know we worked hard for this, I know you needed that money, but there are bigger things at work here. I can feel it.”
Well, she is right about some things, there are bigger things at work here, this thing, this tree, it is more than us, it is more than everything. It lies. They all lie. Lies. Lies. I can lie too.
“Fine, go ahead, pray to your new mushroom god and we can leave.”
“Thank you,” Dybbuk says, his eyes glazed over from the golden light.
With a nod from Kana, they turn their backs to me and walk toward the tree, and then kneel into the moss at the base of the gnarled trunk. The liars' backs are turned. The thief and prophetess face something far greater than them. I would make sure it would be the last thing they ever saw. There is no hesitation as I charge with my blade.
My sword pierces into the back of Dybbuk and the moss now tends over a splatter of blood. Kana turns immediately to her feet, filled with the anxiety of a blindsided seer. We stand there for a moment, likely only a second, but it might as well be an eternity. Her hair begins to rise as she channels all her arcana, she would save herself, and above all, the tree. I lunge towards her, aiming for a great swing to take her down. Her eyes flash with recognition as she effortlessly dodges to the side. I see that charlatan has focused her attention on the future of my sword, but it won’t matter. I swing and swing with reckless abandon, she must die. She dodges and dodges, waiting for something. What is she waiting for?
Oh. As I put all my weight into a swing for her neck, she ducks and delivers a quick kick to my injured ankle. I buckle with a furious yell as she kicks my undefended chest, sending me tumbling away from the tree. I rise to my feet to see her pouring out her iron filings, but they do not hit the ground. No, the primal magic that fuels her prophecy lifts those filings into the air, forming streaks of metal that whirl around her.
The light pulses faster. It matches my heartbeat. I can feel it. I scream.
I charge again, it’s what I must do, I have no choice, it’s all I am, I am consumed.
My sword meets the streaks of filings with sparks. The coward she is, always blocking my swings with her foul magic to stab a streak of iron into my gut. But we are nothing but death now, she will not see the light of day, only the light of her false god.
I see my moment, her iron defense faltering. The light pulses faster. I launch my elbow into her face, she reels backwards. The light pulses faster. I thrust my sword, covered in the blood of friends, into Kana’s beating heart.
And then, sharp pain. A dagger, Dybbuk’s dagger certainly, is plunged into the nape of my neck. The backstabbing traitor, I should have known.
As my body hits the earthy ground, I see Dybbuk fall beside me, his death throes expended. The three corpses are welcomed by the moss, as the lights grow ever brighter.