Its eyes were purple with no whites, it seemed blind yet completely aware of its surroundings. A primal sense of danger filled Luma's being, this thing couldn't be a living creature.
But just as quickly as doubts filled his mind, the visions he had just experienced rose up to suffocate them.
The image of the injured deathstalker attacking overlayed with reality. Next a mining artifice would fire at its exposed eye. That was the path he would have to take, his only way to victory.
And thus it came to be.
The deathstalker swung down on him with an open fist.
He moved to avoid it, before grabbing it's wrist.
However, he met thin air.
The adults on the audience platform began to shout, and the whisperers below became restless, their intervention stopped only by the headwhisperer.
Luma followed the eyes of one of his instructors on the audience platform and found that she was staring directly behind him. The hairs on his neck stood on end, and he felt a faint gust blow on his sweat covered nape.
Their fast, he thought. If not for his vision, perhaps he would've already given up, but confidence filled his blood, clogging whatever fear tried to make his way into his mind.
He spun around with a sweep. However all he found were the whispers of blurring motion, a shadow already moving behind him.
He carried his momentum forward, making a 360 sweep.
The heel of his foot met the deathstalker's leg, an immovable boulder, and a sharp pain travelled up to his knee.
He bit down on the pain and lunged forward, fist poised to crush the deathstalkers head. With this much stimulant running through his bloodstream, perhaps it was possible.
But his movements were an open book to the trained killing machine. In a blur, it captured his hand into a tight vyse, and he could almost hear his bones whining under its grip.
I have him.
"Program 2, exctraction!"
The beam roared forward in an arc of blue. A relieved smile flashed across Luma's mouth as it struck out for the deathstalker's eyes.
One part of the vision had been fulfilled, now he would just have to continue until the silver mask of that murderer were in his pale hands.
However, once the emissions from the beam settled, he found that the top half of the deathstalker was no longer there.
For the first time since the fight began, fear found it's way into his heart, wreaking pounding havoc.
The deathstalker had bent backwards, so far back that one would suspect they did not have spines. Before Luma could even think of his next move, his world was rocked.
Everything dimmed, and a crushing pain tore at his chest.
When his vision cleared, the world around him seemed to shrink, the air gone, his lungs spasming in desperation as he fought to force a breath into them. He was in a crater within the walls of the Radin, his bones like grounded dust against the jagged rocks.
What happened? This isn't how it's supposed to be, he thought, feeling the weight of his body become too much for his muscles to bare. He fell to his knees, pain the only concept his mind was capable of processing.
He tried to raise his arm, if that vision had meant nothing, then atleast he would try to injure the murderer before they took his life. Perhaps the others would fight if they saw that these whisperers could be harmed.
However, his body would not listen to him. Desperation and frustration welled up as hot tears at the rims of his eyes.
He would die now, but that was not the worst of it. The tribe would go on, and both he and Guzla would become forgotten nothings, heretics who had gone against what 'the sun permitted.'
As the world around faded into darkness, someone began shouting from the stands. However the ringing in his ears would not allow him to make out their words.
A screeching scream came next, and a towering figure landed between him and the approaching deathstalker, veins of black covering the surface of their tunneling uniform.
A crier, Luma thought, the world now dark to him.
My crier.
*
Luma dreamt.
Of a figure masked in black, bathed in the rays of a crimson sun. "For I whisper unto you."
An army of tunnelers stood behind this figure, banners of the kanuit raised. "And we shall unto you," they roared.
...
He woke up with a start, clawing at his bed sheets. "What? How am I—"
"Alive?" a rough raspy voice replied.
Luma turned to see who had said that, and found a massive bulk of a man standing at the opening of the tent. The tent was white tent, a medical area, with a floating red stone at the centre feeding energy into the circuitry that viened along it's walls.
"Jabba," Luma whispered.
"They said you would live, but I didn't believe them," Jabba continued, the thin twig in his mouth slurring his words. "Should've known her brother couldn't be done in so easily."
The memory of his sister landing in the arena suddenly hit him. "Shala, where is she?" he shouted, trying to stand up, but finding he had no energy to do so.
Jabba sighed, before spitting the stick out and approaching him. "Don't try to move, it'll only make the crim stone's work harder," he said, tapping the floating stone before kneeling beside Luma's bed.
"Your sister is okay, stripped of a few titles, and ofcourse a punishment but—" he continued, a tired smile appearing on his face, "she'll be fine."
Luma sighed in relief. Atleast his attempt hadn't been a complete botch.
"You on the otherhand are being accused of very serious crimes," Jabba continued, his brows furrowed in thought. "Can't imagine they'd execute you... but there are things worse."
Luma lay back down in bed, and turned around. "Does it matter? Everything happened as the sun willed it, did it not?"
Silence filled the room.
"I know that you and Guzla were..." Jabba whispered. "I understand what you were thinking."
Luma had to rub away the tears that were welling up at the rim of his eyes.
"But I don't understand why you did it," Jabba continued. "Guzla knew the price of disobedience. Even when faced with a whisperer, he continued. It was his fau—"
"Finish that sentence, and it'll be you I try to kill next!" Luma shouted, surpised at his own words.
He'd have as much luck trying to kill the captain of their warrior corp as he had with the deathstalker. But still, he would not listen to anyone disrespect his dead kin.
"What they did to you, it was unfair," Jabba sighed. "But you managed to get through the first trial regardless," he continued. "Already the elders speak of how talented you are."
Luma remained silent. Why was this man still talking about the trials.
"As the sun permitted, you got passed the impossible. And for that, the whisperers are allowing you to complete your rising before you are trialed," he said, before standing up.
"Find solace in the fact Guzla would've been proud."
Luma was unable to hold back his tears any longer. He wept, wept like no one else was in the room. Memories of his time together with Guzla haunted his mind; his first time holding a blade, their last time singing the songs of old around the fire. This was all that remained of him.
As Jabba's steps retreated to the exit, Luma turned around, face soaked in tears.
"Mark my words Jabba," he said in between sobs. "They will pay."
Jabba looked back at him, pity and sadness pulling at his face. "If it as the sun permits, you will have your way," he said.
"The sun be damned Jabba. They will pay."