Failure Bait
--Lia's Perspective--
"Don't fall behind." Dante swung our camping equipment around his shoulder, and we began our trek down the glacier. At various points, the glacier was leveled out with posts and large, stone stakes in the stairs to help with balance.
"Don't slip, I don't feel like carrying a dead body back up those damn stairs." I silently nodded behind Dante and watched my foot placement even more carefully than before.
From the top of the glacier, where Orion's City stood, I could see his coliseum further down south, his barracks due west, and my old home by the beach to the east. There was barely anything left of my village, considering it was wiped off this island completely.
"You need to forget about that old home of yours. Your people should've known that building that close to our King of the Island that nothing would've gone well in the end. They were purposefully stupid, and it got you enslaved." I held in any of my remarks I felt like saying. I didn't want Dante to hit me now of all times while walking down icy steps.
"Nothing from the Failure, huh? Typical. You might be the single smartest slave we own." Dante realized he was only talking to himself the entire time, but after we made it down the steps, he finally lost composure.
"We're out of his zone now. You don't have to be silent anymore." In an attempt to please me, he grabbed a cup of water out of the nearby lake before crossing over the edge of it.
"I know what goes in that lake. Several people in my family died thinking this water was safe to drink after an expedition to the swamp." Dante emptied the cup and laughed in a deep voice.
"Oh, you're a lot smarter than I had thought, Failure. Drink the damn water." He grabbed me by the throat and threw me to the ground. I made an effort to push myself away from the water, but his strength overpowered me, and I had mouthfuls of the lake to swallow.
He threw me out into the snow and laughed once more, before continuing forward. "Hurry now. I'm sick of looking at you." The wet hair on my head was making me even colder, but he didn't care. Nobody really cared about me.
"See that up ahead? That would be the desert. Say, where did you come from before your stupid family settled in that village?"
I dragged myself forward, even if my legs felt limp, and opened my mouth, "S-Swamp." Dante stopped in his tracks, and I bumped into his back, profusely apologizing once I realized.
"The swamp? Orion's been looking for information about the swamp's cities and landscape… and you just stood silent this entire time?" I kept my eyes pointed at the ground.
"Y-You never asked." I held my eyes shut, awaiting the slap of pain that I knew was coming.
"Save that for Orion on our trip back. When we tell him of the White Stone's death and you have information about the swamp, you might get a hot meal." Dante said, continuing forth.
Next, we had the redwood forest. The trees seemed to scrape the clouds in the sky they were so tall, and once when I was a little kid, I remember seeing people look down at me from high up in the trees. I haven't been able to see those people again, but I think of it now and then. It would take us about half an hour to walk through this landscape, not to mention being slowed down by the wild, hostile creatures along the path. I wonder if I'd be able to see Shiro once more…
"Stay back." Dante unsheathed his two swords from his back and slashed at an animal in front of us, first at his legs, then at his head. The deer quickly dropped to the ground with his mouth wide open, letting out all that saliva and blood he had been building up for whoever knows how long.
"We can use this for dinner. Skin it." He threw a knife into the dirt beside the deer, and I got to work.
I started by cutting the skin off of his legs, slowly working to make sure I didn't miss anything, and making sure the hide itself didn't have any tears in it. I frequently remembered my dad teaching me about this kind of thing.
I precisely finished the job, sliding the skin off of the body like it was a sock. "Do you want me to leave it too?" I asked Dante, but he shook his head. I picked up the hide, rolled it up, and offered it to Dante. He snatched it from my hands and continued to walk forward.
"Geez… this snow is really coming down. What for? It doesn't start until the twentieth."
I shook out my hair to disperse the snow and Dante and I continued forward. I didn't expect him to be so vocal on this walk, but he talked about random things, like the scenery, his family, and a little about Orion.
"You know, I know little about our target down south. I was just told he was a high priority and that there's no exception to the rules." I nodded. I was in the same boat with Dante, I didn't know either. It shocked me to a certain level, I was sent to go end this man's life, without knowing about him at all, all for my hypothetical freedom. It seemed stupidly selfish that I would do something like that, but I just didn't care.
Whether I liked it or not, I was becoming more and more like these people who enslaved me.
"Sometimes I wonder, why doesn't Orion go out and do these things himself if the targets are this powerful?" I shrugged.
"I guess that's what people like you and I are used for." I turned to Dante, just as we cleared the line into the forest, at long last. Why did he put us both in the same group? Was Dante a slave all along too?
"Up ahead is the wall we made a long time ago, apparently. It should be destroyed for the most part. Did your village ever tell you about why the wall was so beaten up?" I shook my head, finally lifting it to look at the world at eye level. I felt a little more confident in not being hit at the moment.
"N-No." I quickly said, starting to pick up my pace in order to walk next to Dante, instead of behind him.
"Well, long ago, there was another 'white stone', whatever that means, and he started a siege against Orion to take him out of power. This wall is where everything happened. Orion's amount of people had all gotten together and forged a huge wall against the beach down south so they couldn't march on the capital. That being said, his old soldiers quickly handled the rebellion, and the rest is history. It's been said that Orion has never killed anybody himself." I nodded. I didn't really care about the history, but it was interesting to hear Dante talk about something that didn't involve hitting me or telling me I'm a failure.
I climbed over the wall right beside Dante and we decided to take it slower and easier, watching from a distance to plan our attack. Once we walked closer to the beach on the opposite side of the forest after about six hours of walking in total, he took cover behind a tree.
"I think I see it. It's getting darker, and I see something white shining. It seems like that might be him." Dante handed me the binoculars and I took my time, searching all of the people on the beach. The most obvious one was the white stone, looking back towards the east, then towards the forest.
"Did they see us? How did they catch us?!" I said, but Dante covered my mouth.
"They're looking for something… maybe the deer we came across further back?" I was surprised, I didn't remember seeing any animal on the way here. I would know, I was looking for my old dog in this area, Shiro. It was a white husky with bright blue eyes, hard to miss. He loved the snow in my old village, but we have long since departed since I was enslaved.
"Dog, inbound. I'll take care of it." I dropped the binoculars, shattering the lenses in the front.
"No! Don't!" Just as I had thought, Shiro was standing a safe distance away, panting. "That's my dog! Don't kill him! Please!"
I ran to Shiro, and his tail began to wag. "I missed you!" While jumping to him, Dante slid his sword against my chest horizontally, throwing me against the floor in a puddle of my own blood.
I gasped for air, reaching out to Shiro.
"I'll use you for bait. Do what you were told to." Dante quickly retreated to a higher cliff, leaving me in the snow, leaking blood from my chest next to my dog.
"What… huh…?" What did he mean bait?