chapter 2-untitled

[ II ]1

Kyran could not forgive them their trespasses. He had long since decided this, that they who were the best and the worst of the worst and the best could no longer continue living their lives against the good.2

The Adrien were meant to be guardians. Humanity needed them. It always had, in the way that a child can be fiercely independent but still unable to survive unaided. There should be no need to think, to question, the validity of their actions. Those actions in their intent were valid, they were unquestionable, and they were good. The Bekare had forgotten that. They thought that humanity's flaws were unforgivable. They chose to believe instead that as they continually seemed to be attempting to destroy the world the Adrien tried to save for them, that they should be left to their own devices, to perish. They refused to shoulder that common burden. Humans were flawed, but therein lay their greatness of spirit. The Bekare could not understand that. So Kyran had decided. This was it. He could not allow them to continue heir willful destruction with such abandon.3


The bridge was new on the outside, but its foundations were rotting away, eroded in the hillside by old mining tracks and silt, internal tracks of shifting earth. It would collapse within the day. Only a matter of time, then. Kyran could make out the telltale orange flickers on the pylons that foretold disaster. And still cars of the blind whipped across, ferrying their passengers, always in a hurry, to their final destinations. Shaking his head, Kyran looked down from the stone bluff he stood on and down to the highway, at the stretch below like an arrow-straight corridor lined by watchful pines. 4

There were no Adrien working at the bridge, trying to repair minute cracks and to combat the glow of orange. There was no anonymous letter submitted to an authority. No warning had been sent, no action taken. It was regrettable, the disaster that would soon occur, Kyran thought. Regrettable, and unavoidable. 5

He could see a few Adrien, hanging like spiders below the near end of the structure, where concentrations of orange were weakest, strengthening that glow, deepening hairline fractures and widening trace work cracks. 6

A half-smile tugged at the right corner of his mouth, but the gesture did not reach his eyes. He felt nothing. Death was never a thing to rejoice at, and Kyran felt no joy in this. The Bekare were just a nuisance that had begun to intrude at a level just too high to take. A message had to be sent, a message so loud and so clear that it would ring out long after the initial shock had faded. It had to be big, a grand gesture.7

But, for now, all was quiet. The rain was beginning to let up and a few swallows dipped and circled, catching the insects just coming out of cover. All was quiet.