Divine War: The Lancasterian Chronicles

The blue demon continues to devour the reptilian flesh for as long as Nadjela can see him. The girl waits seated, hugging her legs, as far away from him as possible, but without venturing out of the light circle offered by the campfire. The demon entertains himself by sucking the marrow from the bones, grabbing with a free hand more twigs from the nearby bushes to feed the fire. Nadjela, tired of those sticky sounds and the uncertainty, gathers enough courage to ask:

"What are you?"

"What I am?" The stranger looks at her and lifts up his dark glasses. Because the proximity of the fire, the crimson of his eyes becomes a soft orange, reflecting warmth, frankness, and initiative. He points himself with his thumb. "My name is Chester Lancaster! Second lieutenant of... Bah! Nothing. Just a man willing to carry on with his dreams"

The strange words come in Nadjela's ear and out the other. She remains lost in the gaze of that face that always seems to have a secret smile, as if nothing could tarnish his good humor or his relax. A man with such a countenance is really bad? Is he not linked to the spring that quenched the thirst of her people? A strange and unique man who fell from the sky, as the legends of La Cuna say that the prophet would come.

"Chester Lancaster, the savior...?"

"Me? A savior?" The adjective makes him laugh. He shakes his head before lying on his side on the dusty ground, his cheek in the palm. "That's too much. I'm a guy looking to live by his own rules. I have my sword, my armored, and my freedom. I don't need more"

Saying the word "Armored," Chester glances sideways at the sky. Nadjela follows his eyes to the giant.

"Did you come from him?" she asks.

Chester nods.

"Then he's your father"

"What...? No. This is North Star. Like my sword, it represents another part of my spirit. It was damaged during my last battle and no longer responds," Scratches his chest. "I really shouldn't have underestimated those two..."

He lets out a short story about how, above the clouds, two pilots ambushed him. His machine was caught in the atmosphere, he crashed out of control and lost consciousness.

"I don't kill women or children! Let them stay at home, and let the men talk quietly and in peace with our fists"

"Women warriors...? Where the mother of all birds flies, there are still fights for survival?"

Nadjela hugs her knees even tighter and sinks her face, troubled by the absurd possibility. Heaven is supposed to be a harmonious place where earthly sufferings and ambitions have little value. The same mother of birds raises strong winds that carry away the sorrows, and punishes the ambition cries of the heart with lightning claws and divine songs that to mortal ears sound like thunder. Another detail that displeases her is the existence of a warrior woman, when in La Cuna women were always instructed in cooking, weaving, washing, fetching water, gathering the harvest when it is ripe, and finding a good man to marry and have children. War, fighting, hunting, was always a man's business. Nadjela finds it hard to imagine herself standing in a battle swinging a spear.

"Shouldn't there be?" Chester takes Nadjela's disbelief as an endorsement his beliefs. "I don't know any mother birds. But the world is burning up and down. How can you not notice it? The heat can be felt here..."

Chester closes the eyes, his mind drifting to another environment, one where the earth opens, the seas boil, the sky weeps, and men perish by the thousands. Nadjela does not understand, in fact, she is freezing.

"We are burning. Someone should teach a couple of painful little things to those idiots who start everything. Divine war? My balls!" Opens his eyes and looks at Nadjela. "Didn't you hear what's going on? You live in a cave?"

"La Cuna. Not a cave. I'm from the people of La Cuna"

"First I've heard it"

"I need to go back." She looks away into the darkness that envelops them. "We are in a forbidden zone. My father, my friend Majani, the venerable Zakary, they must all be worried"

"Forbidden zone? There is no such thing as a forbidden zone!" He lies on his back and raises a hand toward the stars and satellites. "This is the world! And the world is yours. You have to go out and take all it offers no matter the odds"

Nadjela keeps silent in front of those ideas that contradict the teachings given for generations to the tribe's people: Obey the founder's blood, and avoid foreign evils. Of course, sometimes they negotiated with other tribes, merchants who came offering honey, or cotton, or plump wombats, and in exchange La Cuna delivered the goodness of El-nido-de-todas-las-plantas (except for the seeds), or the fishing when the river runs. But they never came out as such, and there was always a tacit distrust of the foreign.

"Can you use your giant and take me home?" Nadjela asks.

"I need a mechanic to get it running. I don't even know how the hell it came alive after the crash. All I know is that everything was black, and then I saw a light and heard a voice"

"What's a mechanic? What voice?"

"How do you not know what a mechanic is? And the voice sounded like you, more or less. How old are you?"

Chester looks at her. The princess catches the growing attention, and curls up, wanting to diminish herself and reduce the man's place to look.

"I turned fifteen cycles last fire season"

"Fifteen! I'll assume that's years. Tell me, ever been with a man in bed before?"

Nadjela, all flushed, gives him a disgusted look.

"Don't look me like that!" Chester shows his hands. "There's no delicate way to ask! Anyway, so it wasn't you."

"What do you mean?"

"It's simple! The voice I heard asked me for a favor. Asked me to protect her child. And you'll be someone's daughter, right?"