Crouching to minimize his massive form, he gazed toward a cluster of frost-heavy pines and sent a comforting extrasensory tap.
‘Come out, we won’t hurt you,’ he called out, giving Sheba a reassuring glance, asking his woman to trust him.
A moment later, a small, quivering, dark-haired figure emerged.
Her clothes were threadbare, stained with grime and dirt, and her eyes dilated in a blend of terror and desperate hope.
‘Please,’ the girl rasped, her voice cracking in the cold, taking a staggering step toward them. ‘Help me.’
Sheba rushed forward, shrugging her cloak to drape it over the child’s shivering shoulders. ‘Oh my, what’s your name?’
‘Nirana.’
‘Are you from Lattaya?’ Sheba asked.
‘Nada, Seikoyya, two days’ walk from here. A few weeks ago, the bad men came and forced my family and many from ourvillage to the work camps at the quarry. I escaped to get help for my parents and sisters.’
Her gaze darted between Sheba’s shocked face and Idan’s glowing sigils. ‘Please, you have to help them.’
Sheba crouched beside the girl and shifted her backpack around, pulling out a canteen of water and a protein bar she had baked the night before.
Nirana snatched the sustenance with trembling fingers, drinking the liquid in heavy, desperate gulps before tearing into the snack.
She ate with a frantic intensity that made Sheba’s heart ache, as the child’s hunger only came from hours of running on nothing but fear.
Standing over them, Idan’s expression hardened into a mask of cold intent as he studied the girl and slid his own cloak over his woman’s shoulders.
‘Show us where they are,’ he growled.
Nirana flicked her eyes between the couple and, choosing to trust them, rose to her feet and began moving west. ‘Come with me.’
Idan and Sheba exchanged glances, then followed Nirana as she guided them towards a set of distant peaks.
It took a few hours of hard going, during which Idan helped both females across alpine cold rivers and extreme gullies.
At one point, he glimmered them over a field of nascent grass and cut glass rocks, which got Nirana blinking at him in shock.
However, she soon recovered, keen to return to her kin.
The descent led them into a deep valley where the chemical sting of sulfur and burnt metal choked the crisp mountain air.
Nirana slowed, then, holding a finger to her lips, she indicated that their destination was ahead.
They halted and hunched over to obscure themselves behind a rock, at the edge of a massive, hidden scar carved into the mountain’s flank.
Below, a rusted sign above a steel gate identified the operation as a Rhixon Corp site.
The quarry below was a nightmare of groaning steam-pistons and heavy iron pulleys.
Sheba gasped, her hand flying to her mouth as she took in the scale of the horror.
Thin, shackled miners moved in a rhythmic, lethargic agony, their skin caked in gray xentium dust.
Their necks were tethered to the machinery by bulky ferrous collars, their eyes hollowed out by pure exhaustion.
‘Help them!’ Nirana begged in a hissed whisper.
Idan pulled Sheba back into the shadow of a granite overhang, his eyes flaming with fury.
