He rises from the ashes, the ache in his bones nearly equaling that of his heart. The blood in his veins turns to ice as he truly realizes the devastation around him.  The city of which he had once called home now burns around him. The white-hot plasma fires lash out from the home-huts of his friends and neighbors, scarring his flesh.

            Mother. Father.

            With great pain, he moves to stand, cradling his scorched arm as he would a frightened child. He knows that he must move quickly. It never takes the red-eyes long to return and bring about more suffering.

            He still recalls the day they arrived under their banner of peace and brothership.  So long ago yet the memory hasn’t faded. And as long as they remain enemies on his world, tyrants to his people, it never will.

            With the hollow whining of the invaders’ sky ships becoming ever louder, the young survivor sets out across the decimated landscape. His home no longer remains. All that once was has now been lost, as the elders once foretold.

            “What has come easily to us, can be lost just as quickly. For nothing, not even the wind, or the sky, or the stars is forever. We all return to the dirt from which we came. Know this, Coda, as you embark on your way. For in the end we all embark on the greatest of journeys.”

            “Not yet. I’m not ready,” Coda growls through gritted teeth, forcing his tired legs to move once again.

            The mountains. Coda realizes. They will have gone to mountains and taken sanctuary in the temple of the oldens.

            And so Coda follows. His legs burn from the exertion. The holy path fights back, presenting the survivor with obstacles for him to overcome one after another. He crosses the black valley, propelling himself the distance, just barely making it across.

            “Must you fight? Would it not be best just to give in? To lay down? To be done?” asks the traveler of the silver he carries in his pocket.

            “I cannot. Not if I have a chance to save those I love,” he says.

            The ghostly traveler flashes into existence as he pulls the small ovular silver from the pocket of his tattered robe. She smiles at his stubbornness.

            “Coda. They will find you and when they do, do me a favor,” she says, her voice taking on a static hiss.

            Coda stops, holding the silver out ahead of him, his eyes following the light that projects from its smooth surface out to the traveler.

            “What do you want me to promise you?” he asks.

            The traveler regards him with a forlorn expression. “Do not fight them,” she says.

            “I will protect my people,” he affirms.

            “As I had feared you would.”

                                                                                                                                                                                           ***

            Coda comes to a halt outside of the entrance to the temple of the oldens, allowing his heart to catch up. The precipice overhangs the valley below, where the fires have spread to the surrounding landscape. The orange brush catches fire, leaving only blackness in its place. Scorched lifeless dirt where a once vibrant forest of orange and red had grown to conquer the entire valley.

            Now the invaders have come to stake their own claim on the land with their white fires and blackness, their crimson eyes glowing bright in the blue nights of the planet.

            And now, they have found Coda and his clan. Something he’d never thought possible with how deep into the forest they’d set up camp. But now, he must find his family so that they all may flee together from the invaders.

            “Mother! Father!” he calls into the cavernous entrance to the temple.

            There is no response.

            But then, there’s movement in the dark. Coda’s heart soars. And then it plummets as red eyes appear in the darkness, one by one.

            “No,” he cries. “No. Go away. Leave.”

            Coda scrambles to the ground, picking up a large stone and heaves it at the invaders striking one in the chest. Another raises their energy sticks and fires a blast of red light that strikes Coda’s torso, burning through his robe and sending fires through his body.

            He yells out in pain and collapses to the dirt, unable to move his legs.

            “What are you?” he demands from the ground, tears leaving streams down over the dark matted fur of his face.

            The invaders come to a stop in front of him. There are seven of them in total. The leader, the one the rock struck, reaches up and grasps the helmet over her head. Sliding off the helmet, Coda is allowed a view for the first time of those who have for so long plagued his people.

            Coda gasps, recognition setting in. It’s the traveler whom he’d been communicating since he was four years old. 

            “We’re Humans, Coda.”

            The Oldens.