by Johnny Cycles, June 26th, 2026
Looking for the beginning? Click here.
Chapter 11
Ark awoke in darkness. Not the darkness of the storm, but the darkness of night. An earthy smell filled her nostrils. She opened her eyes. She was in a pit. She was a prisoner. She closed her eyes. She slept.
She awoke the second time to the feeling of being watched. She looked up. The sun was shining somewhere behind the square of sky and green leaves her pit revealed. Small creatures scurried back at her glance. They weren’t duwyns. They looked too thin and brown for that. A head appeared, large dark eyes set in a square face. Dark hair fell down around pointed ears. Elves. Or things that looked like elves.
She turned over. She slept.
When she awoke the third time it was to a plate of food being lowered down by one of her guards. He or she, Ark couldn’t tell, said nothing. She ate. She slept.
❖
“You should not be here,” a tall elf said to her from where he squatted at the edge of her pit. Curly dark hair framed his dark brown, square face.
Ark had awoken the fourth time to find him there. She didn’t know how long she’d slept. She didn’t know how long he’d been waiting. She felt better. The soreness of surviving a storm intent on killing her had greatly diminished. Her head still ached from the lightning strike, but it, too, was improving. She met the elf’s gaze. She said nothing.
“Outsiders don’t survive the storm wall,” he continued into the silence. “How did you?”
Ark said nothing. The elf shrugged and disappeared.
The next time Ark awoke, she looked up to find one of the small creatures staring at her intently from the edge of her pit. This time it, she, Ark guessed from an assessment of details processed by her subconscious, did not run away. Ark smiled. The elfling smiled back.
“Hi,” she said in a high-pitched voice. “Do you speak Elvish?”
Ark shook her head.
“Duwyn?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Laurya.”
“Ark.”
Laurya smiled, as if proud of this successful exchange. “I told Torc you didn’t speak Elvish, but he hates speaking Duwyn.” Laurya paused. “You’re pretty!” She beamed, then blushed and hid behind the edge of the pit. A moment later, her big dark eyes reappeared.
“Thank you,” Ark replied. She smiled wider. “You’re pretty, too.”
Laurya ducked her head out of view once more. When she came back, Ark asked, “Are you an elf?”
Laurya giggled. “Of course,” she finally said and turned her head to one side to reveal a pointed ear. “We’re mountain-forest elves.”
Ark nodded. She’d never heard of those before. She knew elves lived in the Wild Lands – some ventured into the Empire for various reasons – but she didn’t know they were grouped by geographic region. “There are other elves than you?”
Laurya giggled again. “You really are from the Wild Lands.”
Ark gave her a puzzled look. “Isn’t that where we are now?”
“No, silly! We’re in Arvenia.” When Ark said nothing, Laurya continued. “Arvenia is one of the southern regions of Rai.”
“Which is where?”
“North of the Wild Lands!” Laurya giggled again. “It’s where all the elves live! And others.”
Ark understood. The Empire looked upon the northerners as wild and barbaric, hence the name of their land, while the northerners viewed the Empire in the same way. It was confusing at first, but it made sense. “Those who live in the Wild Lands,” Ark explained, “call this region the Wild Lands.”
Laurya gave Ark a disbelieving look. “But that’s stupid!”
Ark smiled. “How old are you?”
Laurya straightened up and thrust out her chest. “I’m one ring into my spring wood,” she said proudly.
Ark guessed this meant she was not considered a child by her people. Probably a
teenager. And just that.
Laurya glanced quickly behind her, then disappeared. A few moments later, the elf
who’d spoken to Ark before looked down at her. Torc, Laurya had said his name was.
“How did you survive the storm wall,” he said in Duwyn without preamble.
Ark stared at him. She said nothing.
“We have a saying here,” Torc replied with a shrug. “The tree knows no hurry.” He
turned and left.
After that Laurya came to Ark most every day, usually early in the morning or at dusk.
She was a curious youngling and peppered Ark with questions about the Empire – the Wild Lands as they called it here – and squealed in delight and horror at what she heard. Ark always greeted her visitor with a smile.
One day Laurya brought Ark a blanket. “Don’t tell Torc,” she whispered.
Ark gratefully wrapped the coarse cloth around her. It was cold here at night. It was
colder in her pit. It was taking longer and longer each day for her to warm up. The sun
barely seeped through the covering of leaves that was her only view of the outside world.
When Torc came next to interrogate Ark, he frowned at seeing the blanket but said
nothing. However, after their brief, one-sided exchange was over, he returned with
another blanket and tossed it to her without a word.
The next time Laurya popped her head into view, Ark smiled and said, “I made this for
you.” She handed up a small ship she’d woven from the twigs that littered her pit and
thread from the cloth. She’d even made a sail and a little stick figure that resembled
Laurya just enough to be recognizable by the elfling, whose eyes lit up at the gift.
“It’s amazing! How did you make the wood so smooth?”
Ark shrugged. She wasn’t going to tell her she’d used what little magic she’d managed
to recover while in captivity to meld the twigs into one block of wood after she’d shaped
them.
Laurya smiled and disappeared, only to return with something wrapped in cloth. She
dropped it down to Ark. It was warm bread. Ark smiled her thanks and ate.
Days turned into weeks. Ark lost track of how many. She marked each sunrise with a
line in the wall of her pit. Then the rains came. Her record was erased. This was the
hardest time of her captivity. Even with the canopy of trees above, her pit soon turned
into a filthy puddle under the perpetual rain. Ark sat huddled and muddy. She bent her back to the cold and the wet.
She thought about the flame. She focused on the flame. She embraced the flame.
The rain became background noise. The cold and wet became
her normal.
Laurya hadn’t come since the rains started. Neither had Torc. Only a guard in the
morning and a guard in the evening, faces and heads covered against the torrential
downpour, appeared with food to lower down and waste bucket to raise up.
Arc thought.
The pull that had drawn her here had been absent since she’d awoken in the pit. Had it
been her imagination? Delusion brought on by long roads and solitude? An unconscious
curiosity made mystical to warrant its satisfaction?
It didn’t matter. Ark’s mission was clear. Reconnaissance. The Wild Lands, or Rai,
needed exploring the same as the Empire, or the Wild Lands to the south, did.
Regardless of what brought her here, here needed to be seen. It was only discomfort
rooted in her change of plans that had her questioning her journey north. And yet, she
had felt something unmistakable. Something had drawn her to this spot. When she
thought on it further – and she had nothing but time to think as the cold rain sought to
break through her concentration – the absence of that pull confirmed its existence. She
had reached the place to which she’d been beckoned. The question that remained was
why.
Time passed. Ark allowed her thoughts full reign aside from the flame. She held the
flame to her at all times. This focal point was essential to her survival. Without it she
would freeze or go mad.
She thought of Char. She wondered how his reconnaissance was fairing. Had he been
able to slough off his loss and memories enough to complete their mission? She doubted
it. He was too self-centered. Despite their training and their preparation, Char would
surely spiral further into depression simply because it was what he felt. He put himself
above all others. He didn’t do it intentionally. It wasn’t malicious. He simply didn’t
possess the empathy or the presence of mind to remember that his feelings weren’t the
entirety of the world.
She didn’t hate him for it, even if he’d been that way ever since she could remember.
She had hated him, though, once, when they were teenagers still training. His infatuation
with her would have been tolerable had he been even slightly aware of her own feelings.
As would prove to be his want throughout life, however, he’d felt only his feelings, his
desire. He’d never done anything physical, never touched her, or tried to, the way so
many here had. No, he’d just followed her with eyes full of longing and pain. It had
nearly driven her crazy. She’d been as mean to him as she could and still he watched her
stupidly. But then he’d finally met someone else, someone who reciprocated his feelings.
He and Ark had returned to their earlier friendship, then, and a good thing, too. Their
mission was too important to let hurt feelings and rejection disrupt it.
Too bad she had died. Ark grieved in her pit as her mind replayed her death. Ark had
loved her, too, as a friend. Char had loved her as much more. And now he was probably off somewhere huddled in a corner allowing his grief to consume him. That was Char’s
other flaw. By nature of his self-centeredness, he failed to see the larger picture, even
when it came to himself. He wouldn’t be able to see that his grief, the bone-jarring,
stomach-churning, hopeless grief of immediate loss wasn’t forever. It would lessen with
time. There was life to be lived. Ark had learned that the hard way. She’d lost someone,
too. She hadn’t let it stop her.
She grieved for him now, too. She had been young when he vanished, lost to her forever.
She had loved him like the best friend he was, nothing more. Maybe on his part there had
been a hope for something romantic, but he, unlike Char, understood her. He could feel
what others felt. He accepted her rejection with grace. And because he did, their
friendship strengthened. But then he was gone. It had been the hardest thing she’d ever
experienced. Harder even than this cold, wet pit. If she could survive that loss, she could
survive this torment.
Ark became aware of Torc above her. She hadn’t been asleep. She hadn’t been
unconscious. She had been deep in her memories as she held tightly to the flame. She
met the elf’s stare.
“We will move you if you do not resist,” he said.
Ark said nothing.
Torc’s face changed. “By the gods, duwyn! Would you die of exposure to preserve your
silence?”
“I will not resist,” Ark replied after a long moment.
Torc stalked away cursing. A few minutes later, he returned with a group of elves. Some
held spears. Others held poles with nooses at their end. Torc lowered one of these down.
“Put it around your neck.”
Ark did as she was told.
Torc lowered a ladder down. “Climb. If you attempt to escape or fight, we will kill
you.”
Ark climbed.
Torc stopped her before she reached the top. “Hands,” he commanded.
Another noose tightened around both wrists. Ark managed the last rungs of the ladder
with just her feet.
She looked around. Her pit was in dense forest. Wet leaves matted the ground. Through
the tops of trees, she saw the rugged rocky slopes of a nearby mountain. Rain sputtered.
“This way,” Torc said. He didn’t pull her. He allowed her to follow of her own accord.
Another small kindness.
Ark walked within a ring of spears. The forest was thick, but
the elves moved as if one with the trees, gliding around and between them effortlessly,
their weapons within striking distance at all times.
They reached the village.
Ark nearly gasped at the sight. The forest had been cultivated
in such a way as to create shelters without death. Each building was a tree, or several
trees, coaxed into proximity and entwinement. Stone and earth had been used to
complete the structures, but the principal materials were living trees. The forest was the
village.
She was led to one of the only free-standing buildings in sight – a squat, one-room, stone
prison. She was ushered inside and released from the nooses. It was warm and dry. A
bed occupied the corner opposite the door. A grated window stood above a modest desk
to the left. It had no panes, but there were shutters to either side. A hole to the right of
the door was her toilet. A bucket of water her sink. Ark washed as best she could. Then
she lay down on the floor and slept.
❖
The next day Laurya’s familiar face appeared in the window. Her broad smile faltered
when she saw Ark on the floor. “What are you doing? Why aren’t you in the bed?” She
sounded hurt, as if Ark had rejected a gift.
Ark shrugged. “I haven’t seen you in a long time. How are you?”
Laurya’s smile returned. “They’re convening the Council!” she said excitedly.
Ark nodded. “To what end?” She knew the answer. She wanted to allow Laurya the joy
of the telling.
“To set you free, hopefully!”
“Hopefully?”
Laurya’s smile faltered. “It’ll be put to a vote,” she explained. “But it’s good news!” she
added, some of her cheerfulness returning. “Torc didn’t even want to tell the Council
we’d captured you.”
“What changed?”
“The Elders finally made up their minds.”
“What took so long?”
“Torc,” Laurya said in a way that suggested this should have been obvious.
“I’m confused,” Ark replied. “Is Torc your leader?”
Laurya giggled. “No!” She stopped laughing. “Not yet, at least.”
“Is he next in line?”
“No,” she giggled again. “But a lot of the younger elves want him to be.”
“Which is why the Elders listened to him?”
Laurya shrugged. “I guess. I don’t know. Some of them agreed with Torc. Others said
we were breaking oath to keep you without informing the Council.”
“Breaking oath?”
“It was our turn to watch the pass,” she answered. “Anyone or anything that enters Rai is to be captured and turned over to the Council for judgment.”
“And the different groups of elves alternate guarding the pass?” Ark asked.
Laurya laughed her high-pitched, childish laugh again. “Not just elves. We all take
turns.”
Ark processed this a moment. Whatever other creatures lived up here, she’d likely find
out soon enough once she stood before the Council.
“But Torc said we didn’t have to turn you over immediately. Nothing was said about
when the Council should be given a prisoner. Then the rains came. No one does
anything during the rains.”
Ark nodded again. “Why didn’t Torc want to hand me over?”
Laurya beckoned Ark closer to the window. “The prophecy,” she whispered.
Ark felt her stomach drop. Before her journey here, she’d have scoffed at such an idea,
but after the inexplicable force she’d felt pulling her this direction, she wasn’t so sure.
“What prophecy?” she asked the question she knew Laurya was dying to answer.
“You’re storm-marked,” she whispered again, nodding to the scar on Ark’s head. The
lightning bolt had struck just above her right temple.
“Is it bad?” she asked.
Laurya produced a small mirror and held it out to Ark, who examined the mark. A nasty
black splotch ran from the corner of her right eye into her hairline. “What does it mean?”
Laurya’s eyes glittered with excitement. “No one knows! That’s the whole point! Torc
says it means nothing, which is why he didn’t want to hand you over. Others think it
means you are chosen.”
“What’s this prophecy say?” Ark asked.
Laurya looked distraught over the question. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen it. They only
let Elders and such read the sacred texts.”
Ark stifled a smile. “Be careful,” she said.
Laurya gave her a questioning look.
“That they don’t catch you eavesdropping.”
Laurya blushed.
“Thank you,” she added to soften her warning.
“It’s nothing,” Laurya mumbled.
“Thank you for hoping I am released,” Ark continued with a smile.
Laurya’s face reddened even more, but she smiled at Ark with downcast eyes. “You’re
so pretty!” she said again suddenly, then ran away.
❖
The Elders came for Ark the next day. Two guards Ark had never seen before opened the
door to her cell. They were massive elves, easily twice her height, and dressed in formal-
looking armor made of dark wood with green accents. They each had a large hammer
strapped to their backs. They didn’t enter the room. To do so would require lowering
themselves nearly to their knees.
Instead, a wide, gnarly-looking elf stepped in. She had
long, thin white hair that flowed down over broad shoulders. She wore a robe of dark
green open in a deep vee shape in the front and a light green shirt that looked as if leaves
had been sewn on it. Her skin was bumpy and rough looking, almost like that of a tree.
“My name is Velutina,” she said after she and Ark had shared a long, appraising look of
one another. “I am Chief of Arvenia.” She paused and waited on Ark to speak. Ark said
nothing.
Velutina smiled, her face creasing with the motion. “I was told you do not speak. At
least, not to Torc.” The smile widened.
“My name is Ark.”
Velutina nodded slightly, the smallest of signs of gratitude. “I was also told you are not
affected by…the conditions of your captivity.”
Ark was silent.
“The tree endures all silently,” Velutina said, her eyes boring into Ark’s. “It is one of our
sayings,” she continued, moving to the only chair by the desk and sitting. “Please,” she
gestured for Ark to sit on the bed across from her.
Ark sat on the floor.
“Despite its name,” the Chief continued, not acknowledging Ark’s choice, “Rai is a
harsh, unforgiving land. The climate is challenging and brutal. Those who live here are
the same way. One must endure as often as not. Like the trees who suffer the rains and
snows with equally equanimity, we, too, must accept what comes with patience and
strength.” She eyed Ark a moment before continuing. “You have impressed us,
outlander, with your stoicism. So tell me, is it true you feel no cold? No pain? No
discomfort?”
Ark said nothing.
Velutina smiled again. “Of course. You are a prisoner in a hostile land. Whatever
secrets you have are all you have.” She paused. “The Elders have decided to take you
before the Council. They will decide your fate.”
Ark held the elf’s gaze in silence.
“Some here are inclined to aid you…Ark,” she added, as if tasting the strange word in her
mouth as she spoke it for the first time. “They would speak on your behalf.”
It was Ark’s turn to nod in gratitude.
“What are you doing here?” Velutina asked, finally getting to the point of her visit. “You
are trespassing on foreign land and you had to survive the storm wall to do so. The latter
suggests great power, which makes the former all the more concerning. What are your
intentions?”
Ark said nothing. The strange pull that had brought her here was just as silent as she.
And not for the first time since waking up in that pit, she wondered if it had been her
imagination all along. But she was not one to rewrite the facts of the past with the pen of the present. In that present, the present of her long journey through the Great Plains and up the coast, she had felt something. That she no longer felt it in this present didn’t make
it any less real in that one. The Ark she had been then was no less sane than the Ark she was now.
Velutina sighed and stood. “After you,” she signaled to the doorway.
Chapter 12
The mines weren’t mines, as Ton quickly discovered once he’d followed his fellow
prisoners out of the cage and towards the center of camp, escorted by a phalanx of armed
guards. Rather, it was a giant shaft cut straight into the earth with a narrow wooden
walkway spiraling down along its sides. The wall he’d spotted earlier encircled it. Not
that they were led through the wall’s gates. No, they first shuffled into a large stone
building set off from the wall where their feet were shackled. They could still move, but
running would be impossible.
The stone building itself was one enormous room, with hard, wooden bunk beds lining
the walls, and rows of wheelbarrows stacked around a tunnel entrance sloping away
towards the center. They were led to these immediately.
“Take a wheelbarrow and get to work,” the head guard, a short, thin man with a hawkish
face and cropped hair barked, jabbing his coiled whip at the tunnel’s entrance in case
where this work was to take place was unclear.
“What about our clothes?” one of the elves asked in an accented voice.
He was answered with a snap of the whip. The duwyn was a blur as he flicked his whip
and cut the elf expertly across the right cheek with a vicious, lightning-fast blow. The elf
cried out and stumbled back, hand reaching to his bloody face where a slab of flesh hung
loosely.
“Anymore talk and you lose an eye,” the short duwyn snarled.
Ton had joined the others at the line of wheelbarrows then as the head guard curtly
explained their job. They would take their wheelbarrow through the short tunnel to the
platform leading to the bottom of the shaft. They would wind their way down, fill their
wheelbarrows with dirt, and struggle their way back to the top. As the guard spoke, a
group of mummy servants wheeled a large rectangular receptacle into the room and
placed a ramp at its front. This would be where they deposited their wheelbarrow’s load,
the guard snapped, cursing them for fools that he had to explain such obvious things to
them in the first place.
He cracked his whip at the nearest prisoner, a tall, muscular duwyn, and shouted, “Get
pushing!”
The hardest part of the work wasn’t the wheelbarrow full to overflowing with dirt and
rocks he had to push up the steep, winding platform, nor the rough, rocky tunnel floor
that cut at his bare feet as he trudged through it. Nor was it the eager guards, quick with
spear or whip to punish and encourage reluctant workers. No, the hardest part was the
heat. With each spiral down, the temperature increased until it felt like Ton was standing
too close to a fire. Sweat poured off his body, ran into his eyes, and caused his hands to
perpetually slip on the handles of his wheelbarrow.
As Ton made his first circuitous journey with the empty wheelbarrow, he noticed the
changing shades of the wooden ramp. From this, he could judge the progress those
before him had made on their way to this point deep within the earth. The Empire’s
slaves had been digging a long time. But why? And to where? What was down here that
warranted such dedicated forced labor?
The strangest part of the work, meanwhile, was the creatures doing the actual digging, for
Ton and his fellow prisoners, slaves, he amended, did nothing but move earth up, up, up,
where they were given one ladle of water before beginning the monotonous, every-
increasing sweltering journey back down. The diggers weren’t duwyns or even dwarves,
which would have made some sense, Ton reasoned, nor the massive creatures he’d
glimpsed in the tent.
They were gigantic worms, easily three times the length of Ton and
as many times as wide. Their skin was milky white and had thick hairs protruding from it
at regular intervals. Their heads, or fronts, it wasn’t clear if they had actual heads, were
blood-red and eyeless, with two short, nubby antennae jutting out above a gaping, tooth-
filled maw.
When Ton first stepped out on the platform and looked down, he’d stopped along with
the rest of the slaves and gaped. The length and breadth of the shaft bottom was a mass
of white, slithering flesh as the worms ate their way deeper into the earth. As they looked
on, one of the worms twisted out of the mountain of moving monsters and turned its end
towards the platform. With a rumble, dirt and some kind of dark fluid spewed from it,
splattering the ground and walls of the shaft. Ton heard someone get sick and he had to fight the urge himself as the smell hit him.
They weren’t moving earth. They were moving shit.
Shit-earth, as they soon started calling it. The worms dug by eating, then shat out what
they didn’t digest. The smell was overpowering, though they eventually grew
accustomed to it. Everything stunk of giant worm shit, so there was nothing else to
contrast it with.
That first day, though, had been the worst for everyone. Even the strongest of them
wasn’t prepared for the extraordinary redundancy of shit-filled wheelbarrow after shit-
filled wheelbarrow pushed arduously up a steep, slippery slope. Each trip took nearly an
hour and towards the end of it, Ton and the others were tripping and sliding, cursing, and
cajoling, all while trying their best not to tip the contents out onto the ground. Doing so
not only led to the whip, but it meant you had to shovel the shit-earth back into your
wheelbarrow as best you could with just your hands.
Extra motivation not to let your wheelbarrow fall, Ton assumed. Or the guards were
particularly sadistic assholes. Or both.
No one spoke that first night. Once they’d completed ten trips, they were given a bucket
of water with which to bathe and drink and the same bread bowl of dark, mystery-meat
soup they’d had in the tent, and left to their own devices. Those devices largely meant cursing under one’s breath, whimpering in pain, and sleeping, particularly in the beginning. By the end of the week, though, a few of the tougher ones had adjusted
enough that normalcy now meant moving shit naked and they began talking before bed.
Gart, as the scarred duwyn’s named turned out to be, was one of the first to speak.
“The name’s Gart,” he said to Ton on their sixth night. “Rhymes with fart,” he added
before Ton could say anything and laughed. “This scar’s the best thing to happen to me,”
he indicated the misshapen flesh, ugly bubbles frozen just before bursting all over the
right side of his face. “I went from Fart Face to Scar Face overnight practically.” He
laughed again. “And it’s not even hindered me with the females,” he continued, eyes
twinkling. “Some women like scars. Some even like freaks. I’ve got both markets
covered.”
Ton forced a smile to his face. Gart was a talker. Ton had met the likes of him before. Bars the Empire over always had a few. They hardly ever shut up, unable or unwilling to allow silence to linger for fear it may take permanent root.
“Ton,” he replied once Gart’s monologue ended.
“That’s a stranger name than mine,” Gart whistled. “Though not as funny. Doesn’t
rhyme with anything good, you see?” He winked.
“You seem to know a lot about this place,” Ton said, ignoring the comment. The good
thing about talkers was that you could learn a lot from them. The bad thing was you had
to sift through a large portion of nonsense to get to something true and useful. But Gart
had known how the slave market worked well enough. And he claimed to know about
the fights. Ton was mostly interested in these if it meant escape, but where they were
digging to was a close second.
“Most do, I’d reckon,” Gart replied. “Though I’ve been around the Empire more than
most.”
“Trader?”
“Something like that,” he replied evasively.
Ton eyed the scarred man a moment before continuing. “Where’s this shaft we’re
digging going?”
Gart barked a laugh. “Where’ve you been living, under a rock?” When Ton said nothing
in response, he continued. “The Dark Dwellers! The Empire’s at war with them.”
“I knew that,” Ton said.
“Where do you think they live?” Gart laughed a longer laugh this time. “In a sun-lit glade in the woods? Think that’s how they got that name?”
“Surely they’ve tunnels of their own the Empire could invade.”
“Doesn’t work. They tried that. Got slaughtered. Too narrow to overwhelm with
superior numbers, too dark to see, and too many tunnels. It’s a maze down there.”
“Is that where you got that scar?” Ton asked.
Gart’s expression went blank and he gently touched the side of his face, as if caressing
the bubbled skin. “No.”
Ton contained his smile. A topic the talker didn’t want to talk about. He’d remember
that next time he wanted the duwyn to shut up. “So, we’re digging a tunnel straight to the
dark dwellers themselves?”
“Straight to their capital. As best as they can guess, at least,” Gart continued, his usual
animation back.
“Then what?”
Gart shrugged. “Send the army in.”
Ton doubted the plan was as simple as that, but it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be here to
see the tunnel’s completion and the Empire’s plan in action. “How do I fight?”
Gart opened his mouth, then shut it as Ton’s words caught up. “Fight who? You want to
join the army?”
“No, the Dragon’s champion.”
Gart sighed. “I didn’t take you for a suicide.”
Ton held the duwyn’s gaze. “How do I fight?”
❖
Salestia’s new home was the most luxurious she’d ever seen. It made the Manor House
look like a backwoods inn on its last legs. Her room was massive, with two fireplaces
and a bed so soft it left her sore, accustomed as she was to her old pallet, which was not
much softer than the hard ground she and Ton had been sleeping on of late. The obsidian
walls made the space feel smaller and she often had to fight the sense of claustrophobia
they brought on, but she eventually grew used to them. There was no fancy chandelier in
her room, as she’d heard there were in some of the other bedrooms, but there was a bath with actual running water. And it was hot! She couldn’t believe it.
Her room also had a balcony, which overlooked a large square, circle really, that ran the
length of the inner ring of the walled city. Her fellow slaves told her this was mostly a
negative – the rooms facing the army camp offered a more varied and interesting view,
among other things – except on Emancipation Day, which was once a week. When she
asked them what this was, they only smiled and said something about surprises.
That the others spoke to her at all was a relief, particularly given their passive spectating
of the beating Talinia had given her. Alpha, she mentally corrected herself, not Talinia.
Talinia was gone, dead or buried so deep within Alpha’s subconscious, Salestia doubted
she’d ever return. She’d learned this the hard way – again – the next time she saw her
sister. She’d called her by name, given her own, evoked their mother, reminded her of
their past, all to no avail. Talinia’s, Alpha’s, only reply was the rod.
Alpha’s chief interaction with the others was with this weapon, as far as Salestia could
tell, and she was quick to punish any misstep, impropriety, or threat, perceived or
otherwise, to her authority. Salestia took more than a few beatings that first week as she
tried to get through to her sister. She took several more as she learned all the rules and
regulations of the Dragon’s harem. There were a surprising number of them, and Alpha
enforced them with a robotic ruthlessness that made Salestia wonder just how much
dwarf was left in her. There were rules governing how often and with what they should
bathe; what, how much, and when they should eat; and how they could spend their free
time. They had a strict seating arrangement at dinner and the same strict order of
movement when they entered or exited a room. Alpha, of course, was first everywhere,
and Salestia, Iota as she was now called, was, of course, last.
They had to use the proper utensils when eating, wear the proper outfits when inside the
harem – the flimsy, see-through dresses that left little to the imagination – and thick, dark
robs covering every inch of their bodies, leaving only their eyes visible, when allowed
outside, which was infrequently enough. They could go out on their balconies only if
appropriately garbed and then only once a day.
There were rules for everything, but Salestia and the others didn’t do anything. Their
days were full of nothing and more nothing, only this nothing was all strictly regulated.
Eat and do nothing. Bathe and do nothing. Sit in the drawing room as a group and do
nothing. Sure, they made small talk sometimes, or read books, or played musical
instruments – those that could at least, Salestia was all thumbs – but it was to no end, no
purpose. It was just filling time.
It was ridiculous, Salestia thought, and she balked against the rules and formality, which
led to more beatings. Eventually, though, the constant pain of bruised and pounded flesh
forced her to accept her situation, if only temporarily, she assured herself. She’d figure a
way out of this gods cursed harem or a way to kill Ral and the Dragon or both.
The Dragon. He, or it, she reminded herself, hadn’t arrived yet, despite Ral’s warning of soon. Soon turned out to be more relative than Salestia realized. Weeks went by. The beatings all but stopped, though Alpha was still impetuously and irrationally cruel.
Talinia was dead to her. The already-mourned-for sister who’d been suddenly
resurrected returned to the grave, like a vampire before sunrise. There was only Alpha.
But there were others who shared her fate who weren’t Alpha, though most of the older
women looked upon the newer ones with disdain and an anger born of fear. The
hierarchy was based on who joined the harem when, but it was possible to improve one’s
rank through various deceitful and frequently violent means.
Still, some actually befriended Salestia. There was Theta, for
instance, a tall, willowy duwyn with glossy black hair and skin so dark and beautiful it
made the obsidian walls seem light by comparison. She was from the northern part of the
Empire, she’d told Salestia, and her real name was Alassandra. The Dragon had spotted
her in church one day and sent his men to her home that evening.
Then there was Gamma, a hill dwarf like Salestia, with bushy side whiskers and red hair.
She was plumper and shorter than Salestia by a matter of degree. Despite her relatively
high rank among the women, she treated the others with respect and something close to
kindness. She’d willingly went to the Dragon as a young girl, she’d told Salestia that first
night after seeking her out to explain the rules to her. Salestia didn’t need lessons in
desperate times, but she still couldn’t believe someone would want to join the Dragon’s
harem.
“Just follow that beautiful bitch Theta in everything,” Gamma had finished her detailed
list of rules with this advice and a wink that first night, “both literally and figuratively.”
She sat in a massive cushioned chair in Salestia’s bathroom, while the latter soaked in the
hot bath Gamma had drawn for her. “You’ll fuck up some of the time, but you’ll get the
hang of it.” Gamma, who claimed she’d forgotten her real name, delighted in vulgarity
and cursed as often as she could, which, given the strict propriety of the harem, was
mostly in private conversation. But she sure took advantage of the opportunity when she
had it.
Salestia had groaned in response. “Why so many dwarves?” she’d managed. Besides her
and Gamma, there was Talinia, Alpha, she corrected herself, and one more, Eta. That
was almost half the harem.
Gamma’s light eyes sparkled mischievously. “On account of our tight cunts, obviously.”
Salestia laughed despite herself, then regretted it immediately as sharp pain flashed
through her bruised ribs. “The Dragon likes raping dwarves?” she asked cautiously,
remembering what the other had said to her about her repugnant flesh. She’d never
forget that night.
“It’s not rape if you give it willingly,” Gamma cackled. “But it’s not the Dragon who
makes us wear these damn see-through shit-for-dresses. Those things are asexual, I
think. Doubt it even has a cock. No, the Dragon likes dwarves for other reasons. Ral likes us for our cunts.” She laughed again, snorting halfway into it, then laughing harder because of it.
“Ral?” Salestia asked, unable to keep the fear out of her voice.
“He’s not a monster,” she replied. “Well, not in bed, at least.” Again the cackle and
snort. “Disobey him, though,” she raised her eyebrows at the bruises covering Salestia’s face.
“When’s the Dragon coming?”
“Who knows?” she said lightly. “That bastard is always saying he’s coming and then
not. Kind of like Ral…” she lewdly winked at Salestia.
Salestia shut her eyes and sunk deeper in the tub.
“I notice you haven’t asked what the Dragon wants with us if not for our tight, wet…”
Salestia let her ears sink below the surface of the hot water. Salestia was no virgin, but Gamma was relentless in her crudeness. And she didn’t want to explain to the dwarf how she knew what the Dragon wanted from them, that she had lived through it already, that
she would never forget the feeling of her life being sucked from her body.
Or that she’d helped kill the one who’d done it to her.
❖
Ton patiently waited in the small armory he’d been led to for the signal to enter the arena.
He had the choice of a range of surprisingly high quality weapons and armor. A fair fight
would last longer and provide more entertainment, he reasoned.
It hadn’t been easy convincing the head guard he wasn’t simply looking to commit suicide by combat to
avoid the slow death of shit shoveling. The guard had a quota to meet and Ton was fresh
meat. He’d easily get a few more months out of him.
Ton, at the reluctant suggestion of Gart, had approached the guard one evening after his
ten wheelbarrows. “I want to fight,” he said without preamble.
The head guard, who’d never given the slaves his name, snorted, but otherwise ignored Ton.
“I want to fight,” Ton patiently repeated, moving closer to the duwyn, demanding his attention.
The short duwyn flicked his whip at Ton. The strike came without warning and was lightning quick.
Ton was quicker. He stepped forward and plucked the end of the whip out of the air before it could crack. “I want to fight.”
The head guard’s narrow eyes widened and he tugged at his whip. Ton held it a moment
longer before letting go. The short duwyn appraised Ton with a new understanding and Ton saw greed in his eyes. As he learned later, bets were placed on the fighters participating in Emancipation Day with a cut going to the owner, or sponsor, as they preferred to be called, of the winner.
“Cass!” the head guard shouted at one of the sentries guarding the exit of the barracks.
A huge duwyn stepped forward, spear held loosely in one massive hand. “Sir!” he said.
“Kill this one,” the chief guard commanded him with a lazy wave.
Cass didn’t stop to question the order. Doing so would have him joining Ton in the
mines. He leapt forward and thrust his spear at Ton’s chest. The large duwyn was fast
for his size and the strike told Ton he was more than capable with his spear.
He would have been better off disobeying.
Ton was a blur. He spun towards the soldier as the point of the spear whished harmlessly
past him. Elbow met head and Cass dropped to his knees, eyes empty.
The chief guard said nothing for a moment, then shook himself, as if coming out of a
dream. “Okay, you fight.”
That had been three weeks ago. Being allowed to fight hadn’t granted Ton any privileges
and he’d still had to push ten wheelbarrows of shit-earth up the long, winding ramp each
day.
Now, Ton scanned the weapons before him as he shouldered on a leather chest plate over the
cheap clothes he’d been provided. He’d never worn armor before – his magic was
protection enough – but he needed to keep up appearances. He couldn’t very well come
out naked, tattoo for all to see, wielding unbelievable powers. Sure, he’d get out of the
mines that way, but he’d only be trading one prison for another, all while announcing his
presence to the Dragon.
The Dragon.
Would he recognize Ton? Would he know it was Ton who’d killed his
comrade? It was a risk Ton had to take. The mines were slowly draining all the magic
from his body and, once that happened, he’d have no chance of escape. No chance of
rescuing Salestia.
Ton struggled with the sudden rush of emotions that filled him at the thought of the dwarf. Anger and desire, pain and pleasure, love and hate all assailed him.
He’d spent the better part of the past month allowing the pain and exhaustion of the wheelbarrow to
distract him from the fear-infused scenarios that played out in his mind. Salestia raped.
Salestia tortured. Salestia killed. He pushed himself harder each day to drive those
images away, to reach his physical breaking point so that each night his body would shut
his mind down along with itself in a desperate effort to recuperate and recharge.
It didn’t work and his dream cries joined those of his fellow prisoners, each wrestling
their own demons of depression, fear, and regret.
But now he was finally doing something about it, he told himself as he took a set of
throwing knives from a rack of blades. They were well-balanced and sharp. He
concealed them in the usual places and picked out a sword. He’d been trained in both, as
well as the bow, and he felt confident of his chances with either, magic or no. He figured
he could get away with a little bit of magic – increased speed and strength within reason
– but he wouldn’t be stopping any arrows midflight or letting swords bounce off his flesh.
A muffled sound from outside was followed by loud cheering. The crowd was ready for
bloodshed. It was good to know something got them acting normal. If he had to fight in
front of the same eerily silent crowd he’d walked through in the market….well, he’d still
fight just the same, but it would be disconcerting. Something was wrong with the people
here, something he hadn’t noticed on his journey through the Empire.
Or was that precisely it, he wondered. He hadn’t noticed. Were the people of the Empire
the same all over? Had he simply not registered this fact because he was too wrapped up
in his own pain and self-pity, too lifeless himself to see it in others? Up until now he
thought he’d done his job, scouted the Empire and its surrounding lands, noted what was
important and what wasn’t, and that was it. He’d left for the Border Lands confident the
Empire wasn’t a suitable place for his people. But had he missed something important?
More importantly, had he missed something dangerous?
He thought back to the night he saved Salestia from the Dragon. Pieces started coming
together. He hadn’t seen the larger picture before now because that picture was just so
impossible, so unlikely. But if he were correct now in his conclusions, then it meant not
only was the Empire not a potential home, this whole planet wasn’t either. At least not
without killing every last Dragon.
Before he could think more on it, the wall of his armory fell forward revealing bright
sunlight and a sand-strewn square. Well, circle, actually. It was the space within the
circular walls and it covered the mineshaft he and his fellow slaves were digging. Tall,
wooden buildings loomed around it and people were crowded on balconies and roofs to
spectate. Cheers and shouts filled the space as Ton stepped out of the armory. He
wondered whom they were cheering for. It certainly wasn’t him, nor was it the Dragon’s
champion. He had to earn the right to fight the giant.
As he scanned the wall to his right and left, he saw other openings like the one he’d step from. He wasn’t going to fight one other opponent, he realized with a sense of shock and excitement. He was going to fight seven.
An arrow whizzed by his head, nearly taking his ear with it, and he rolled instinctively to
his right and forward. A tall duwyn in leather armor like his own stood directly across
from him and had already knocked another arrow. The distance between them was far
too great for his knives to be effective. Should’ve taken a bow, he cursed as he leapt
back to his left, swatting the next arrow from the air as he did so with his sword. The
crowd gasped. Then they cheered.
Before Ton could close the gap between him and the archer, a dwarf came bursting from
the opening to his left. He carried a wicked looking axe affixed to a chain with a heavy
ball at the other end. He was swinging the ball above his head as Ton turned to face him,
ducking to avoid the third arrow the duwyn opposite him let fly as he did. From the
corner of his eye, he spotted more fighters pouring out into the sandy circle, and he hoped
the archer would find other targets while he dealt with the dwarf.
The dwarf released the balled end of his weapon at Ton’s feet, hoping to ensnare him
long enough to ax him to death. Ton leapt enough to avoid the snare and whipped his
free hand at the dwarf. His throwing knife caught the creature in the shoulder as he
pulled his chain in for another strike.
The crowd was screaming constantly at this point as battles like Ton’s raged across the
open space.
The dwarf pulled the knife out with a grunt and threw it angrily to the ground. He
snarled something in a language Ton didn’t recognize and whipped the axe end of his
weapon at Ton’s head. Ton deflected it with his sword and moved within striking
distance of his opponent. Definitely taking the bow next time, he thought, as he parried
the ball-end of the chain.
The sword was suddenly ripped from his hand.
The ball had spun around the blade with surprising quickness and the dwarf had expertly
yanked on his chain to snatch the sword away from Ton.
Ton didn’t hesitate. He didn’t need a sword. With the momentum from the dwarf’s pull,
he lunged forward and jabbed two fingers in the thing’s eyes. He followed this strike
with a flurry of lightning-fast punches to the dwarf’s head and neck, knuckles finding all
the soft spots and some of the not-so-soft ones, too. The dwarf crumpled to the ground,
throat crushed and blood oozing from a variety of orifices.
Ton spun in time to throw himself out of the way of a massive hammer wielded by an elf
so tall he may as well have been a giant. The heavy head thudded into the sandy ground
mere inches from where Ton had stood over the dying dwarf. Ton rolled to a crouch and
faced the massive elf, who had already recovered from his miss and was swinging the hammer in a blur of an arc towards Ton’s head.
The crowd was frenzied. Debris rained down on the combatants from the viewing points
around the circle. Behind the elf, Ton saw one of the beasties, as Gart called them, sword
protruding from its side, bite the head off another fighter. Ton had little time to stare, but
the creature was massive and scaly with arms like steel and claws like daggers. Further
in the distance, the duwyn with the bow was fending off two attackers. An arrow-stuck
body lay off to the side of their melee.
At least he only had the one elf to think about, Ton mused as he skipped backwards and
whipped a throwing knife at the creature’s head as the elf sought to square up and swing
again. The knife hit home and the elf…the elf didn’t fall. It was only years of training
that kept Ton from staring stupidly at the knife that had sunk to its hilt in the elf’s
forehead, years of instinct that saw him dodge yet another swing of the hammer by the elf
who should, by all rights and logic, be dead on the ground.
The elf hadn’t even grunted in pain. His head had rocked back slightly from the dagger’s
impact, but then he’d stepped forward, hammer back in motion.
It must be magic, Ton decided as he scrambled out of range of the elf’s swing. The
archer was down and the two fighters were cautiously approaching the beasty now.
The elf charged Ton, hammer held like a battering ram. The creature was so tall, Ton’s
head barely reached its waist.
Ton stood still and waited. The crowd’s shouts grew in opposite proportion to the
number of combatants, and they were certain Ton was about to have his skull smashed in.
Just before impact, when the elf had to have been sure his hammer would batter Ton to
the ground, Ton ducked and rammed his shoulder into the elf’s oncoming legs.
The crowd gasped as the elf tumbled over Ton to land face-first on the ground.
Ton was on it a split second later, knives slashing and cleaving. Ankles, knees,
hamstrings, Ton cut his way up the back of the elf, who writhed and finally twisted
enough to send Ton sprawling to the ground next to the dwarf’s corpse.
The elf rolled over into a sitting position and attempted to stand, only to have its legs
fold. Green blood poured from the wounds on its legs and it let out a moan of pain.
Ton picked up the dead dwarf’s ax-chain and swung the blade at the elf’s neck. The
creature brought the hammer up to block, but too late. The chain caught the elf on the
side of the neck and the ax spun once, twice, before the blade sunk into the creature’s
shoulder. It dropped the hammer and gripped at the chain around its neck. Ton yanked
and the chain tightened. Still the elf didn’t fall.
Ton yanked again, but this time the elf tugged back. Ton would’ve been pulled from his feet had he not let go of the chain. He stepped back, panting from the exertion. He almost laughed at the sight of the elf, legs rags and useless, knife pushed almost through
its head, and chain choking the life out of it, yet there it was, pulling the ax blade from its
shoulder and unwinding the chain.
Ton leapt forward and flung two of his remaining three knives at the elf’s chest.
The crowd’s screams intensified.
Ton kept moving as the elf twisted against the chain, all but ignoring the knives now
sticking from its chest. So much for that idea, Ton thought as he grabbed the elf’s
hammer from the ground where it lay, fallen and forgotten. The elf’s eyes widened as Ton lifted the massive weapon and took a few steps back.
The crowd fell silent, and the screams of someone, or something, dying behind Ton
echoed across the circle.
With hammer outstretched, a boost of magic strengthening his arms, Ton executed a
perfect spin and slammed the hammer into the elf’s temple.
The crowd gasped as the elf’s head bounced across the sand, green blood fountaining
through the air.
Still the elf’s hands clawed at the chain around the stump of its neck.
Ton brought the hammer up for another strike, but the living corpse slumped over, the
body catching up to the head. Its hands opened and shut and finally the thing stopped
moving entirely. Green blood pooled at Ton’s feet.
The crowd erupted.
Ton turned to see the beasty, blood covering nearly every inch of its reptilian body,
baring its sharp teeth over the corpses of two duwyns. Its eyes bored into Ton. Another
sword jutted from its torso and cuts riddled its legs, but it didn’t look like it was ready to
surrender.
Ton let the giant hammer fall and started for his sword when a horn blared.
Mummy slaves appeared and began carrying the corpses away. A figure stepped out onto
a large balcony behind the beasty. It was the duwyn who’d taken Salestia.
“Congratulations,” he shouted to the now quiet crowd, “to our two victors. We look
forward to seeing you both in the next round.” A pause. Cheers. “Get your bets in now
for the next fight!”
It took a moment for Ton to process the duwyn’s words. The melee was over. There would be no final fight to the death between him and the monster. He was done for the day.