I had thought the mines a terrible place, but this is different. In the mines, there was some semblance of life, even if it was subdued and submissive, but here, there is nothing, not even the sound of crickets.
Harsh clacking sounds emanate around us as the doors swing open, beckoning us to enter and warning us that there is no escape from this place of hell. As they come to a stop, boiling heat smacks me in the face, causing me to sweat, and the desire to run away comes over me, urging me to flee, to escape to a place of safety, but I remain where I am, unwilling to show fear or weakness. I am an arbiter. I am Noni. I do not run from fear. I embrace it.
Inhaling as deep as I can,—the sun pokes through the clouds for a second as though to say good-bye before disappearing again—I step forward, ahead of Commander Vye, and delve into the dark chambers of foreboding and despair, ready to face the fires of hell and to overcome whatever challenge has been laid before me. Once inside, I find myself in darkness, save for an orange glow at the bottom of a circular staircase. Even the sun dares not enter this place, blocked by the terror that lies deep within, as though an invisible wall prevents it from stepping even one inch into its realm.
A guard motions for us to go down the stairs.
We obey. Together, Commander Vye and I step onto the first step, and the lack of a metallic ring surprises me, as though even sound itself is too afraid to exist here. One fateful step at a time, I descend further into the darkness, heading for the orange luminescence before me, a moth unable to resist the glow of a lamp, and steel myself, commanding my anxiety to leave me, as it will only get me killed. I try to look around, to find a route for escape, but the black walls blend in with the darkness so well, that I feel as though I am encased in a hole, one that could well be my final resting place. The silence surrounding me makes me want to scream, to yell, to beg for mercy, but I clamp my mouth shut. Pleading only brings death.
I reach the bottom of the stairs and stand before another giant doorway, and as soon as I step off it, a deafening roar strikes me, filling my ears with its thunder and smashing the wall of silence that has imprisoned me, and I want to cover my ears, unable to handle this amount of noise, but I mustn’t show weakness. I must be like Commander Vye, who stands proud and unyielding, conveying no amount of fear or submissiveness, but is resolute in her pursuit of seeing this task through. Squaring my shoulders, I straighten my posture, emulating her and refusing to bow before this place and the unknown that awaits me on the other side of this doorway.
I walk forward and step in to the orange light as though I am being born for a second time, passing from darkness into light, but this light brings no joy or hope; it is the sharp blade of the reaper’s chosen weapon. Fires loom ahead of me, stretching from the floor to the ceiling, demanding more fuel only to be satiated by naked corpses that inch their way toward them on a conveyor belt. One by one, they drop into the flames, and I watch as these soulless vessels are disposed of, having become nothing more than a common piece of garbage, a waste of space that is best disposed of. Unable to peel my eyes away, I stalk forward until a rail stops me, forcing me to stand still with my mouth parted, watching the hypnotic motion of bodies making their way to their final destination. Dumped, like rotted food, not even afforded the decency of a proper farewell.
Someone shoves a handkerchief in front of my face, forcing me from my stupor, and for the first time, the putrid smell of decay pierces my nose, embedding itself into my brain as a permanent fixture, a parasite I will never be rid of, and with each breath I take, that odor morphs into an acrid film on my tongue, reminding me of stale meat that has sat out too long and was allowed to go green. The memory of Molers forcing me to eat spoiled meat just to prove a point flashes in my mind. I vomited for the next 12 hours after that. From then on, I only ate meat that smelled fresh. The handkerchief hops up and down in front of me, reminding me of where I am, and I look up at the arbiter handing it to me, while her other hand holds another piece of cloth over her nose and mouth. None of the armed guards have such a thing over their face, but perhaps they can no longer smell it, or their helmets block it enough to make it bearable. She waves the cloth at me again, and I shake my head at her, refusing what temporary comfort it could provide. Commander Vye’s sharp eyes watch me, taking in my refusal of the cloth, and she takes the material she had placed around her face and drops it on the floor, not wanting to be outshone by someone under her command.
The arbiter in charge motions for us to follow him, and as we do, I notice movement in the shadows. People, condemned to a worse fate than burning in the ravenous fires, place bodies on the conveyor belts, choosing to hide in the shadows than face the shame of what they are forced to do. The hollow expressions on their faces unnerve me. Whatever humanity they possessed before coming here has been stripped from them, turning them into automatons who do the bidding of their master. Loud voices echo from behind us, and I swing around to see what the commotion is about. A man refuses to lift another corpse onto the conveyor belt. Without a single word, a guard raises his weapon and puts a hole in the man’s head, and before his body touches the floor, other workers swoop in and strip him of his clothes before dumping him on the belt. The belt carries him to me, allowing me to get a good look at him, reminding me of just how fleeting everything is, and as I watch his body be carried to the fire, the feeling that his dead eyes staring straight into mine is a warning wafts over me.
Commander Vye snaps her fingers, jerking me from my moment of silent wondering, and I hurry after her as she follows the guard guiding us. He leads us through the maze of conveyor belts and the people in the shadows stripping bodies of the possessions they had in life. We shove our way past them, ignoring them as they do their job. My shoulder bumps into a man holding a shirt coated in gray dust, masking its once vibrant blue color, with a tear stretching from the armpit of the left sleeve to the bottom of the hem, followed by blood, turned brown from oxidation. My mouth starts to apologize for bumping into him, but I stop myself, before I give myself away. I am an arbiter and not supposed to care if I disturb someone in their work, but that isn’t what stops me. His hollow eyes, bleak and soulless just like this place, stare past me, as though he does not see me, almost as though I am nothing more than a ghost to him, stop me, eating away at me until they have devoured the last bit of my humanity. He says nothing, makes no noise, and gives no indication that he knows I am here as his hands remove the pants from the body in front of him, flopping it around with ease, as though he has done this hundreds of times. I glance around me. A bubble of indistinguishable noises roar so loud that my ears become deaf to everything else around me while dark figures remain focused on their task, surrounded by moving shadows traveling into dancing light, wanting to be seen instead of forgotten. I am alone. Cut off. Lost in a sweltering ravine, the only guest death has invited to a feast of burned flesh and putrid decay.
I cannot move. Despair greeted me at the mines, but this is not despair—it’s hopelessness. Chained to the ground, I remain where I am among those stripping the bodies, dressed in my black uniform as though I am death, as though I am the reaper who has condemned them all to such a horrendous fate. This is why Tapiwa wanted me to be brought here. This is a reminder of where I will end up if I disobey Arel’s commands. The squeaking wheels of the conveyor belt pull me from my stupor, forcing me to look at the body of a woman as it passes by me on its way to the fires. Her eyes, clouded from death, stare at me, accusing me of being her executioner, of condemning her to burn in heartless fires instead of giving her a proper farewell. Without thinking, I reach up and place my index and middle finger on her eyes, closing them so that she will not have to look at the soot-covered ceiling or at the terrifying flames that are always hungry. Perhaps she can dream before she is burned, floating on waves of serenity. The conveyor but carries her corpse to the flames and dumps it without a second thought, and I wonder who she was and what crime she committed to end up here.
An alarm blares, its inc
essant beeping pounds my eardrums, making me want to cover them, but I dare not to. I am an arbiter, not a terrified child. Everyone moves to the side as the alarm sounds, and I do the same, while looking at the flashing red lights that circles us, warning us of something that is coming. A hole in the ceiling opens up, allowing me to see into the silo above it, but before I can ponder what it is, a wave of corpses plummet from the hole and to the floor, adding to the pile of death’s children, forming little mountains. Some of the bodies roll from the top all the way to the bottom like rocks on a mountain, but instead of a roaring thunder, the only noise they make is that of soft thuds. One stops by my foot, and I look down at it, while my heart skips a couple of beats. For a moment, I believe that it is Sheila lying on the cold concrete floor in front of me, but as I study the girl’s face, I realize that it is not Sheila—the pit in my stomach dissipates as this fact sinks in—but a girl about her age, who looks a lot like her. Fresh bruises cover her body, and her face is still swollen from having been struck; she is no more than a few hours deceased. Swallowing a lump that has lodged itself in my throat, I pull my foot away from the girl’s body and step back, moving away from her and toward Commander Vye, all the while reminding myself that Sheila is back at the manor, alive and waiting for me.
Commander Vye gives me a reprimanding look for dawdling, and I glance away, unable to meet her unforgiving gaze. She turns back toward the guard guiding us, and I follow her, taking one last glance at the girl’s corpse—someone is already stripping it—and the foreboding notion that builds within me, unnerving me. We reach a patch of light, and relief floods over me, glad to be away from the darkness and its cold residents. A woman stands on a platform in the orange beam of light with her hands on her hips, close to her weapon, watching us as we come toward her.
“Welcome,” she says to Commander Vye and me, “to hell.”
She steps away from the light, though it seems to follow her no matter where she goes, accentuating her stocky features, putting her burly muscles on full display, letting everyone here know that she is in charge. No one watches her, except for me and Commander Vye. Not even the guards escorting us bother looking at this woman. My eyes stay glued to her, watching her every move as she stalks to a set of stairs in a regal manner and an ominous feeling geminates in my stomach, growing by the second as each of her steps echoes around us, drowning the roars of the fires behind us as though they too are afraid of this woman. Thoughts about what she had done to get assigned to this place rush through my mind, each worse than the last because she must have done something unforgivable. Why would anyone want to be assigned here? Unless…
“My name,” the woman says as she steps off the platform, each word leaving her mouth at the exact moment her foot stomps on a step, “is Commander Aeron.”
Shit.
There isn’t an arbiter in Arel who does not know that name. Even Commander Vye’s cheeks twitch upon hearing the name: it is synonymous with death and carnage. It is rumored that she has marks on her body, one for every enemy she has killed; her body must be coated in tattoos by now. Though against regulation, the arbiter council decided to allow her this one bit of deviancy because of what she is able to accomplish. Everywhere her names goes, fear precedes it while death follows. Aeron—Aeron the Butcher. Stories were told to the recruits in the training facility, and the recruits repeated the stories among themselves, where they grew and evolve, or remained true to the original. As I watch her stride in front of the arbiters under her command, what I had once thought of as embellished tales told to frighten us into submission look more realistic by the second.
When she was a recruit, she murdered her roommates—all of them. She never gave a justification for such an act. When the warden on her floor saw her come out in the morning coated in blood, he rushed into the room to see what had happened and found a room covered in entrails, blood, bits of bone, severed fingers, two eyeballs, a dissected brain (if you could call it that since it had been cut into thin strips that were woven together to form a sort of rope), bits of teeth, and a flab of skin that looked as though it had been fileted. The warden demanded to know what had happened, but all she did was stare at him, a predator sizing up its prey, with a sardonic grin on her face. She was put in detainment, but the council decided to let her live, to nurture her dark nature for their own purposes. I remember an older recruit telling me this story and he demonstrated every part of it. I did not sleep for a week, and it still haunts me even now.
Her murderous ways did not stop there. There is another story about her first assignment at one of our outposts. It was attacked by barbarians, and over 100 arbiters were killed, but not Aeron. It is said that the commandant of her outpost panicked and left his post, and that she took charge. She turned the battle around and forced the barbarians to flee back into the wildlands where they belonged, but not before sending a message. She had managed to capture their leader. To ensure that they never attacked again, Aeron strung him up on a pole just outside the outpost where all could see, unconcerned that someone might take a shot at her, and gutted him; she ripped out his intestines and chopped them into smaller pieces, throwing each piece at the barbarians watching from the trees, yelling at them to take the pieces back to their village, her blood soaked uniform instilling fear into any who watched. The body hung out there for weeks, but Aeron never allowed it to be taken down, even when its putrid smell made any unfortunate enough to be nearby vomit.
Sometime later, she was tasked with cleaning out the very settlement that the attackers had come from. If Arel wanted to make a point, they succeeded. Aeron not only attacked it, making sure that the barbarians who lived there were forced to leave, she made sure that they would never reside there again. She ordered their fields to be salted so that their crops would die, but that is not the worst of it: every man, woman, and child was tied to a post and left to die the most agonizing death. A trail of bodies, left out to rot, stretched from the settlement to the outpost, and it is said that she walked among the carnage, pleased with her handiwork—an artist and her painting. As I ponder the stories told of her, I can’t help but wonder why she is here?
Commander Aeron steps in front of me, and I feel her cold eyes scrutinizing me, taking in every detail of my posture, every twitch, every uncontrollable spasm that her gaze brings out. A smirk crosses her face, telling me that she is pleased by the fear that her very presence instills. I do my best to keep my eyes straight ahead and keep my focus on something in the background as an incessant amount of warmth builds around my neck, stretching down my back and to my waist as droplets of sweat form, causing my uniform jacket and undershirt to cling to me, forming some sort of seal. I want to move. I want to get away from her, but I cannot. If I do, it will show weakness and weakness is never tolerated.
“You must be Arbiter Noni,” Commander Aeron says in a stern voice, and I smell the decayed bits of meat, that she must have eaten hours before my arrival, on her breath.
I remain silent. There is no point in saying anything. She knows who I am. She knew before I arrived here. This entire venture was arranged by Tapiwa, and now I know why: it is a warning, a warning of what will happen to me if I continue to show mercy toward those Arel has deemed expendable.
“Well?” snaps Commander Aeron.
“You have not asked me a question, commander,” I reply. She hasn’t. What did she expect me to say? Yes, I’m Noni and you’re a tyrannical bitch? Such a reply will get me sent straight into the fires. Chase’s words echo through my mind: do what you have to, to survive. I keep repeating them, reminding myself of the promise I had made to him earlier, and to Sheila and Gwen. If anything happens to me, a far worse fate will befall to them.
“What do you think of my empire?” Commander Aeron asks.
“Empire?” I reply, unsure of what to say, but knowing that no one in Arel has an empire, except for the two presidents, and to say otherwise is punishable by death.
“My domain then.” Commander Aeron bea
rs down upon me as I take in her well-formed muscles that are twice the size of mine, and I know that she can crush me with one blow if I anger her, but I cannot stand her arrogance. This is all a test. I know it is. A test to see if I will break, if I will succumb to the fear that the crematoriums always instill in people, but seeing it now, seeing how the people here act like mindless drones as they throw corpses—the remains of individuals who once had hopes, wants, and desires—into the blazing inferno that hungers for more, my fear turns to anger, which transforms into defiance. I refuse to be broken, to allow this woman and her gruesome reputation to force me to coil into a ball, begging for mercy.
“Perhaps you need to see more of it,” Commander Aeron says. She motions for us to follow her and both Commander Vye and I do. Workers work in wanton repetition as they continue to strip lifeless bodies of their meager possessions before tossing them onto the conveyor belt for their final farewell. Debilitating heat singes my skin and smoke spews from the chimneys, leaking into the chamber, causing any who breathe it to choke, assuming the smell of rot hasn’t already suffocated them, though my sense of smell no longer detects it, having become used to the death surrounding me.
As Commander Aeron leads us to another part of the crematorium, I do my best to keep my face emotionless, devoid of any humanity, otherwise I risk being outed as a dissenter, but inside my heart aches for the souls condemned to this place. Whatever humanity they had before coming here has been stolen from them. Despite my efforts, I turn my head just a little to watch as a man collapses from exhaustion, and like the one earlier, those next to him lift him up, and dump him on the conveyor belt. He screams in terror as he is carried to the fire. He tries to claw his way off the belt, but bony hands push him back down, refusing him mercy, and his screams morph into agony as he is dumped into the fires, before being silenced forever and death’s cold hand grips my back, warning me that I will be next if I am not careful.
Ensnared (Enchained Trilogy Book 2) Page 27