by D. N. Hoxa
It took me a very long time to navigate the unknown terrain, but the dead tree trunks kept me company. I stopped to rest a few times but never for longer than a couple of minutes. If only one of those men saw me, I was a goner, and Millie would be, too. So I kept on going until I finally made it to the other side of the mountain and saw two large wooden gates in front of me. Unguarded. The first red flag.
The left gate was pulled open just slightly, and through the crack I could see inside.
The ground was covered in grey sand. About ten feet away from the gates was a line of huge containers made of wavy aluminum, some grey, some black, and some the color of rust. I counted eleven of them, and they blocked my view completely, but they would also keep me hidden from whoever was on the other side.
Taking in a deep breath, I slipped through the open gate and ran to the containers. I decided to move to the left because the last container ended with the wall of what I guessed was the mining site. It felt safer, and the more I walked, the more I could hear.
I could hear them talking—men and women—and it sounded like they weren’t too far away, maybe even just behind the containers. I needed to be careful. There were many footprints on the sand, which meant people frequented that part of the site often. I needed to find a hiding place asap, but where? The metal containers on either side of me had no doors, which meant their backs were turned to me, and I had no idea what was inside them. From what I’d seen from the mountaintop the day before, I was somewhere on the outskirts of the mining site but I had no idea how far the tunnels were.
And, to be honest, I had no idea how I was going to go about finding Millie in that huge place. I stopped to take a deep breath and gather my thoughts. The hopelessness I felt wasn’t going to help me. I needed to stay positive. It didn’t matter how bad it was going to get—I was going to find Millie.
But before I could make myself believe, the voices I heard became louder. My eyes snapped open. Sweat beads slipped down my brows, and goose bumps covered my skin. I couldn’t tell from which way the voices were coming. If I ran into them, I would have signed my death warrant with my own hands—mine and Millie’s.
As the voice grew louder and louder, it was obvious that there was only one thing I could do if I wanted to remain hidden: climb the containers. Pretty damn difficult to do since the cuts on the aluminum sheets were barely two inches deep. If I didn’t try, I was going to get caught, so it was a no brainer. With a deep breath, I pulled myself myself up.
The slippery surface of the container was not my friend. My sweaty fingertips slipped every time I tried to hold onto the shallow cuts and waves, but at least my boots had rubber in them. The louder the voices became, the bigger my panic.
My fingers slipped seven times in a row before I could pull myself up a few inches above ground. The container was more than twenty feet high, but I forgot all about it when the voices were so close, I could actually hear what the people were saying. Adrenaline pumped my blood until my heart felt like it would jump out of my chest at any second. I climbed like my life depended on it, and as soon as I lay down on my stomach on top of the container, I heard the footsteps turning the corner. Holding my breath on instinct, I closed my eyes and focused on my ears, half of me sure that I’d hear the people calling that an intruder was in their midst.
But the footsteps grew closer and closer, and nobody screamed bloody murder. They hadn’t seen me.
“There’s no point in making bets when everyone’s going to bet on the same thing,” a man was saying.
“Ah, the good old days when people still believed,” said a woman with a laugh. “Ain’t that right, worm? You used to believe once, didn’t you?”
No answer, but her friends—two other men by the sound of it—joined her laughter.
Curiosity got the best of me. Moving as slowly as was possible, I dragged my body closer to the edge of the container to take a look.
“I don’t get why they’re still trying, honestly. There’s nothing here,” said one of the men, just as I raised my head and saw their backs.
The woman walked in between her friends, a good four inches shorter than them both. The three of them wore black—the same uniform as the men who’d come after us the day before. The men who’d captured Millie.
But that wasn’t what took my breath away.
Ahead of them walked four people. I honestly couldn’t tell their gender. The grey clothes they wore barely hung on their emaciated bodies—bodies that could barely move. Flesh and bones were all that remained on them. They walked with their heads down, with shovels in their hands, like they were on the way to dig their own graves while the three guards laughed their hearts out.
My first instinct was to grab the knife and go after them. I could take three, couldn’t I? I was well rested—hungry but well rested. I could save those people.
But as soon as they turned the corner, I finally thought to look ahead.
There weren’t only three guards.
There weren’t only four prisoners.
There were many, many more of both.
I forgot where I was and stood up on the container. Before me were more than two dozen containers arranged in two straight lines by the walls of the hole in the ground. To their side was the center of the mining site, which I’d seen from the top of the mountain, with countless tunnels running around it like snakes. To the sides, several piles of what looked like bones were left in plain sight for everyone to see. In the middle of it all were the people.
You could easily spot the guards—they were all dressed in black.
You could easily spot the prisoners—most looked to be closer to their deaths than the sleeve of my shirt was to my hand. They all wore torn clothes, too, and they all had some kind of a digging tool in their hands. The containers were put very close together, so I didn’t even need to jump from one to the other as I walked closer and closer to the center to see better.
More guards. More prisoners.
But they weren’t prisoners. It became clear to me as soon as I saw most of the site: these people were slaves.
For the longest moment, I just stared at the people moving from one tunnel entrance to the other in a hurry.
If Millie was here…
For the second time, realization hit me like a fist to the face: all these slaves were too small, too obedient, too…ordinary looking to be of Alfheimr.
All these slaves looked human.
“Intruder!”
The shout pulled me out of the trance violently. My breath caught in my throat when I turned around to see who’d called. Three more guards dressed in black were at the other end of the container line. In front of them were four slaves.
No, no—three slaves.
Three slaves and Millie.
People began to run seemingly from all sides, all at once. The guards had their swords in their hands as they came for me, and others from the other side were the same. Taking my knife out was useless, but it gave me a sense of safety I needed as I ran right where I came from on top of the containers. I’d seen what I needed to see—I’d seen the place and I’d seen Millie. She was alive and I knew the terrain—at least somewhat. I could come back at nightfall now. I just needed to escape the guards coming for me first.
I felt Millie’s eyes on me while I ran. I felt everyone’s eyes on me, but I didn’t stop until I reached the last container. Using the momentum I’d gained, I jumped in the air and hit the ground rolling, the hope that I wouldn’t break anything very high right until I made impact. My elbows and my shoulders hurt like they’d been ripped apart from the rest of my body, but after rolling three times, I landed on my feet. Focusing only on my legs, I managed to put one foot in front of the other without falling until the pain on my upper body faded a bit. Ahead, dirt and sand awaited me, called my name, asked me to hurry up. As soon as I got into the woods again, I was going to be safe. There, I could hide. There, I could survive for another day.
I didn’t turn around to s
ee if the guards were close or not, I just ran. Shouts and footsteps were coming from everywhere so I couldn’t calculate the distance. That’s why I was shocked when a hand grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me back. It was the equivalent of hitting a screen—I was thrown back by such force, I was sure my ribs would break.
When I hit the ground on my back, I saw the bear of a man dressed in black standing to my side, looking at me like he wanted to cut me open and see what was under my skin. The knife was in my hand, and I was going to use it just as soon as I could fill my lungs with air again, but before that could happen, a pair of hands appeared on the man’s face.
His head turned left real quick.
His body hit the ground two seconds later, revealing Sim.
He looked at my face once and then he looked behind me. “You fool,” he mouthed, and I only had one second to get back to my feet before the other guards reached us. They were all of Alfheimr, most of them Diviners and Arcs. My jaw apparently remembered their knuckles. The knife was in my hand, and I used it to the best of my abilities. The remorse, the guilt of taking a life was gone. Raw fear made me move like I never had before, and the more blood spilled at my hands, the stronger I felt. Five guards were fighting us, but a lot more were coming. Sim fought with his bare hands at an incredible speed. We could do this—together, we could escape. I didn’t question why he’d come back for me, I was just glad he had.
The other three guards who reached us were faster to jump into action when the first five were all dead on the ground. I was wounded in a lot of places, but for now the pain didn’t register. For now, the pain didn’t matter. The guard in front of me aimed his sword at my gut, but I jumped to the side and hit him in his elbow. Not hard enough to make him drop his sword but enough to gain myself a second to take his feet from under him. As soon as he hit the ground, I reached for a sword on the ground, one that had belonged to a friend of his, now dead at my feet, and I used it to stab the guard on the back of his neck just as he got up on all fours. I felt the second the tip tore through his skin and flesh. I felt it in my bones when his soul left his body and the horror of it didn’t make sense to me, not when there were more of them running, coming for us.
I spun around, sure that I had more to give, but I didn’t. I’d miscalculated the whole thing: the hunger, the wounds, all the blood I’d lost. The view in front of me swam, and I couldn’t see how many of them were coming—just a black sea wave eager to swallow me whole. By the time my vision cleared, someone hit me with a fist to the nose and I fell back. My feet got caught on the body of the guard I’d just killed, and I fell on top of him hard. Blood oozed from my nose and mouth. It seemed the sucker who’d hit me had broken my teeth, too. I didn’t get the chance to check, though. When I could open my eyes again, all I saw was a face so mean I’d remember it until I died—and a fist coming for me. I couldn’t see Sim, I couldn’t hear anything—just the ringing in my ears until it, too, was gone and nothing remained but darkness.
The sound of metal hitting stone was my wakeup call. My ears still rang, but at least I could feel every part of my body. I wasn’t tied up, and my teeth weren’t broken. Something cold pressed against my forehead, startling me.
“Morgan?” she whispered. Millie.
My eyes snapped open, and I saw her face, pale and terrified. I was lying on the ground, and she sat beside me, her eyes full of tears, her ice-cold hands touching my face. I grabbed her by the wrist and held on while the memories rushed back to me. The mining site, the humans, the guards…Sim.
I sat up fast and blinked the blur away. They’d gotten me. The guards had knocked me unconscious, but had they caught Sim?
The mining site stretched long and wide before me. The people, the human slaves moved with their heads down and shoulders hunched, never daring to raise their eyes.
“Where…where…” I wanted to ask where Sim was, but loud laughter caught my attention.
The black uniforms of the guards not twenty feet away from me stood out like a sore thumb, but that wasn’t what made my knees tremble.
The orange of his eyes reminded me of nightmares you couldn’t escape from. All the bad and the worse that had happened to me in the past three years seemed to connect directly to that man. I couldn’t decide which was stronger: the need to run to him and break his neck, or the fear that made me want to turn around and hide in one of those tunnels forever.
I should have known. From the very beginning, I should have known. Lion-eyes wasn’t just someone you killed. Not even the Diviners of Kall could match him. It all clicked in place as his lips tugged into an arrogant smile. A victorious smile.He had me—the fool in this story.
Sennan told me that he couldn’t protect me if I left Vanah. He said there were worse things out here than I could ever imagine.
It looked like he was right all along.
The Diviners of Kall had asked Lion-eyes a question I hadn’t understood at the time, hadn’t even given it a second thought. Haven’t you taken enough already?
Now, I understood. All the humans playing the part of slaves around me made sure of that.
That’s why no human who left Vanah had ever returned.
That’s why the masters had sent Lion-eyes and his friends to find us.
They brought humans here, to the mining site for whatever fucked up reason I wasn’t even sure I wanted to understand. They’d succeeded in bringing me here, too. They’d led me right into the claws, and I hadn’t even suspected a thing.
“Move, weakling!”
Something hard hit me on my left shoulder. I spun around fast, ready to fight whoever had caught me by surprise. The face of the guard dressed in black clothes took up all of my vision before I realized there were four more of them behind him. And behind me.And to my sides. The guard had hit me with a shovel—an old shovel that had seen much better days, and he was waiting for me to grab it. I did—I can’t tell you why.
“I said, move!” the guard shouted in my face.
Every cell in my body vibrated in anger. The shovel wasn’t the ideal weapon by any means, but it would have to do. I raised my arm, so eager to hit him right in that crooked nose of his, when someone grabbed my free hand tightly.
“Morgan, no,” Millie whispered. “Please, don’t.”
The guard smiled at my hesitation. Did he think I was afraid?
He stepped back, and with his friends in tow, he left us to go shout at some other poor soul trapped in that huge hole in the ground. Millie laced her arm with mine and pulled me back.
“To the left,” she said in a whisper. “Look to the far left.”
I did. And I saw what couldn’t be seen from a distance.
The woman was big, a good head taller than the tallest man there. She was completely naked, save for an old, torn cape that had used to be white hanging around her shoulders, and the hood shielded half her face. Her blonde hair fell in dirty, thin strings, all the way to her hips, covering her breasts. Her eyes, so blue they could pierce right through you quicker than a knife, were visible from a hundred feet away. She stood by the walls of the mining site, almost one with the dirt behind her, not moving a single muscle. She held a staff as tall as her in her right hand and either slept with her eyes open, or watched, unblinking.
“There’s four of them,” Millie whispered in my ear and pulled me yet again to the side.
“Who are they?” I asked with half a voice.
“What’s left of the Valkyries, or so they say.”
Well, fuck. Sennan said that all Valkyries, devoted soldiers of Odin, died when their magical weapons were destroyed, but then again, he’d never mentioned a mining site full of human slaves, either. Maybe he didn’t know.
But he probably did. I just never knew how to decode his words before.
“I can only protect you here in Vanah, Morgan.”
“Don’t take your freedom for granted, Morgan.”
“There are far worse things out there, Morgan.” No shit.
&nbs
p; It wasn’t worth much, but now I knew.
Holding onto the shovel, I let Millie drag me until daylight disappeared and the light of the small gas lamps mounted on the muddy walls of the tunnel covered me. The smell was unbearable: dirt and piss rolled into one. Bile rose up my throat, and I had to cover my mouth to keep from throwing up.
“What the hell is going on here?” I watched the humans with their head downs, walking deeper into the tunnel where the darkness seemed to swallow them whole.
“Morgan, you need to calm down.” Millie grabbed my face in her hands, but I pushed her away.
“What’s going on? What the hell is going on?” I followed a woman with a braid that reached below her butt, but I couldn’t make myself take more than three steps before I turned to the entrance again. Light. Real light. I needed the light.
“Morgan, please. If you don’t calm down, they’re going to take you. Just…please,” Millie urged me again, but she no longer tried to touch me.
“Take me? Take me where?” It felt like everywhere I looked, doors slammed in my face. Muddy doors, at that. “Just tell me what the hell is going on?!”
Though she was small, Millie managed to slam me hard against the muddy wall of the tunnel. Surprised, I forgot about the people walking around us and focused on her.
“Shut up and keep your head down, Morgan. They’re going to take you away!” she whispered, then with her hand on my cheek, she pushed my head toward the entrance of the tunnel so fast, she almost broke my neck. I didn’t get the chance to complain when I saw two of those awful guards standing there with their arms crossed, watching me like they couldn’t wait to get their hands on me. I could probably take them, but how many more would follow?
“Walk with me and don’t say a word until I do.” Again, Millie grabbed me by the arm and spun me around like I weighed nothing. She dragged me deeper into the tunnel as fast as she could until the entrance was only a distant light.
I was claustrophobic, apparently. I couldn’t get myself to breathe properly. Charles’s face came in front of my eyes. You’re losing it, he said—or maybe it was the voice in my head. I was losing it like I hadn’t in a long time, and I felt like there was a hole under my feet sucking me in like quicksand. I needed to snap out of it. I needed to snap out of it now.