by T. C. Edge
I stare at her, a recollection that has somehow grown faded in my mind, lighting up bright once more. Raymond. Poor Raymond...
"I'd rather not," I tell her bluntly, my mind flooding with that morbid memory.
"Really? You seemed to enjoy melting those guys down in the valley. I saw you, Amber. I saw how you took them down. It was...beautiful." A rare smile simmers on her face, the words delivered with an almost lustful sigh.
I sigh in return, though in a more conflicted, disquieted way. Yes, to a part of me, it was beautiful. To the inner flame that yearns to feast, it was perhaps the most wondrous moment of my life. Yet, the rest doesn't feel so strongly on the matter. The rest sees death and killing as a necessity, not something to yield joy. Just as Perses taught me.
"It was instinct," I say eventually, caught between a smile and a frown. "More would have died if I hadn't acted."
"Many more," she says, eyes caught in a distant, earnest stare. "We might have been overcome if it wasn't for you." She turns her eyes down the line of carriages. Outside, the noise of bodies climbing back aboard the transports begins to sound. "If Perses wasn't so busy protecting those Devotees, maybe he could have ended the fight sooner." She delivers the accusation with a grim tone, an insult to both the great Herald himself, and those he was fighting to protect.
It's too much for me, a line crossed. I reach out of the carriage window and grab her by the shoulder, forcing her eyes back on me. "What did I tell you about changing your opinions about the Devotees?" my voice rumbles. "And don't even think about questioning Perses back there."
"Why not?" she retorts, betraying herself and our mutual ranks. "It's because of him almost half of us are dead." She seems to realise her error immediately, grunting in self rebuke and shaking her head. "I didn't mean that," she says, speaking to the ground. "I'm just tired and pissed off. Don't listen to me."
My hand, still on her shoulder, weakens its grip. I slowly withdraw it as she takes a step back from the window.
"It's OK, Hestia," I say, "but just make sure you don't speak like that again. And don't come to this window to ease your own anger either. I've had just about all I can take of that." The words come unexpected, though feel strangely natural coming from my mouth. And Hestia's reaction, bowing her head and meekly nodding in submission, satisfies me too.
"Good," I go on. "Now it sounds as if we're moving off. Let's not keep the convoy waiting."
Raising a single brow, she trots off, leaving me feeling quite satisfied with my assertive performance. To become a good leader, it's something I need to work on. Hestia, due to nothing more than circumstance, will make a good training ground for me.
The convoy begins moving again, and I sit back, not exactly smug, but feeling a little more natural in my new position. Clearly, given Hestia's testimony, my bout with the Wind Elemental has been viewed with some merit. Even Perses claimed that few could have bested the man as I did.
It's hardly becoming to think it right now, not at a time like this, but it all fills me with an invigorating, almost euphoric feeling of pride and power. And at the core of it all, it's a sensation of belonging that engulfs me. A feeling that I am needed, that I am doing good. That I have found my place in this world, and have discovered something that I can truly excel in.
It just so happens that that thing is death.
I hardly even remember that I have company in the carriage when a gruff voice interrupts my self-satisfied thoughts.
"You think it's fun to kill, do you?"
I turn my eyes down to see the bearded man finally waking from his enforced slumber, his wildly blue eyes filled with a network of broken capillaries. With some effort, he manages to lift himself from his curled up position on the floor, sitting on the bench ahead of me on one side of the spacious carriage. The four others appear to be still unconscious from the bout, or otherwise sleeping.
I find myself unable to answer the question immediately as the staggeringly strong man heaves his body up before me. With wrists and ankles heavily chained, and those chains fixed to the carriage's interior, I have little fear that he'll try to assault me. I do wonder, though, if I'd be able to fight him off if he did. So quick and strong a man might just be able to snap my neck before I could roast him.
"That's telling, you know," he grunts, staring at me, eyes looking like he's just come off a three day drinking spree. "How can a girl as young as you take pleasure in it. What have they done to you here?"
"I..."
"They killed my wife, you know. They killed my sister. They killed almost everyone in my village, save those they wished to torture and transform." His blue eyes darken to a thick, deep navy. Lips curve up in anger from within that bushy, blood-encrusted beard. "I came to seek revenge for what they did to me. And here I am, captured once more. Babysat by a child who takes pleasure in death."
"I do not take pleasure in death," I say, my voice managing to rip free of its constraints. "And whatever happened to you doesn't give you the right to act the same. Massacring villages. Murdering the men and the elderly. Taking the women and children as slaves. You sound like nothing but a hypocrite."
The heavyset man laughs quietly to himself with a breathy huff. He shakes his head, eyes hunting me down as the carriage begins to roll on. "I can't control what these men do. They are nothing but barbarians," he growls, looking towards the other captives. "I never did anything to your people. I never raided a village or took life. I came for one reason, and one reason only. To get revenge on those who destroyed my world."
His words are delivered with a powerful sense of righteousness, an earnestness I find hard to ignore. I regard him without eyes of rebuke, but a desire to hear what he has to say. He seems a man resigned to his fate now, fully aware of what will befall him. A man with no reason to lie.
"It was Herald Nestor, wasn't it?" I ask him. "He did this to you."
The man visibly shudders at the name, thick shoulders rippling and drawing in. A wave of pain washes over his eyes once more. A pain still fresh, still new. That of losing his family and people. That of seeing his world destroyed.
"He came with his soldiers," the man whispers. "He took those he wanted and killed the rest. Murder. Sacrifice. All in the name of this Prime." His eyes sink away, his voice taken with it. For a moment he falls into the abyss, accosted by those dark recollections. I give him time to break free, to lift his eyes and speak again. "The men and women he captured were taken to a fort." His voice is cold now, distant. "We were told we had divinity inside us, something that needed to be awakened. But no one survived the process. No one...but me."
His eyes sink again, trying to compose himself. An urge takes me to step across towards him, to try to comfort him somehow. He seems a man utterly broken by what he's been through. A simple man drawn into a frightening world, his body awaking with powers he never knew he had. And in him, I see a dark reflection of my own experience. I feel a flutter of something, some awful shame, begin to build inside me.
Have I lost myself entirely? Can I now condone the actions of these people, the methods they employ to discover those worthy of ascending to Olympus?
I look at the man again, and realise that that was to be his path too. To have survived the process of awakening would make him worthy of joining the Children of the Prime. Would he have become a soldier, perhaps, a weapon to use in war? Would his mind, his memories, have been altered by the Overseer to make him more compliant?
Just as you've been, a voice inside me calls out, somewhere stuck deep within, locked away in the depths.
I frown as the words flutter through my mind, echoing up from below. And then, a bright light swarms through my head again, driving off the darkness, filling it with a sense of joy and relaxation, a sense of purpose and righteousness in what we here are doing.
"You have suffered terribly," I say gently. "I can see that. And I...I have no words to soothe you. All I can tell you is that Herald Nestor doesn't represent our people. I have been told th
at his methods are brutal and cruel. I am sorry you had to go through that. Please, do not tar us all with that same brush."
He regards me for a long moment with eyes I find hard to read. I feel, somehow, that I might be getting through to him. That my words might be having some effect. I manage to raise a smile, sympathetic and sweet, as the fog outside of the carriage begins to grow thick. Through the Fringe we have gone. Onto the Sacred Plains we ride.
"You seem a pleasant girl," he says eventually, staring me in the eye, his own turning to a cooler blue once more. "But you sound naive. You sound like you've been brainwashed to see such things as normal. You tell me Nestor doesn't represent you, but that isn't the truth. He came preaching the word of your Prime. He has power and influence among you, I have no doubt about that."
"He among many," I counter. "The very man you fought yesterday is nothing like him, nothing at all. He has a good heart, and only wishes to protect his people. He isn't like Nestor. He doesn't torture people to awaken their power. He merely uses his own power to protect innocent life. And that is all I aim to do too."
"How noble," the man says with a light tone of mocking. "But I heard whispers when I was a captive of your people. I heard of plans to conquer other places, other lands. The soldiers there weren't speaking of protecting what they had. They were speaking of taking what wasn't theirs. Just as they took me, my family, my friends. They, you, are a plague. And one day soon the cure will come."
"The Cure," I frown. "The Cure have been destroyed. The last remnants of their barbaric army have just been annihilated."
"I'm not talking about them," the man says with a dose of derision, eyes darting back to the other prisoners once again. "I'm not one of them. I only joined them to seek revenge and nothing more. Oh no, the true tonic to the sickness here will come. I have witnessed the goodness, and the power, in them. I know they won't stand for this wickedness and evil long."
"Haven," I whisper, peering closer at him. "You're speaking of Haven, aren't you?"
He lifts his eyes, sitting back with bearded chin raised. He seems to enjoy the light tone of fear that ripples through my voice.
"So you know," he says, nodding slowly. "You know your awful actions have been seen."
"Not mine," I breathe out, almost pained by the insinuation. "And not those of most of us here."
"I'm sorry, girl," the man growls, "but I don't believe that for a second. You, perhaps, are of good nature. Maybe others here are too. But it isn't you or they who matter. It is those at the top who need to fall. You're just a servant of their will, aren't you? You don't have any power to act freely."
"I do," I say, growing a little too flustered. "Of course I do. I choose to be here. I choose to fight to protect my people. Who wouldn't do that?"
My words spill into the carriage, and the colour of my armour begins to glow brighter. The man leans back instinctively from the heat, a heavy frown cast over his eyes as he presses himself back.
I take a steadying breath and cool my blood, easing the heat within the carriage. A silence falls for a moment, giving us both a chance to calm.
"What exactly are you?" comes his voice eventually. "I saw you out there. You were like living flame. I've never seen anything like that."
"I'm a Fire-Blood," I say proudly. "A Fire Elemental. And you seem to hate Heralds? Well, you're looking at one. I'm a Herald of War. And I'll do all I can to protect my people."
He shakes his head slowly at that, a saddened, almost disappointed cast to his eyes.
"A weapon," he says. "That's what they've made you. That was their intent for me as well. I wonder...how many others here have been sucked into their web of lies?"
I find myself without an answer, a conflict beginning to brew inside me once again. I turn my eyes from him and out of the carriage window, looking into the thick yellow-brown smog that coats the plains. Within them, the faint shadows of great statues loom. I notice one that looks like the Prime, the dual figures standing side by side. And with the sight of them, a warmth comforts my heart once again. I turn back to the man with a smile.
"My name is Amber, and my title is Herald," I tell him defiantly. "Out there, the great city of Olympus awaits. You will witness strength and power like you've never seen before. Any information you have, and are trying to hide, will be easily extracted. And perhaps, soon enough, you'll come around..."
"I will never come around," the man growls. He stares at me with an azure fire in his blue eyes, hating the world and everything in it.
And in that face another faint memory stirs inside me.
Wasn't I like this not so long ago? Wasn't it the Overseer himself telling me that I'd come around and see the light, just as I'm doing with this man now?
"I have no desire to lie. I have nothing to hide," he goes on. "Do whatever you will with me, Herald Amber. My name is Marius, proud husband to Mandy, hunter and tracker from a peaceful village far from here, and I don't care for you or your lofty titles."
I go quiet, my energy quelled by his rebuking, disrespectful tone. I feel suddenly like a child being reprimanded by someone much older, much wiser. Someone who has experienced the world and isn't to be in the least bit intimidated or lectured by a stupid girl of just seventeen, no matter how powerful and gifted.
And yes, right then, I do feel stupid. It's a feeling I hate, and one that brews anger.
I set my eyes on him again, back against the wall, belligerently fighting my own corner.
"We'll see what you care about soon enough," I tell the man called Marius. "Oh, you say you've seen the power of Haven, but just wait until you look upon Olympus. I know it was two soldiers who took out Herald Nestor and his men. I know they must be highly gifted to do such a thing. But do you think we don't have people like that ourselves? You saw Herald Perses. And you saw what I could do. Oh, we are the tip of the iceberg, Marius. Olympus is a place of gods, and no mortal city will defeat us."
He stares at me, shaking his head slowly, unperturbed by my speech. A bored grin works up onto his face, and then a huffing laugh coughs up from his lungs.
"Take me to your gods then," he smirks, full of contempt and scorn, "and let me tell them what I've told you." He leans forward, muscular body drawing his chains tight. "Your time is coming to an end," he growls. "Your evil has been seen, and will not be tolerated. Whatever happens to me, whether I'm killed or turned into a slave like you, it doesn't really matter. In the end, good will always prevail. And no force of evil here can stop it."
He leans back again, smiling in a strange, deranged sort of fashion, and then shuts his eyes tight. It is a clear sign to me that this conversation is over. And one that leaves me feeling uneasy in so many different ways.
My mind turns about, pondering his words in a renewed silence. Oh, I always believed as he does, didn't I? I always believed that Olympus and those within it were corrupt and cruel, a wicked people living off the sweat and blood and toil of others, controlling them through strength and lies. Yes, there are people like that still, of that I cannot deny. Yet there are many others of good and kind nature as well.
It isn't an evil place, not really. From what I've seen, the city is peaceful, forward thinking, and progressive. And though the people of the Fringe do live to serve them, perhaps that's just how it's meant to be. During my time there, I saw few people who were unhappy with the status quo. Who was I to ever doubt the shared feelings of a sprawling populous? Who was I to question their faith and devotion if it made them happy and content?
There are certainly black marks within my experience. The execution of Raymond and his allies was an unfortunate, harrowing event, one I fear was designed in part to reveal me to the world. It was, above all, about maintaining control, and preventing any type of mutiny from rising up from the embers of Raymond's heretical preaching.
A part of me, perhaps, can understand that. Not agree with it. Not like it. But at least understand the reasoning behind it.
I look at Marius once again, sitti
ng almost content now, a faint smile upon his bearded face. He witnessed evil, that is for sure, and Nestor's methods certainly cannot be endorsed. But he saw only a snapshot of what life is like here. He doesn't truly know who and what we are.
I sit there as the convoy rolls on, and convince myself of it all. I tuck the dark thoughts deep within, and let the light consume me. Sliding nearer to the window, I turn my eyes back out and watch the world pass by. My world. Not perfect, by any means, but the one I've been given.
And the one I must protect.
59
The last hours upon the road are uncomfortable, and not only because I'm travelling in one of the functional military carriages rather than Black Thunder. No, it is being in the presence of Marius that does it, sitting there enveloped by his dark, brooding energy.
We share no further words as the city finally looms ahead, the thickset man sitting with arms folded and eyes closed. While the other captives look up through the windows in wonder and dread at the mighty walls and great gate, Marius merely ignores it all as I once did, reflecting my own experience from weeks ago.
I notice a slight change in the outer bastions as we reach the drawbridge and start to cross the moat. Above, set upon the walls, I see a larger contingent of soldiers, eagle eyed Farsights searching the distance for any looming threat. And when we enter into the courtyard, paved in its multi-coloured stone, a further military presence reveals itself, several large troops of men seemingly preparing to march out and protect the borders of the Fringe, as Perses ordered.
By the looks of the gathering of citizens and interested onlookers, word seems to have spread beyond military boundaries of our fatal mission. Many of them stand in solemn silence as we roll gently into the city, the convoy now lacking one carriage that set out in another direction to deliver the grieving Devotees to their new homes and villages.
Headed as always by Black Thunder, the people bow and dip their eyes in respect. I don't know if it's for Herald Perses that they salute, or whether they somehow know the dreadful cargo his great carriage now hauls. Either way, a reverential silence accompanies our way back into the city and out of the main square, our path taking us towards the very same dungeons that I once inhabited not so long ago.