by K Kazul Wolf
Pain. It’s blinding, numbing, the world swirling into nonexistence. It’s like what Carita did to me when she met me, an illusion boiling my blood.
My head bangs against the ground. It goes black, numb, nothing.
Until it isn’t.
I gasp, trying to roll over, get to my feet. But my wrists are tied, my ankles bound.
Finally, I manage to get to my knees.
We’re in a long room, lined with paintings and portraits. They all feature dragons, whether human or beast. There are no ground dwellers or illusionists who would be featured in a place like this. Small tables sit along the walls, holding statues, vases.
“There, little illusionist. I knew we’d get you up somehow.” The king sits a ways away, raising his voice so it reaches me. He’s perched on an ornate chair, not quite a throne, but cushioned and more colorful than your average seat. He digs his teeth deeply into what looks like a guava, the juice dribbling down his face. It doesn’t seem to bother him. “Your idiot beast woke up before you, but as you see, we’ve since exhausted him.” He nods vaguely to my right. “It’s your time to give us results now.”
Slowly, I turn.
Vito lays human and crumpled on the ground, bound in the same way I am. Blood forms a small pool around his head, scattered bits of a broken chair lying on and around him. He isn’t moving. I don’t know if he’s breathing.
I scream his name, my voice tearing at my lungs. I launch myself forward, wiggling and crawling like a beast, desperate. Is he okay? He has to be okay. They can’t have…no.
Hands grab my arms and I scream again, a guttural, animal noise. Vito. Vito, Vito.
“Ah, ah, ah, not done with you yet.” He waves the guava around like a scepter, the men gripping me tighter, struggling to keep hold of me. I keep squirming but I can’t use my hands, can’t use my legs. But, an illusion. He can’t stop that. My tattoos pull against my skin, my limbs going limp as the energy drains from me. I push through it, gasping to focus past it, on the water that is always flowing around me.
But there’s nothing in this room. No moisture.
No, it’s not that.
I can’t feel it. Something’s…blocking me from it.
“Silly little illusionist, wearing your heart on your sleeve. Or, well, in this case, skin.”
No. He used my words against me? Horror cuts through my gut. That…that can’t be possible.
“Why?” I choke out. “Why are you doing this?”
“You, my slithering friend, happen to know how to work illusions in an unusual method. Or at least your dragon friend does.” He takes another dribbling bite. “How was he able to change back without consuming illusionist flesh? Considering the lengths the boy went through to avoid it, I doubt he flew down and gorged himself on castaways.”
Lies. So many lies, so much deceit, too many deaths. “I don’t give a damn about that. Why are you doing this? Why do you keep pressing us, pushing us into your boxes, blindfolding us from any sort of reality?”
His lips purse, considering. Then he shrugs, taking another bite and chewing it slowly before he answers. “Because this world needs protecting, and I don’t see anyone else attempting to do it.”
Protecting this place. The words dry in my mouth for a moment, hard to grasp. He can’t honestly think that. “You’re protecting no one in this world other than yourself. This city of yours— No. This world is your charnel. A place for bones and bodies, not for people to live in, to love in, to enjoy life. And you’ve somehow got it in your head that you aren’t smothering life with every breath you take? You are the world’s greatest liar, my king.”
He simply raises an eyebrow. Not angry or offended, but amused by my accusations. “How like dirtied blood. Not that I expect you to appreciate me, my work. No one has appreciated what dragons have done to save this world for centuries, other than the dragons themselves. Before you accuse me of only serving dragons, I’ve heard the truth from the last of the veterans from the great war themselves, illusionist. This world was once an absolute bloodbath.”
The king rises, striding forward with the grace of a predator, of his bestial side. “So the dragons took command. We regulated the world, all to keep you and your worm friends safe and as peaceful as possible.”
“Peaceful?” I scoff. “This world is far from peaceful.”
“Oh?” He pauses a yard away. “Tell me, what is peace? People will always fight. There will always be conflict between any two individuals with any sort of brain between their shoulders. Before, the people were wild animals, split, divided into factions that always warred. Now we are one. The city rose and all fell before it. The dragons brought people together. We gathered our sheep into one flock, told them the things they wanted to hear, gave them enough support to keep them coming up for more.
“They are oppressed, to a point. But they live their lives. They are born, they serve us, and they die. It is full, for them.”
“What about choice?” I nearly scream. “What about truth? What about freedom?”
He takes a step forward, the tang of rotten fruit on his breath as he leans closer. “There is no peace with choice. With truth only comes more lies. Freedom brings war.”
He’s insane. Absolutely crazy. He’s so wrapped up in his own lies and half-truths that he believes them.
But I was like that, too. He trained me to be like that.
He takes another bite of that damned fruit, his lips curling into a smile.
Rage is a swarm in me, biting against my skin. I lower my horns, thrusting out as far as I can. They catch on something and I yank back, fabric ripping.
He shouts, a high-pitched, weak thing. “Do you know what these clothes are made o—”
He chokes, gasping and coughing and spluttering as he stumbles back. By the time I look up, he’s being supported by a hunter who looks at the guards holding me back with wide eyes, completely lost.
Sure, I may not have drawn blood, but he’s distracted. Maybe…
The words on my arm flare hot against my skin. Water swirls around me and I draw it to my wrists, pressing it against the rope, widening the gap until I can slip my hands and ankles out of the knots—
Just in time to feel the water disappear from my touch.
He’s still coughing, stumbling after me while the hunters keep looking between their king and me, wondering which to go after.
I lower my horns. He’s not going to get away with his ridiculous, delusional rule any longer.
I run forward. Something slams into my chest, flinging me to the back of the room, my head hitting the floor with a crack that makes my mind spin.
“No one,” the king croaks out, his voice coming ever closer. I try to sit up, get back to my feet and run, but everything’s wobbly, weak. “No one I have had the pleasure to punish has ever,” he throws me back again, and this time I crash into a wall, my breath slammed out of my lungs before I heap to the ground, “had the audacity of you, you little serpent. None have ever dared touch me, much less my clothes. Hunters, tie her up again. Take her to the cages. We’ll have her punishment ready by the end of the day.”
The hunters prowl closer to me, their footsteps tentative. But I can barely move my leaden limbs as they yank me to my feet, binding me with metal this time.
All I care about as they drag me away is that I catch Vito twitching his fingers as I’m dragged out. He’s still alive. They haven’t killed him.
Not yet.
39
The Cages
The floor sways beneath me, my stomach and head rolling. They took us into the rocky base that supports Caelum, along rickety, rusty bridges lined with fences, with levers moving and linking them together. The hunters drag us along, adjusting the weird mechanics, the bridges swinging around—a maze with no walls.
Light floods the darkness around us in the same way that Maur had his source-less light, except this isn’t nearly as bright, and there are no colors. Only brown and black and grey.
&nbs
p; It’s hard to stay focused on our surroundings, take them in. But there’s Vito here with me, slung over some hunter’s back, blood dripping in a slow, uneven trail behind us.
The procession stops and I bump into the hunter in front of me. She roughly knocks me back, into the hunter carrying Vito. Panic strings through me until there’s a small puff of warm air, a breath on my shoulder. He’s still breathing, he’s still alive.
Though who knows how many more breaths either of us will have the chance to gather in our lungs.
One of the hunters pulls two levers placed in a long row, and instead of another piece of bridge rising or swinging to meet us, two great cages fall from the unfathomable ceiling. They look exactly like oversized birdcages, their bars thick and rusted, hanging from a chain that looks sketchy at its best.
“Get in.” One of the hunters gives a hard shove.
I trip over the gap, slamming hard against my injured wing, gasping as my vision spins with the sharp pain.
There’s a thud and the groaning of chains next to me—Vito must be in the other cage, now—and then the cages shake, shuddering violently and jerking as they drag us upwards, into the darkness.
The hunters below become a small dot of light. I grip the cold, rust-ridden bars in my hands as I watch them make their slow progress back outside of the cavern.
There are moans and cries from the darkness around me, either pleading for help or begging to die. Are we the only prisoners from the battle below here? Is that all this massive space is, one horrific prison? Where do they find enough prisoners to need a place like this? What kind of people do they keep down here?
People like me, I guess. Those who care, or love, or live. The greatest crimes you can commit while living under the city in the sky.
The hunters leave, the slamming of the door closing a whisper in this giant cavern. That doesn’t stop my companions in the other cages from howling and screaming and crying, as if they lost their one hope at freedom, as if the hunters will come back for them.
I grip the bars tighter and soft, rusted metal digs into my palms. The noise of their yowling eats at my eardrums, sending their panic spiraling through my bones. Finally, the noise dies down, leaving me with the quiet of my creaking cage in the absolute darkness. Letting go of the bars, I raise my hand in front of my face.
I can’t see my fingers.
A cry escapes my lips, small and feeble and desperate. I keep blinking, like that will clear my sight. My breathing picks up and I squeeze my eyes shut. The cage shifts and I try to stand, but my foot falls through the bars.
A real scream breaks free of my lungs. The cages around me erupt in yells, too. The panic flutters around my chest and I keep screaming, keep trying to yank my foot out, but all it does is scratch me, dig into my skin. I can’t see. I can’t get my leg unstuck. I need to get out of here. But there’s nothing, no way out. The world feels like it spins around me, my senses working and failing to figure out what is up, where is down.
There’s only nothingness.
“A-Ava?”
My scream cuts off, the other voices around me slowly fading away. I lean forward, pressing my face to the cold bars.
“Vito?” I whisper.
“I’m here.”
Tears crawl to my eyes and I reach forward, through the cage, toward him, where he must be.
“I-I’m sorry,” I choke out, my voice cracking. “So, so, s-sorry”
Something warm brushes my fingertips. Vito’s hand wraps around mine.
“Ava, none of this is your fault.” His voice is broken, too, and all I want is to be able to brush away his tears.
“But it is! E-everything, from the very start, has happened because of the choices I’ve made. Everyone who’s suffered, all that you’ve gone through…”
He grips my hand so tight it almost hurts. “You made the best choices you could. I blame you for none of them, Ava. Don’t you dare blame yourself for these horrible circumstances. Don’t you dare blame yourself for what these people did to you, did to all of us.”
It’s too hard to talk, to even think past the tears, past the combination of guilt and relief rising in my throat. My whole body shakes with the sobs but I hold back the noise, afraid of the other prisoners here with us.
Vito reaches out his other hand, wrapping it so that both are around mine. I have to twist myself so my leg is pinched painfully where it fell through the bottom of the cage, but I reach both my hands out, too, holding as much of him as I can.
“B-but I lied t-to you,” I stammer. “I-I couldn’t find you when you n-needed me.”
He reaches farther, gripping a bit more up my arm. “That doesn’t matter right now. It’s over. We have now to worry about.”
Now. I hang my head, tears pouring down my cheeks, plinking against the metal underneath me. They have us bound and gagged. The markings on my arm are invisible to me. I still can’t feel them, and there’s no way that I can see them.
Nothing past now exists.
Not for my mom, not for Maur, and especially not for us.
“I know,” he whispers as my sobs echo quietly between us, among all the other helpless souls trapped here. His voice cracks nearly as bad as mine as he tries to comfort us both. “I know.”
40
The Execution
Our tears run dry. Or maybe we’ve become numb. I’m not sure which it is. I don’t know which I’d prefer.
“How are you?” I murmur, pressing my forehead against the cold, rough bars.
Silence stretches on for a minute and I have to close my eyes to stop from seeing things in the black. I can almost feel him tilting his head, trying and failing to hide how stupid the question was.
“I mean, your injuries. From…everything.”
“Oh.” He takes a breath. “I’ll be fine. What about your wing?”
I wince. I’d been able to forget about it until now.
Carefully, I stretch out my wing—
And gasp as the pain bursts color on the back of my eyelids
“Are you okay?” His voice is too loud, the other prisoners making noises, chittering and hissing.
“I’m fine,” I gasp, slowly letting my wing relax. “It’s fine.”
The cages around us creak gently, as if threatening to fall to the ground. He doesn’t say anything and I don’t blame him. He knows I’m lying, he’s not stupid. But what can he do? What can either of us do?
It’s funny: even though I know my eyes are closed, I keep thinking they’re open. I keep thinking I see shapes in the distance, sometimes Vito, but more often flickers of scales and feathers and unnatural light. My heart thumps so hard I’m surprised the cages around us don’t scream because of the sound. I’m surprised I don’t scream because of it.
And there’s a smell in the air. Rot. It’s so pungent I can taste the rancid flesh on my tongue. Do…do they leave people here to die? Is that why everyone around us is so crazy?
Am I going to go that crazy?
Vito’s hand tightens around mine.
I take in a breath of air like it’s clean, fresh and whipping through my hair as if we’re flying above the city. Maybe his wing had never been severed. Maybe I was never cut down. Maybe this darkness is only the back of my eyelids and I’ll wake up to find that we’d fallen asleep on the golden tiles of the palace’s roof. I’ll be late for dinner, but Vito hadn’t wanted to wake me up. He’s always been so kind that it came around backward, getting him in trouble.
A door slams open.
There’s a small circle of light coming from a distant corner of the cavern, not from where they brought me in. Or maybe it is. Everything seems to be blurring and jumbling together. For all I know, this is another delusion.
“Do you see it too?” I murmur in the silence that almost seems to be a physical thing between the cages.
“Yeah.” His voice is barely a whisper. “I do.”
Our hands are so tight around each other that it’s painful, that I worry he may
break my bones. But I don’t care. It scares me, how little I care, how much I need to be touching him. My Vito.
The bridges swing and fall, making paths for the hunters below. It’s so loud and echoing in the empty cavern that between the creaks and pounding of my blood through my veins, I may go deaf.
After a few minutes of travel, they stop underneath us.
They pull the same levers they did last time and we fall, clutching each other with all that we have.
I recognize a couple of the hunters, now that I look at them. Not friends—I was always a little too strange for most of the other illusionists—but people who I studied with, and ate with, and lived with. There’s some sympathy among them as they see us, but one man yanks my cage door open, steps over my limp wing, grabs my shoulder, and pulls me from Vito’s grip.
A scream escapes my lips, desperation and loss pouring out of me. Vito calls my name as they come for him, too.
The hunter grabs me under my arms, painfully yanking me from where my leg’s trapped. I keep fighting, clawing toward where Vito is.
“Shut up,” the hunter mutters, banging on the bars of the cage.
I don’t listen. I wriggle, calling Vito’s name, trying to break free of his grip, get his filthy hands off me.
“I said, shut up!” He pulls a little too hard.
My ankle snaps.
My screams rise higher, pain blinding me. I can’t think. It’s so much and it won’t stop. All I can hear is Vito calling my name over and over and over again, and I want to reach out to him. I want to make him stop. I want it to be over.
Exhaustion melds with the pain as it fades as much as it ever will. I catch glimpses of movement, of my wings trailing as I’m dragged, of Vito’s dark eyes. There’s a lot of wind and clouds and voices with senseless words.