III | Embers In The Wind

༛༛ ༛ ༛༺༻༛ ༛ ༛༛

My breath trembles past my lips as I lean against the brick wall back amongst the mud and dim lights of Warroll. My left arm tingles all the way down to the f ingertips while my shoulder throbs with constant heat.

Pain is a guarantee; it's the suffering that's a choice. I know this well enough by now.

I grab my wrist and raise my injured arm, gritting my teeth. Pain spikes up my neck, tugging at every muscle and nerve. The joint thunks as it's eased back into place, the dislocation only minor. I've had worse and have had to pick myself up from worse. The joint still tender as I curl my arm to chest, but I have more important things to worry about.

Turning, I place my hands on the wall. The brick scratches my bare palms, each ridge and uneven crack heightened against the sensitive skin that rarely feels the touch of air.

Hide it. Don't let them see.

They've already seen. It's why the Sharlik soldiers took me in the first place, too long ago to remember with clarity anymore. I don't even know where they took me from.

I find a familiar bump in the wall and slide the brick from its place, revealing the hollowed space behind it. I hesitate, fingers trembling. Glancing around me, making certain I'm not being watched, I delve my hand into the darkness. Within I find the worn paper that's been with me through too much. I smooth my thumbs over the discoloured paper, an old pamphlet that shouldn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

There aren't any memories attached to the print of the cottage, the writing beneath means nothing to me. Jadira's flowers and herbs. Read to me by Dax. I didn't trust anyone else to tell me what the words meant, and no understanding bloomed upon learning them.

The only thing that matters is that it's all I had when my brother found me. It's all I have to tell me where I came from. But that shouldn't matter either.

My brother told me where I came from isn't my concern, nor should it ever be. He told me that my only thoughts should be on survival. I asked him how I was supposed to know where I was going if I didn't know where I had come from.

You don't have a destination, little flame. Just this moment. Just this fight. And then the next.

I close my eyes, his voice sounding so real, like I can turn around and he'll be here with his light auburn hair and disapproving eyes. I don't turn because he's not here to help me anymore and he hasn't been for two years. I'm here—alone—with nothing but an old pamphlet to a place I don't remember.

I fold the paper and place it back within the hole. Then I take the chain from my pocket, attached to it is a circle of metal, blood crusted within the inscription. The Sharlik soldier's identity tag, his rank and the name the Empire gave him. All it is right now is a scrap of metal until I can find someone to read the wording on it. I clench the tag in my fist, the metal digging into my palm, the pain sharp and sweet.

Dax is behind my eyelids as I blink, weeping and telling me he's sorry.

I place the tag in the hole, teeth grinding together, trying to keep the fiery rage buried deep.

I'll find whoever gave those soldiers the order to ambush us and I'll kill him. I'll tear through the ranks of the Empire until I find the man who uttered the words, who doomed Dax. If I make it through tonight.

I shove the brick back into the wall, smothering the memories, smothering the rage to focus on something else. Anything else. My sight catches on my bare hands, the right one the crux of this misery. The golden markings wind their way around my fingers, embedded deep into my flesh, crawling over my wrist to disappear beneath my tattered sleeve. I spent many nights tracing the patterns by the light of the fire, wondering where they came from, who gave them to me. It took me a long time to truly realise their burden.

Pushing off the wall, I slip my hands into the gloves Dax gave me, refusing to focus on childish curiosities. There're too many things to do for that.

I flex my fingers in the new gloves, the black leather smooth but stiff. I clench and unclench my fists, getting accustomed to the feel of them. Like a snake shedding its skin and adorning a new one.

Throwing my shoulders back with a wince, I walk forward, leaving behind the wet and dark alley to stride into the wet and dark street of Warroll, nothing ever dry and bright in Sharlikire. Warroll is trapped in the shadow of the Sharlik Empire's towering spires. They claw to the sky like talons eager to capture the stars and steal them, further darkening the land.

I look upon the spires now, foreboding and ancient.

Fear the Empire, Az. They want what you're hiding.

What am I hiding, brother?

A scream tears me from my thoughts and I sink back into the shadows, eyes scouring the street. Ahead a girl is tossed to the mud in the street, crying out as she scrambles back, trying to escape the soldier that advances. I step forward, muscles tensing to intervene, but stop when another kid comes running. A little boy sprints down the street. He runs straight past the girl but doesn't get much further. An arrow pierces between his shoulder-blades and a gasp leaves me as he crumbles to the ground, landing face-first in the mud.

Street rats. The kids that didn't come with me on the robbery. They've been driven out of the warehouse.

"Move!" a soldier ahead yells and more kids round the corner, crying as they see the body in the street, as the soldiers march them to a damning fate.

The shadows wrap around me again as I move back out of sight, but something crunches under my boot. I glance down, lift my foot, and find myself staring back at me. The wanted poster is streaked with mud, but I can still see my face on it. Black hair hangs around my face like a curtain, the half circles under my obsidian eyes—dark and wretched—are evidence of too many nights without sleep. Whoever gave them the description of my face has seen me up close and personal. The likeness is too accurate to risk showing myself to the soldiers in the street.

Leave them. Leave them all to die.

The screaming and wailing begins again and I lift my head as a street rat's throat is slashed, their blood splashing to the dirt. The soldier steps over their slight and crumpled body, advancing on the next one. A girl. They're killing the girls.

I shake my head as something reaches me, burning at the back of my mind, telling me it's important. The stench of smoke, the screaming, the crying, the orders of the soldiers, their ferocity. My terror. I taste it. Terror from long ago.

Forget the memories.

I frown. A memory of what?

"Mama!" a girl is screaming as I look up again, the burning in the back of my head fading as the memory passes like embers in the wind. "I want my mama!" The girl is older than the others, older than most street rats, perhaps the same age as me. I don't know her. I don't know any of them. They're all fleeting faces, fading noise in my head. They don't matter.

I stay hidden even as the soldier tears at her clothes and bears down on her. I stay in the shadows even as he pins her to the ground in the middle of the street where his comrades can laugh and jeer. I stay hidden as they take the boys towards those dark spires to turn them into men that would joke as a young girl is raped.

Jile had the same look in his eyes. Savage, beastly, more monster than man. I still see his leer, the way his gaze had dragged over me, the way his voice had reached me, asking about the scars as though he had the right to know. Perhaps he would have been gentler if I hadn't spat in his face and laughed as he slapped me. Perhaps he wouldn't have tried to kill me after if I hadn't commented on the lacking size of his cock. Pain I was familiar with, that I could handle. If he'd been gentle, it would have broken me further.

Jile would've fit in well with the soldiers of the Sharlik Empire. Perhaps he does.

I hear their screams and cries. It's a familiar noise, repeated across Rupteran from village to city, heard within the dark and the light. There's a monster in all of us and today's world begs each of us to let it run free.

It's my fault they're being targeted. I started this. I gave the soldiers the reason they needed to turn on the people they're meant to protect.

I look away, knowing there's nothing I can do to help them without getting myself killed. I have other things I need to do before I die.

Leaving the wailing behind, I taste ash on my tongue and feel embers ignite in my lungs.

This world will burn and I look forward to it.