The wagon finally left shadow and darkness. The moonlight of the great sky finally bled through as they left the shadows of the sortie tunnel. They'd been travelling through the ancient tunnel for over two hours; it traveled underneath the city and the great river Andween which cornered Zortar the eastern side. The tunnel from what he'd been told by the advisor had been constructed by the first Raja of Zyneria and gilded safely with magic taught to them by Hamash himself, with the entrance being locked behind the lock of the Raja's own bloodline. It seemed impractical to lock something behind a specific family lineage, but who was Zern to criticise something that had lasted for well over a thousand years.
Zern looked up at the cloth which covered the wagon and imagined the parade of the seven moons slowly across the sky, each with a beautiful illuminating color of their own. If what the advisor told him was true then they'd be arriving near the base of a landscape of rolling hills which stretched for about a week before they would finally arrive at the first destination which he refused to tell him. The advisor refused to let that slip through his furry fingers. He shouldn't have been surprised, the Hamashasa were tight lipped when needed, it was typical for inhumane creatures.
He groaned and sighed. He could not go anywhere, food was retrieved through a small hole in the floor which could be opened or closed, before the ceramic plates would disappear through the same damn hole. It was strange to eat at a ceramic plate, a plate that was for nobles, not for the poor peasant like him. The advisor had explained it was improper to eat like a peasant in front of an advisor, and had thus requested ceramic plates be given to everyone including the two arena survivors. Zern had chosen not to question it, why argue against something so nice?
He ate with knives and forks, he listened closely to the screeching of the utensils as they scratched against the white ceramic. It was a truly exhilarating feeling.
"We're being spoiled," a small raspy voice said as Zern shoved a potato into his mouth.
He turned towards the source of the raspy voice and saw the burned man, "You can speak Yinitiri?"
The man nodded. "Yes," he took a bite into a potato, "very well in fact."
"So why didn't you ever speak up about that in the pits?"
"There was no need to. I never expected to live past the next battle, I never expected to see the next meal."
"So you just stayed quiet?"
"Yes."
"So why do you speak now?"
"I see the light of the next day, I'm eating my next meal, perhaps I might even get to walk on ground free from the bondage of sinful stone."
"Sinful stone?"
The burned man nodded.
"You're not of the Court are you?"
"That half excuse of a religion, sixty stones no." The burned man paused for a moment and cut his second potato in half before eating it. "I may speak your language but I am not from Yinitsir."
"A diplomat or merchant of some sort?"
The man nodded. "Merchant class, although where I lived merchants are filth, only just above slaves." He paused for a moment as if pondering whether to talk further before he sighed, scooped another mouthful of potato in his mouth and continued. "Many say that north of the Gods'pine and east of the Tootstorik, few things live. Such thinking is a fallacy as few dare to take the journey across those seemingly cursed plains, and nobody yet that has returned has cared to share such discoveries. Civilisation does exist."
Zern considered the thought for a moment. He remembered his days in Elecen's father's map room, the Gods'pine seemed to stretch until entirety. From the edge of the north west of the known world to the very shores of the far east. It was a mountain range without end, that touched the very heavens itself, even its most common name the Gods'pine was built around by seemingly its divine nature. No other mountain range matched its scale and importance. For centuries it had been the barrier between nothingness and civilization, it was said that nothing existed north by monsters and wilderness.
"Weird and Wonderful?"
"Some wonderful, some weird, mostly wilderness. Seldom exists of my people, tribes structured around migrations between hot springs built upon the backs of enormous crablike creatures."
"Crabs?"
Zern tried to imagine tribes of men living on the backs of crabs which somehow produced hotsprings from their own bodies. It was too alien to imagine, in totality. So many questions arose from it all more important than the last. How did they fight wars? How did they gather food? What would happen if the crab died?
The advisor across the other side seemed to almost choke at the concept of a crab based nomadic civilisation. He coughed violently for a moment and turned up with tears to the sides of his eyes and a flushed nose.
"Such a thing cannot exist," the advisor said fur moving around on his skin like waves on an ocean. "It just doesn't make sense, the creature would be too—"
"Except that it's real," the burned man said bluntly. "That may be some of the more bizarre things but it is not the only one, and my people are certainly not the only ones out there."
"There are more?" The advisor asked.
The burned man nodded. "Yes, in fact one of these strange occurrences was how I got these burns," he said pointing to his face, "cervanir, or in Yinitiri, centaur." He put his hand over his burned sections as if reliving parts of the pain. "Beyond the endless steppe and dirty dust bowls that make up the north there are also organised nations. There is an island divided amongst itself but unconquerable, it is perhaps more populated then most regions of this planet. They praise the great fish which surround the islands, along with the nutrients in the waves they create. They are far more pleasant then those half-horse horrors, and yet further east lies the forked mountains which split these lands from the great cold wastes you are more familiar with."
The burned man turned towards the advisor. "Tell me, Hamashasa, what do you know exists north of the spine?"
The advisor eyed him for a moment and stroked his white beard. "From what the archives of the library garden of the east tell us, past Farsight Keep exists as nothing but a land of endless snow that touches the tip of the world. In some records it is said there remains a series of great fortresses, great black stone ones built into the very earth and mountains of the great north."
The burned man went silent for a moment, he placed his ceramic plate down on the wooden floor next to him and stared into the white cloth above him. "I envy your ignorance," the burned man whispered, "envy it."
The conversation ended with such words. The hours turned to days and finally three nights after he'd been first imprisoned inside the clothes cage the crates which served as the door to freedom finally opened. He was greeted by the rolling hills he'd expected, within most of them he could see rice fields being worked by peasants made unaware of the invasion of their kingdom.
He walked forwards, bare feet in soft grass and he fell forward. He could feel it, for the first time since his mind had numbed the darkness he felt the cool touch of freedom. He rolled over and felt the wind across his body, it wrapt around him and swept itself under his clothes lifting them half a handspan up. He laid there for a few moments looking up into the sky unaware of the shouting towards him.
He finally saw it, it was so clear in the east, not covered by the soft shimmer of residue arcanic forces, he saw the rising of the first two moons Lunareth and Mystravane. Lunareth was a beautiful blue with a circlet of gold seemingly engraved in its surface. Elecen had said this golden laurel wreath of sorts was where it had supposedly gotten its name, the gold gleamed gratefully and claimed itself as a mirror of the sun in the night. Mystravane was different, an ugly grey smaller than Lunareth but non the less impressive.
He wondered what the lyrics of the song Elecen's little sister had once sung to him was?
He was grabbed and forced up, two guards took him by his shoulders and threw him up. The advisor shook his head and his fur seemed to ripple in a mix of embarrassment and annoyance.
Vashniel walked down off his cart and looked towards the southwest where his home would've been under new administration. The Hamashasa's silk-like fur rippled like waves in the shape of a 'u', there was a meaning to it but Zern couldn't figure it out.
Everyone around him kneeled down as the Raja stood towards his old city, so Zern followed. It would be bad if he were to be punished for failing simple propriety. Everyone kneeled for about two minutes before Vashniel turned around and everyone rose to meet him.
The exiled Raja spoke words within his own language combining a use of his fur and actual language to convey messages. It was a strange way of speaking but it often made it nigh impossible for races bar the Hamashasa from understanding it.
Dinner was cooked, Vashniel sat cross legged on a beautiful carpet and everyone dispersed amongst themselves as they waited for the meal. Zern walked towards a large rock that allowed him to admire the countryside and horizon.
He climbed atop it and sat legs dangled down on the boulder. He scanned the horizon, it was dark, not a light flickered, the only thing that seemed to provide any sort was the golden crescent light of Lunareth which ran across the fields of the east once a night. If he'd been lucky a day or two before he might've been able to see the glow of the still burning capital in the distance.
He thought on the Hierarchy. Would they do more for him then the Hamashasa he trekked with? If shadows threw themselves at him, would the Hamashasa give him light? No, he doubted it, but what of the Hierarchy. Despite being hobgoblins, they were accepting, regimented, honourable–
Honourable, he stopped on that word. Running to the hobgoblins and telling them about the Raja would get him killed. They were too obsessed with keeping protocols even when it called for them to break it.
The next several moons had finally made their appearances within the sky by the time his soup arrived. A colorful collage of curious balls contrasted by a deep black sky. However as his soup arrived the man delivering it to him did not just pass it to him and leave he sat down next to him.
"Rather intoxicated with sky?" The burned man asked before taking a spoonful of soup and putting it into his mouth.
"You don't see it, this clearly, where I come from."
"Strange, it's clearer than this where I come from."
"Strang."
"Strange indeed," the burned man took another mouthful of soup. "What's your name son?"
"Zern."
"Strong name."
Zern sighed. "It means coward."
"I see, still strong."
"Yours?"
"My name is not strong, means dressmaker, was what I was supposed to be, not what I became."
"What is it?"
"My name," the man chuckled and shook his head, "you'll never need to hear it, I call myself Heede. Apparently it means 'deal breaker' in a language I do not know."
"Do you deserve that title?"
Heede nodded. "Absolutely, that terrible decision still haunts me to this day, damn reason I ended up in those pits."
"We've all made mistakes," Zern said, "some bigger than others."
"Mine are far bigger than most men would want to accept." Heede left his stories at that, he continued to eat and sip his soup before he almost made Zern choke on the question he asked next. "So, Zern, how do you suppose we break out of this mess?"
Zern coughed up some of his soup and sprayed it across the dirt in front of the boulder.
"Don't make me laugh," Heede said, "I know you've thought about, damn I've thought about. Don't worry, I wouldn't tell, I want to get out of here as much as you do."
Zern wiped his mouth and looked down across the rice paddies further out. "I haven't thought about it enough, I've been running for years so it's become normal, but whenever I do run, they always rake me back in. Whether with ropes, traps or swords I always end up back in a cage, whether it is steel, rock or cloth, I always end up in it. Maybe… maybe, at least within exile I can find my purpose."
Heede smirked. "Spoken like a poet, but not a very good one. I'm not fooled easily. Tell me, what's your big play?"
"There isn't a feasible one, I'd say." Zern said finally. "We only have these fleeting hours to escape and even if we could leg it away they've got horses to run us down. If we're lucky we get away initially and then what? We're lost, we're not natives, we don't know where to go, we don't speak there language, we'd be stuck trying to navigate through days or weeks of rice and paddy fields. We've got no proper clothes and we're not bloody hobbits, we'd get an infection sooner or later and die before we'd reach any major city."
Heede frowned and turned out towards the Eben's Star. "So that's it, you give up? After killing an unkillable beast, you give up because you'd starve and get sick? I thought you southlings were supposed to be hardy people, when I was young we were going back and forth between Lyri, jumping back and forth, up and down."
"You speak as if you've travelled across the world."
"I have!" Heede said firmly. "I have," he said it this time more softly, "too many things I've seen have killed people I know, but not until I came south did I get introduced to the idea of taking another being and taking away its freedom. I have seen many unspeakable things in the dark corners of the north beyond your spine, but none are darker then the taking of another's freedom."
"Men are our own greatest monster." Zern paused for a moment and was silent, he remembered something, something that could only fit that line. "'In this world, there are no gods, or monsters, only the ones we create.'"
"That line is not of the peasant."
"An accursed and forsaken profit, who refused to pray to things that demanded it."
"A wise man," Heede said. "Where we come from there are no gods, only the great castes in which we are thrown into and can descend down but never ascend up. What happened to such an enlightened thinker?"
"The elf was tortured for a thousand years," Zern began trying to remember the rest of the story Elecen had told him, "his mind was forced to fracture and break, many and over. He eventually became the very thing he swore against; a servant and slaves to a god who demanded his submission multiple times a day. However it was said that in the end he was content and happy to submit, for the mind that had crafted his original philosophy had been cultivated into something entirely new."
"A strange story." Heede said, looking at Lunareth. "What is its meaning?"
"A religious parable." Zern said. "Of an extinct religion, it was the native religion of my lands till the Court enlightened it centuries ago. It was supposed to teach the peasantry that submission to not only their god but also their lord was just."
"A story of control."
Zern nodded.
"If you do not plan to break free, then what do you plan to do?"
Zern was silent; he stared out towards where the capital had once been. He was still, he breathed in the night air and sighed. "For now, I will follow the Hamashasa's till at least they take me to their first destination. If that is a reasonable spot, then perhaps I will try and escape then. However if that does not suit me, then exile in the Farsight Keep will suffice."
"Timid," Heede said, "however I respect your decision to go through with your decision." The burned man petered off for a moment before saying something almost inaudible. "Silnie."
Heede left with his bowl of soup and left Zern with his own. Zern sighed, he'd let too much slip from his mouth. He always seemed to do that, but as great men always reminded him the first step to fixing oneself is to acknowledge their failings. He would need to fix the hole within his mind, the one that allowed people to exploit him and take advantage of what he knew. He'd cursed himself that he'd allowed Heede to dig within him and extract what he wanted.
How would he address these things? He'd need to remember those times wouldn't he? No he wouldn't, he wouldn't go back to the times when he thought about those days and nights. Those thoughts were for another night he finally decided to scoop up the last bit of soup in his bowl before being called over by the guards to get ready for bed… inside the cloth cages.
It wouldn't be long till perhaps he'd have his best chance at freedom. Wherever the Raja was going his own fate would be tied to it. If the Raja marched to death then death, he would meet, if to life, then life he would meet.