ALRIGHT NERDIANS! HELLO AND WELCOME TO THE FALLEN AND BROKEN REWRITE!
I'VE ATTEMPTED TO WRITE THIS A/N FIVE TIMES AND THE WEBPAGE KEEPS EXPIRING. SO I'M VERY ANNOYED.
ANYWAYS, THIS WILL BE RATED M FOR GORE, LANGUAGE AND TRIGGER WARNINGS BUT HAS NO SEX OR ANYTHING CAUSE EW. I HOPE YOU ENJOY!
SECTION I: FALLEN
How long did it take for the world to crumble?
About five minutes.
Yeah, that sounds pretty accurate.
CHAPTER ONE
-SKY-
Sky sat bolt upright, panting. His dream echoed in his ears as trying to slow his breath and heartbeat. He didn't want to wake Jason.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Seven more hours.
Sky sighed quietly. His back still ached from the constant hunching in the mine and the whip still burned in his back.
Bang. Bang. I have a headache. Can I stop?
Sky slung his legs over the edge of his cot, his head hung, his overgrown brown curls falling in his eyes. His feet still couldn't touch the ground.
No? Why? Please, I'm exhausted!
The cots were pathetic. A rough metal shelf jutting out of the wall with a pile of wheat stuffed into a sack. It didn't have blankets or sheets or proper pillows like in the Old World. Funny how it felt like heaven after a busy day.
Oh god please stop no I didn't want this no I didn't meant it no no NO NO NO-
"Alright! Get up!" the warden yelled, a metal door slamming. Sky jumped with a start, shaking. The warden's harsh voice bounced off the twisted cobble and steel wall as he marched down the hall, his polished boots striking the floor sharply. Jason sat up quickly, rubbing his eyes and blinking to try and clear the sleep away.
"Already?" he murmured, stretching. His back popped and Sky nodded, rolling his shoulders.
"Food'll be here in a second," Sky murmured. A hunk of mouldy bread was thrown through the bars suddenly, sliding over the dirty cobble. Sky didn't make eye contact with the demon as it walked past briskly. Its claws clicked in time with its boots, it twisted and gnarled wings jutting out, the pale purple and black scales shining under the torch light. Sky saw a flash of glowing violet eyes and sharp white fangs and shuddered at the swishing noise of its tail as it dragged over the ground. Sky banged on the hollow cobble behind him and pushed off his cot, scooping up the bread. Tearing a chunk free, he tossed it to a drowsy Jason. He caught it and dug in hungrily, making Sky smile as he walked back to his cot, sitting down and stretching out.
"Oi! Jerome! Mitch! Wake up!" Sky hollered, banging on the wall again.
"Piss off!" Mitch yelled back sleepily. Sky chuckled drily.
"He's gonna smack you with the magic stick if you don't get your ass outta bed, and I know you're still bruised!" Sky yelled back. There was a multitude of muffled cursing, a yelp as Jerome was shoved out of bed and Sky simply rolled his eyes at their morning routine. He cast a questioning look to Jason, who gave him a weary smile.
"They're getting up," Jason reported, tapping the wall behind him. "Ian's up and moving and Husky's whining." Sky listened for the familiar scuffle and nodded, satisfied, chewing away at his bread.
"How long do you think it'll be today?" Jason asked, looking at his empty hands sadly. Not a crumb remained and he'd licked his fingers for whatever was left.
"I reckon eight hours. I heard Bash found a vein of diamond and we'll be working on that all day, I swear," Sky sighed, and Jason groaned.
"Isn't that all the way down in the new ravine? I do not wanna go in prime mob territory!" Jason complained. Sky shrugged.
"They lugged Kermit and Seto down there last night with Bash and the crew who found it to light up. Didn't you hear them last night?" Sky asked, and Jason replied with a shrug and a shake of the head.
"I was out like a light. We went too hard yesterday and I didn't want to waste any sleep," Jason explained. Sky nodded in understanding and stood at the same time as Jason. They walked to stand in front of the bars, at attention, standing straight. Kermit and Seto were across the hall from Sky and Jason, shoulders slumped and barely standing. Sky snuck a wave and Kermit smiled half-heartedly, the bags under his eyes noticeable. Seto yawned and scratched at his wrists absently, which were donned by heavy metal cuffs to stop him using magic. He hated them with a passion and they drove him mad. He was scratching at them constantly, the skin around them red raw and often bleeding. Kermit feared they'd become infected and Seto would die but Seto told him he'd be fine. But judging by the shiny flesh, infection was already setting in. It had been a month since he was last begrudgingly helped, and the medicine was gone in a week. Seto straightened suddenly, nudging Kermit. The Warden appeared in front of their cells as he unlocked them, sneering poisonously.
"You know the drill! Two lines with your cell mate, make a ruckus and it's an hour with the stick!" he yelled. Jason and Sky lowered their heads and stepped outside, joining the line with Seto and Kermit in front of them, Ian and Husky behind. As they walked out the door and down the stairs into the mines, they were handed their rusty picks and eyed by the terrifying monsters perched above. As suspected, they were all carted down to the diamond vein. Bash and Bodil were already working on it, side by side.
"Hey! Thanks a lot, watermelon! You got us extra work!" Ian yelled as he readied his pick. There was a clash he struck down, and Sky shivered. He resented the pickaxes. First strike of the morning equalled hours of painful work and sore backs.
"I'm too old for this," Sky sighed.
"Sorry for doing my job!" Bash yelled in reply to Ian's accusation. His high-pitched voice made it hard to take him seriously, and Bodil giggled immediately. Playful antics ensued as Bash and Ian traded insults, jokingly threatening to come over and beat the other up. Sky sighed as the guard on duty screeched at them, shutting them up promptly. Soon Jason and Sky were walking back and forth, arms full of diamonds ready to be deposited in their carts. The luckier guys got the job of pushing the carts up the broken tracks, out of the tunnel to the even luckier men charged with sorting them.
Muttered complaints went unheard, backs ached, tears were shed and Sky found himself continuously wiping his brow. Sweat mixed with dust as the humid tunnel had a rare moment of silence, the only noise being picks striking ore and diamonds clattering into carts. Then Ian let out an excited yell; he'd struck gold.
"Separate vein!" he yelled, and a guard was there instantly.
"You, you and you!" he barked, jabbing a claw in separate directions. "With him, you're now working on this vein! Extra rations for you four tonight!" There was a flood of groans from the majority as Mitch and Jerome high-fived, gleefully joining Ian and Bodil to work.
"You better share, asshole!" Bash shrieked. Bodil stuck his tongue out at Bash before raising his pick to get to work. Sky turned back to Jason, his snide remark pausing on his lips.
"Jase? You right, buddy?" He looked like he'd caught death, his face ashen and grey. His movements were sluggish and his knees wobbled as he struggled to raise his pick, hitting it half-heartedly.
"Get back to work!" the guard snapped, pointing at Jason.
"Oi," Sky hissed out the corner of his mouth. "Jason. Are you okay?" he nodded quickly, moving to wipe his forehead and lingering just a second too long.
"I said back to work!" the guard screamed. The whip cracked and Jason gasping in pain, collapsing to his knees. He grit his teeth to stop his pained cry, falling forward, his shaking arms barely holding him up as his palms dug into the jagged rock. The guard smiled smugly, fangs glittering like the ore in the walls, walking to the opposite end of the tunnel to yell at another poor slave. Sky knelt beside his pained friend, concern twisting his features.
"C'mon, lemme look buddy," he sighed.
"It's nothing," Jason whispered, a sob in his voice. Sky shook his head and lifted up the ratty hem of Jason's t-shirt, bunching it at his neck. The skin was previously raw and bruised with a new, long red stripe alongside his spine. The barbed whip had nicked the skin, multiple little blood spots already welling.
"It's not too bad, Jase," Sky lied through his teeth. "We'll get something for it after our shift, okay?" Jason nodded wearily, rubbing his wet eyes and shakily standing with Sky's aid. He winced, hunched over from the pain. Sky would've been able to take the pain, but Jason was younger by a few years: only a boy when he was thrown in the prison. He was already here when Sky was finally caught, having been ambushed.
Sky had survived half a year in the apocalypse with Mitch, Jerome and Seto: the four soldiers at the time. Sky had asked Jason how he'd been captured once, and had been gifted with the story told by too many. Unsuspecting, innocent in their village, the news of the ruptured End portal reaching them a day before the swarm came. Jason was a standard tale: in the midst of a hasty and unprepared evacuation he'd been injured, torn from his family and chained up to join the others like him in the cart which carried him to the prison they worked at now. Young girls and able-bodied women had been sent to cook, farm and weave while most boys and men had been tossed into the mines to work. The elderly, pregnant and too young were exterminated. Some of the children are now being raised by the demons to work mindlessly, while some women who had been pregnant at the time are now forced to breed, reproducing children to be killed for food or forced into work.
Five years ago, a fourteen year old Jason and nineteen year old Sky had been forced into an apocalypse when the government opened the End portal, unprepared for the swarms of demonic hybrids. Crops burned. Cities crumbled. Countless innocents were slaughtered. Countless more were enslaved.
A new world order came to light five years ago on that spring morning: a world ruled by demons from another dimension, ruled by the Queen of the End. The strong work on while the weak are tossed aside and forgotten, dying of malnourishment, disease and exhaustion.
In a world of kill or be killed, you don't get a choice.