Chapter Two: The Boredom of a Minion
So the cycle resets.
After I had died, the dark vision of death gave way to a clean white light, and that light gave way to a grand sight, one that oozed with familiarity: The Minion Repository, or The Gates, as was colloquially known to some because of its appearance.
Three immense gates, plastered upon clean white walls, stood apposite to one another, each with a height and breadth enough to fit a giant by a human's standards and an army parade by minion's standards. Before each gate, were queues and queues of minions, organized by ranks of fences— the spaces between them wide enough to fit a super minion— ending in massive doors which opened every thirty seconds without fail. Each time the doors opened, a grand portal, where the natural palette of the rift concocted in harmonious ripples, appeared in a distorted blur.
A great deal of our being was leashed to this very zone where we were herded, like cattle to the slaughterhouse, and sent out to the fray of perpetual combat. Every time a minion dies, he would end up at the very beginning of a long queue designated for a specific gate. This designation, one should note, is not merely an assignment of the minion's place in the Match, but is an intrinsic attachment to a minion's being. Meaning, since my conception, I was naturally a minion of the Middle lane, so I died by the mid lane and lived again by the mid lane.
For every gate, there were assigned squads. My squad had been wiped out, and a fresh squad from the Mid queue had exited to take our place and supply the middle lane with more minions (and the champions with more gold).
And so I stood, lined up with my squad in the same fashion as we had marched out: casters in the back, melees in the front, all in single file. At a bird's eye view, we appeared to be but another segment in the mechanical branches of a complicated assembly line of minions draped in royal blue (or, baby blue, given our size). Each of us minions had a squad number: ours was five-four-two, and though the number was unique to us, each squad was so identical that they only had one major distinction: whether they had a siege minion or not.
Before me, stretched a mile's length of line of blue minions, snaking left and right in the compact arrangement of the queue. Every squad started with its rear caster and ended with its front melee which had the rear caster of the next squad in front of him. The grey steel of siege weapons piloted by siege minions popped out every three squads, with their drivers sitting atop them, only rolling their contraptions forward whenever the queue moved, and each time the queue moved, the high doors of the Gates opened and then shut.
After phasing out of my non-existence, my feet stepped upon a polished alabaster floor. I found my wand in my right hand, and my position exactly where I had been when I first departed the Nexus. A sizzling sensation diffused in my head, and, for a moment, my chest felt delirious, spinning in a million ways until, not long after, I shook my head as if to yank the accustomed feeling out and keep my soul inside. This always reminded me of a question which perplexed us all: Every time we die, are our souls transferred to new bodies or are our damaged bodies repaired and phased back into the Minion Repository? And I shook that question away too. There were better times to ask that.
I was the forward caster, the caster adjacent to our squad's rearmost melee, and, like my designation to the middle lane, this position within my squad was an unchangeable part of my essence.
I felt a hand tap my shoulder, light taps, obviously that of a minion's tiny fingers. A caster minion of a different squad, from the opposite side of a fence to my right, offered a cigarette. It rested between his gloved hands, peeking out with its vermillion ember which hummed out a faint swirl of smoke, a common air among the many other minions in the waiting queue. I looked at his offer, sighing, and he drew it slightly closer, as if insisting that I take it.
Boredom. That was perhaps the only disease a minion could suffer, and we caster minions usually encountered it, for our heightened intellect meant a higher sensitivity to the futility of our existence. A cigarette was a usual bite-sized way to temporarily appease the dullness almost ubiquitous to us casters. Our blasting wands had an unintended function of providing tiny sparks of fire, and our minds, an intent to light a cigarette on it.
"No." I said. I knew this minion who had just offered me a cigarette (Noxian-made, wrapped in coarse paper; robust and numbing), because our squads often aligned in queue during the first minutes of the Match. Between the two eye slits of his battle mask (which appeared no different from mine), there was his minion number, carved in its wood: eight-one.
I continued. "Save the rest for the others who'd finished their packs too greedily, Eighon." I know, such nicknames sound absurd, but how else could you shorten minion numbers of the thousands? And yes, we do have minions nicknamed "Onenene" or "Thre-ee-ee." If, all your life, numbers were your only ways of distinguishing one another, strange sounding names were not bemusing peculiarities, they were acceptable quirks.
"Suit yourself." he said. "I knew you wouldn't take it anyway." And that was why it was already lit beforehand, and why I felt more obligated to refuse. He lifted his hand to his battle mask's tiny mouthpiece, and sipped a good deal of the Noxian tobacco. A dragon's huff of smoke exited the same mouthpiece not long after— like steam from a chink in a pipe— fading into the area around him.
Before I go on, I believe you'd find it difficult to imagine the voice of an inconsequential caster minion, so for your benefit, I would describe it as shrill, toned like that of a pixie and almost as squeaky as a mouse, and this was due to our fragile little forms, which could only work with tiny flows of air. The only way to differ from one another (and in turn recognize the identity of the speaker) was to listen for their accent and the general manner of expressions and ideas of which they spoke of.
I heard a series of coughs go off behind me, each cough like the spit of a whistle pumped with pressurized air . "That hits hard..." It was our center minion. Minion number two-two-five.
"You should try it, Twoofi." Eighon said, noticing the effect of his cigarette upon my squadmate. "I have an extra," he turned his head to me, "one that I would have given to Threniur if he'd wanted a cigarette like he used to."
After he'd stop coughing, Twoofi looked to me, wanting to hear what I had to say, and when I said nothing, he made himself clear: "Should I, Threniur?"
It was not the first time he had asked me, and, a part me knew that if I were to say the same monotonous "no", he'd ask again the next Match day.
"Look all around you." I said. "Then make your own choice." and he did quite so, turning left, right, then behind him. At least one minion per squad had a cigarette scavenged from the Minionnah. He stopped to look at Eighon again and promptly shook his head.
Eighon sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "Not forcing you. But you'll want it soon enough, more than you'd want to be different." and he looked forward, turning a cold shoulder to both of us.
Twoofi turned to me. "Will I?"
His questions made his "freshly-conjured" status obvious. To a human, Twoofi was the equivalent of a child, blessed to be stranger to his existence, but cursed to be a new owner to it as well, and so he was stricken with curiosity, wonderment, and fear.
"Threniur," he said, aching for an answer. "Will I eventually smoke a cigarette too?" As he asked, the queue moved. "Should I? Will it affect me?"
"How did it feel?" I said. A loud, disappointed breath left him when he'd notice I evaded the question.
"What?" he paused, "The dying?"
"Yes. How did that feel?"
"Why are you asking?"
"If I tell you, will you answer?"
"Of course." he said.
"You're freshly-conjured and newly assigned to this squad, and I, as a long-summoned, want to reminisce the thoughts I used to have when I was just like you."
Twoofi squirmed. "Well, erm…"
"Well?" I said. "Tell me."
"I felt…" he stopped, searching for the words. "It's hard to describe. I felt oddly… ambivalent yet indifferent. One way it felt uncomfortable, and the other it felt acceptable. I could get used to it— that's for sure— and I surely wouldn't mind."
Somehow, I sensed Eighon's eyes glance at Twoofi, maybe in amusement, maybe in disgust. I walked on, the queue moving, and I fell silent, and, noticing that I had gone quiet, Twoofi thought that I was satisfied with what I heard and wordlessly moved on with me. In truth, I had given great attention to what he said, and to relinquish myself from showing interest (and receiving more questions), I turned to look at the group of large rectangular screens which shone above us: the Feeds.
There were a group of five screens, rowed and adjusted in such a way that they bordered the three gates from the end of the leftmost gate and to the end of the rightmost gate. Each screen showed a from-the-sky view of a champion. These were the Champion Feeds, but atop them all, was the Map Feed, which showed us live locations of each champion and minion wave, and, sharing the space of the Map Feed, was the Gameboard. Unlike the other feeds, the Gameboard showed the status of each champion, how much gold they had, how many towers they destroyed, what amount of monsters they killed, and… how many minions they've slaughtered. It should be no surprise that all champions were indubitably fixated on increasing that number.
Above all feeds, there expanded yet another screen, larger than all screens combined. The Message Feed. And there, above us all, shone words in blocky letters, as if a sign from the infinite heaven above our people:
DEATH IS HEROISM.
SACRIFICE IS DUTY.
CONFLICT IS PEACEMAKING.
PAIN IS NOTHING.
I did not like looking at those words for too long, so I looked back down to the more mundane screens, but, like the sun, its presence penetrated through my attempts at distraction. To all of us, these words embedded themselves like maxims. Many absorbed them, used the words to fill the encroaching emptiness of their aging existence, and looked up to them to carry them through the next Match Day.
But some only swallowed the words like worn-out medicine, staying in the well of their stomachs yet never reaching their minds nor their hearts. Some remained impartial, as if unsure what to do with the words. Some embrace them after a bit of persuasion. Others, however, resisted them. Smoke hissed out somewhere near me. Eighon had his head turned up, and he let out a cloud of his tobacco's musk, dissipating upwards until it had turned into nothingness. Somehow, I knew he meant it for those words. I looked away.
Whatever significant event happened above in the Rift was shown by at least one feed, but more importantly, a mysterious voice announced each event enthusiastically. It was female, creaking with age, and, because of regular repetition, the pleasantry and gentleness which it originally had, now sounded to me as mechanical and artificial. We knew her as simply "The Voice", and she would announce, for example, in this manner:
On one feed, Yasuo, leaving behind him a trail of dead minions, came upon a struggling Annie in an aggressive dash and struck the child diagonally across her shoulder before swiftly drawing his blade to drive it through her chest. It was a sight to see, a wounded child reaching for her teddy bear before a windy sword had rid her of life. I watched, at one time shaking my head at the sheer incompetence of the summoner controlling her, and nodding at the fact that a champion died. Never mind that it was an ally. Champions are champions.
Just as Annie died, the mysterious voice echoed out from above.
"An ally has been slain!" So the voice went.
Jeers from every squad in all lanes rose like the depressed jingles of a sea of bells. Twoofi joined in, one with the crowd's sentiments, and then abruptly silencing himself, probably seeing that I did not react as they did. The melee minion in front of me, another squad member, number five-nine-zero, Finiro, raised his hammer and shield up high and shouted: "Weak child!" The other melees, Thrur (three-four) and Foroive (four-zero-five), in my squad followed suit, shoving their weapons into the air.
"Feeder! Weakling! Pathetic child! Call yourself an ally!" Words of the same vulgar gist resounded among the other melees and some of the more outspoken casters.
Boredom. Watching the feed was another way to appease it, and while we casters had novel ways of alleviating the boredom like cigarettes, the melees preferred to keep their eyes on the feed and notice every tiny detail of combat. Each cycle, to them, was a test of strength. They longed for the Match and vicariously lived it while it was not their turn, and, as consequence, they felt an attachment to it. Every time one of "our" champions died, they reacted as if they themselves were the teammates of the champion: disappointed, frustrated, and sad.
Ironic. Would the champions feel anything for them whenever they died? The question was as exhausted as the answer. Time evidenced that.
The queue moved and I walked onward, keeping my eyes on the screen. Five minutes and we would be back in the Rift, and a few of Matches more, just a few, and it would be Rest Day.
"Threniur." said a caster minion of my squad. Right behind Twoofi, was Sitwive (six-two-five), our rearmost caster, one of the other long-summoned of my squad. "Did you know the minion you last-hit?"
The word "last-hit" was a term that champions substituted for "kill" when it came to minions. This word functioned as euphemism, and did well to distract one's conscience from the heavier implications of using "kill". So wretched is our people, that such a word existed, one that was specifically tailored for all minions. And it meant killing us.
"No, I did not know him." I said, "Not this time. I did not see his minion number, fortunately."
"Good thing" Sitwive said.
Twoofi looked between us. "Why is it a good thing?"
"Well, Twoofi," Sitwive began, taking up a particular lecturing tone (one which he especially had ever since Twoofi joined), "some minions take last-hitting them as an amusing happenstance or a personal offense, especially those of the rare freshly-conjured." Then he took upon a new tone, one that told a smile. "Like you!"
Twoofi listened to him. The queue shortened as the next squad left the open gate doors, which then closed. We moved forward and stopped. Before us were the massive gates. The Rift waited on the other side.
Sitwive went on. "So that means, during the Rest Day, they'd sometimes come looking for their "last-hitters", and if you do not know their minion number, it would be easier to deny knowing them."
"What would they do if they somehow find you?" Twoofi said. Sitwive, much unlike me, preferred to greet his questions warmly.
"Well, most of the time they'd ask you questions." Sitwive then mimicked the sound of a naïve freshly-conjured minion. "'Did you get any gold from me? Does my death add to your minion kill count? Do we have minion kill counts?" and he returned to his normal tone, "They might also try to make acquaintance, so they'd probably ask about your age, how many matches you've seen, if there's any difference being a Blue minion and a Red minion, and all that..."
Sitwive continued. "Other times, however," his voice went low, "they may…" he paused, glossing over the many words he could use, yet uncertain of which was the right one "How can I explain this... They may… Hmm…"
The melees of our squad swung their weapons and shoved it above their heads as they shouted out their enthusiasm in anticipant battle cries, familiar to us all but meaningful mostly to them. We were next to leave, to fight, and die, and they, the melees, more than us casters, felt it in the foundations of their souls.
Seeing that the Match was calling for us again, Twoofi urged Sitwive on. "They may…?"
The air of the Rift came upon us. So did the Imperative. The doors opened before us, and all that we were and all that we had before the gates was spirited away, forgotten for the purposes of the Rift. Our limbs and heads snapped into place; our weapons stood erect in our hands. Our voices hushed. Yet our eyes could move; our consciousness had remained awake, receptive to all that would be done to us. The melees stepped out into the rift, one by one, and then I followed, but not before I could complete what Sitwive meant to say:
"Attempt to seek vengeance."
AN: Minions smoking cigarettes. I intended that with all my heart and soul. Maybe I enjoy writing the farcical portrayals of minions in the face of serious themes. Maybe there'll be more.
Foreshadowing is a useful little device. And a note on style, I use masculine pronouns for minions not to imply that all of the minions are male.
Also, I changed the summary again to the old one. The recent one exposed too much and came off too strong. Best keep summaries short but piquing.
This story may have some symbolism involving criticisms of war, dogmatic ideologies, and other things political and social; and maybe a little bit of life and existence, so I think this story is an allegory? I'll leave it to you decide and interpret what it is; and criticize it. Feel free to point out my mistakes in both editing and storytelling, for this is largely quite a unhinged experiment of mine and may appear to some as a stream-of-consciousness writing.
Anyways, now that I've finished this chapter, I'll go back to my other story now. Next chapter after a while.
Name Meanings:
[Nickname = Minion Number = Hebrew Numerical Value = Transliteration (Hebrew Script) = English Translation]
Threniur= Minion Three-Nine-Four = 394 = Chofesh (חוֹפֶשׁ) = Freedom
Twoofi = Minion Two-Two-Five = 225 = Bechirah (בְּחִירָה) = Choice
Eighon = Minion Eight-One= 81 = Dichaon (דִכָּאוֹן) = Depression
Sitwive = Minion Six-Two-Five = 625 = Acharaiut (אַחֲרָיוּת) = Responsibility
Finiro = Minion Five-Nine-Zero= 590 = Takif (תַקִיף) = Resolute
Thrur = Minion Three-Four = 34 = Choach (כּוֹחַ) = Strength
Foroive = Minion Four-Zero-Five = 405 = Kasheh (קָשֶׁה) = Hard
I used Google translate for the letters, my knowledge for the pronunciation, and a particular website for the numerical values of each Hebrew letter. Does the English translation hold any symbolic value? I leave that to your interpretation, because I'm not so sure myself.
I apologize in advance to the native and fluent Hebrew speakers if I've used the wrong sense of the words or have made an error in calculating the numerical values. My Hebrew isn't that good.
Squad Meanings:
Squad Five-Four-Two = 542 = Mevaser (מְבַשֵׂר) = Herald
Pronunciations:
[A general trend of minion name pronunciation is that, being based from number designations, each single syllable borrowed from each of their numbers sounds distinct and reminiscent of their original number. This is done for practical reasons, one being that it should be easy to know the original name of the nicknamed minion just from hearing it. For example, THREe-NIne-foUR. A minion can deduce, from proper pronunciation of the bold letters, the true name of the nicknamed minion.]
Threniur = Threh-nai-uhr. But it can sound like Threh-nee-ur if pronounced quickly, often, or in a drunken slur. Both are understandable.
Twoofi= T-woo-fee and T-woo-fai are both acceptable pronunciations. The "oo" sound is made because of the double two of the original name: the first two is represented as "tw" and the second as "wo" (the "oo" sound), and, combined, they make "twoo" (pun intended). Thus, Minion Two-Two-Five (Twoofi) could not be confused for Two-Five (Twofi).
Eighon= Ae-on.
Sitwive= Sih-twah-yhv
Finiro- Fai-nee-row and Fi-nee-row are both acceptable pronunciations. "Fai" and "fi" are unique to the number five, so pronounced naturally or literally (by the letters) are comprehensible to a minion.
Thrur= Th-ruhr
Foroive= Fohr-row-whayv. The "wha" is similar to a French "oi"; this is due to the "row" sound of zero connecting with the "ahyv" sound of five.
Note: These are not, for the purposes of reading, strict pronunciation rules. You can read the minion names in any way you wish. The pronunciations I've listed are how the story construes the minions to say them, with respect to their system of naming.