A/N (Aroihkin's Notes) / Chapter originally written on 06.18.2004. Re-polished on 01.12.2006 for the arowrites dot net archives.
Review-replies can be found now on arowrites dot net.
Formatting repaired on 04.13.2010 -- thanks, ffnet, for eating all my scene-dividers sometime in the last four years!
05.02.2010: All scene-dividers have been eaten, again, on all of my stories. I give up. Please just go read this story on arowrites dot net where it hasn't been made incoherent; I am unable to keep up with this site's stupidity.
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Requiem for the Dream
( entry 05: wretched hope )
Years ago... so far back that it seemed to the ones who remembered as though it had been a life time, Valua had owned Esperanza. The "city of hope". Sailors from all over the known world had drifted in occasionally to try their own luck at going East, and the ones who were not killed in the attempt were often infected with the disease--the plague that the small town carried in surplus.
Despair. Thus Esperanza grew from a tiny military outpost, into a small city.
Upon finding that they could not break through the dark rift themselves... Valua eventually abandoned Esperanza, leaving behind its residents. The city of hope had become the city of the hopeless, being tossed aside like rubbish only put a firm seal upon the people's dejection.
Years went by, no one kept track how many. Five? Ten? It did not matter... long enough for one of the drifters--an orphan of the rift--to grow from young child to young woman. But how long had it been before even she and her parents had wandered in?
Then, one fateful day, a new group of travelers entered the town, their ship was large and sleek, purple and silver. A single lifeboat was released, and onto the dock stepped four young strangers. An airsick Prince, two Pirates, and a girl in white.
Oh how the citizens of Esperanza had laughed when the leader of the four had proclaimed that they would break through the rift! So many had tried, so many of such skill! What fools were these, to think they would succeed where so many had failed?
But the city of hope was in for a surprise, for--somehow--they did make it.
Perhaps there was real hope to be found in Esperanza after all? The people took on a new liveliness--sailors having long since tied themselves to the dirt took to the skies again. The people began to walk with a purpose other than to simply wait for death. Chins were raised, eyes brightened, and then...
...and then...
It was like a child's summer dream come to an abrupt halt, a ship crumbling slowly as it arched downwards into Deep Sky...
The change. No one really knew how it had happened.
The Grand Admiral of the former Valuan Empire had... taken over the world. He crushed Valua without launching a single ship, he sent the feared Ramirez to exterminate Pirates both black and blue like vermin... the world knelt...
No one knew for sure what had happened to the young Pirates and their friends, but everyone felt in their guts that they had been the first to fall.
Seemingly-forgotten until this point, Esperanza suddenly found its port overfull with ships of all sizes and descriptions, refugees from other cities under every moon. And behind them like a horrible rift of another kind--the new Armada. It was the peoples' own homelands' ships... their own people aboard them... herding them like cattle into the only place depressing enough to break them near-effortlessly.
Hope, they'd named it. What a terrible thing...
For a long time, the Armada had patrolled the ways out of the city--keeping everyone bottled in. Esperanza began to build new homes, but could not build enough with their limited supplies, the city had grown to five times its size over night. The high, rusted walls seemed to strain from all the people huddled fearfully inside.
And then... the food began to run out.
Children cried, mothers wept, and bodies soon began plummeting off the land. Most were dead, thrown off with whispered words of closure.
Some were alive, driven mad by hunger, thirst, and despair--they leapt from the walls of their own accord... screaming curses at the Armada as they fell.
It was only a few days after the food had run out entirely, when the numbers had dwindled down to only three times their original size, that -he- had arrived by lifeboat, flanked by two elite soldiers. He was easily recognizable, the crisp Valuan uniform and silver-white hair--the cold green eyes. Lord Admiral Ramirez had become quite the legend himself, even in this city that heard so little from the outside world.
For what was whispered about Ramirez was simply death. He was death, he was the grim reaper... any who opposed him died--for he was the very hand of Lord Galcian himself.
"You people are being taught a lesson." he had said coldly, standing just inside the gates of the city--for no one had bothered to close them, "The same lesson as the rest of your wretched world. The sooner you learn, the sooner things will be better for you."
And with that he had turned and left them, without another word or a flicker of eyelash, presumably to go back to hunting down elusive Pirates. The citizens--both new and old--took a deep collective breath... and then choked.
For something near a dozen large ships had broken away from their patrol and were approaching steadily, their flags--blank and blood red of the new Armada--were up. Before the town had time to fully panic, expecting attack, the first of the ships had disembarked and soldiers had landed.
The cargo of these ships were rations and building supplies, and the soldiers quickly set to making the population work for those rations--building housing complexes that rose above the walls. Factories and jails, the city soon spilled over the walls and up the cliffs. But no one even noticed.
After all, the danger was already inside.
Years went by, the populace trying desperately to fall into a rhythm with which to live by. Buying and selling was forbidden, as was resisting the military. Soon the executions of the more rebellious citizens--members of 'The Sands'--began to become commonplace... making up for the steady trickle of newcomers. For Esperanza was the only city one could travel to without strict government approval... you had only to approach a new-order cargo ship and ask to go there. But the well-known catch was that you could never travel back out again.
Lord Galcian did not mind killing the weak, but he had realized that to destroy all of them would be a waste of a potential resource. So, he would break those who survived. And he succeeded, for the most part, except for that one rebel group that kept cropping up. Small enough that he had not yet bothered to crush them, but just devious enough to ensure that the military did not have a complete grasp on the town.
The Sands, so named for the hourglass that was their symbol.
James scowled at the 'grill' (as they had come to start calling the blasted 'portable stoves'), and took a moment to swipe his hair out of his eyes again. He could pause here and there because he worked faster than those up the line from him, and so the ex bounty-hunter took the moment to straighten and look around.
Today, it was whispered, the factory was going to be inspected. This was a big deal, he knew, because if the factory did not pass these inspections, the work was only going to get worse and the flow of ration chits would slow down as further punishment.
So he didn't take as long of a pause as he could have, before setting back to work. This morning he had been moved up the line, where his 'dexterity and attitude would come to more use', according to the soldier who had questioned him only a day before.
Patience and luck, was more like what one needed here. He was putting the sides, back, and extremely heavy main cooking piece (which was assembled yet further up the line) together. James also installed the caster wheels and doors--which meant the cross piece that held the tops of the doors down as well.
Which would not have been all that difficult, except that he was continually getting the wrong parts, not enough of one thing--broken and smashed of another--and the holes Never Lined Up. The steel was not forgiving, either, when it would slip and fall onto his foot. And the soldier smirked every time he heard the clang of steel bouncing off of James' boot and onto the stone floor.
The dark-haired man fought against one particular side panel that seemed to refuse to cooperate under any circumstances... and he finally got the bolt through the correct slots and tightened the nut down on the other side. Now he only had to do that on three other spots on the same side plate...
Patience and luck, but mostly the former. A good thing for James that he had more self-control than to curse or mutter...
The ex hunter continued to work, as silent as always, as a group of military men walked past. James didn't even flinch, or jump when he caught a glimpse of a young-looking officer with blond hair out of the corner of his eye. The rest of the plant seemed to take notice, however, when the young man in question--silently and without explanation--smoothly decapitated one of the workers with a flash of steel.
The body slumped forward, a screwdriver dropping from one hand... and a dagger with an hourglass-shaped pommel dropping from the other.
"This plant," the blond man said, roughly shoving the body of the would-be assassin off of the portable stove, "has just failed its inspection."
He was certain that he made an odd sight, sitting on the edge of one of Esperanza's high, rusted walls, his knees drawn up, arms resting atop them and his sharp chin digging into them. His eyes, half-hidden by his dark hair, were mostly unfocused--staring out over the top of the harbor and at the dark rift.
How many people of Esperanza had done the same over the years? James did not know, and felt--with conviction--that he did not particularly -want- to know. All at once he had realized that the city's disease had been working its way into him... through the pores of his skin like tiny, invisible roots.
It was not the dark rift he was seeing, no, splashing across his vision was the memory of only an hour previous. The soldiers had, under the direction of the blond man--(who, he reasoned, must be a high officer of some sort)--began to kill random workers. And when the officer was not looking... James watched the soldiers, with a stealth and ease of something well-practiced, loot the bodies.
The carnage itself had not made him so much as blink an eye--having expected something along the lines after an attempted assassination from The Sands. He had, however, been more expecting for everyone to be searched for a sign of the hourglass, rather than for random victims to be selected.
As for the looting, James felt more ill at that, than at the actual killing...
And, naturally, the rations for the week were cut in half for all the workers at that factory. He shook his head, having handed his own ration chit to the one called Jon... the married man with the children that had been the subject of so much talk the day before at the bar.
"Hey," the voice startled the ex bounty hunter, making him jump and snap his attention suddenly to his left--
Where Ben was currently pulling himself up off the ladder to sit next to him. James swallowed, and tried to will his adrenalin-fed heartbeat to slow back down. He was admittedly jumpy after the massacre at the plant, though he had stayed carefully out of the way of the ensuing fights that had broken out over the random victim selection.
A bunch of exhausted, terrified, bone-weary factory workers, most never having fought in their lives, armed only with screwdrivers and wrenches. They hadn't been much of a challenge against armed and armored soldiers, and they, too, had been looted when the blond wasn't looking.
James felt as though he would be sick.
"I heard about what happened, and about what you did." the newcomer continued after a moment of also staring out at the rift. "That was really good of you, you know."
The darker-haired factory worker blinked, thrown briefly for a loop. Ben hadn't been at work today, but what had James done that was 'good of him'? He didn't say anything, however, and was soon rewarded with clarification.
"You know," the younger man said, "with the rations."
"I don't need as much." he replied stiffly, glaring into the rift from behind inky black locks of hair that insisted on getting into his face at all possible times.
"Yeah, well... that was still really good of you."
The two simply spent the next long few moments contemplating the rift, or at least seeming to for all outward appearances. Again, James was thinking about other things--now his attention drifted to the fact that there were no longer ships within sight. When the change had first occurred, they had always been patrolling outside the city to make sure none escaped alive.
Now there was no point, he supposed, as there were no ships left that the new Armada did not own. Besides, where would anyone go if they did escape?
Regardless, anyone who built a ship for personal use soon found their heads separated from their shoulders, as having a boat had become considered an act of piracy. The new order did not bother with public executions--the heads on public display in the nearest town square afterwards worked just as well, and there would be no miraculous escapes just before the killing stroke.
The Valuans had been stupid in that way.
"Um, James, I wanted to thank you for finishing that chess game with me yesterday." Ben broke into his morbid thoughts again, sounding awkward and a little embarrassed.
"...why? I beat you, after all."
"Yeah, well, you would have anyway." Ben chuckled nervously before elaborating hurriedly, "that was the way my brother and I left the game when I saw him last." he coughed, clearly embarrassed, "Except the side I played last night was his, and you were playing mine... so you can see how bad I was losing before."
"When you saw him last?" James repeated, raising one dark eyebrow--having immediately spotted those few words as suspect.
"Well, yeah... I told you before that I came with him on his search for 'decent work', right?" he waited for James' nod, "Well, we were going to finish that game the next day--and we both went to our beds..." the brown-haired man sighed, "and the next morning he'd vanished."
"...I see."
"Yeah, you know--first I thought maybe he'd been one of The Sands the whole time... you know... and had gone out that night and maybe gotten caught and killed. But when I went to the square that day... and his head wasn't there..."
James was silent, not sure why the younger man was telling him about this--but it reminded him again of Todd, the starving families, the soldiers looting...
The world really -had- gone to hell, even more so than before.
"Well, anyway, thanks for finishing that game with me--even though I lost." Ben repeated, finally staggering to a halt in his awkward story.
"You're... welcome." the ex bounty-hunter said thoughtfully, quietly, his gaze fixed again on the rift.
More time went by, whatever Ben was thinking of was a mystery to him, but he really didn't give it any attention. He was too busy hurling further into his own dark thoughts... the roots burrowed deeper and began to split... reaching for his bones...
"You remind me a lot of Wren." the other worker murmured quietly, almost too soft for James to hear. "So much that's it's almost like he's come back, every time I look at you."
Yet more silence followed, James' eyes now tracking the movement of a school of sky fish--well out of the range of nets from the city's walls. Sky fish prospered now more than ever without people out catching them. Most of the rations dealt out by the government consisted of hard trail bread, salt, and rack-dried vegetables.
Fish was something most only dreamt about these days, though those in the military were free to catch them if their duties 'happened' to take them near a school. Another thing that was used in 'friendships' like those of Todd and his military connections, where he caused trouble for them to entertain themselves with, and they gave him Loqua.
James snorted in disgust, closing his eyes. His gloved hands formed slowly into loosely-held fists.
"I know that you are one of The Sands." he said simply after a while, ignoring the alarmed gasp from the other man, "--is that... why? You wished to follow where you felt your brother might have gone?"
"I--um--uh..." Ben suddenly laughed, "you really -are- just like him! Moons..."
"You are clumsily trying to change the subject." he pointed out, not looking at the younger worker even though he now reopened his eyes. "Unsuccessfully, I might add."
"Well, yeah. I guess that's probably why I joined." Ben finally admitted, knowing the cat was out of the bag anyway--so to speak. James didn't seem like he was about to clamber down the ladder and report him, anyway. "But it's not why I stayed."
The older of the two nodded, as though confirming something in his mind, and then tilted his head back--stretching his neck as he looked straight up. The wind picked up, and he closed his eyes again as his hair renewed its assault on them.
And meanwhile, below them, a familiar figure swaggered off for an obvious destination. He'd heard all he needed to, and his loqua would be assured for weeks to come from -this- one... what marvelous luck...
"This city is stifling." James said after another long moment, "I think it would choke me, if I lived here too long."
"Yeah." Ben agreed, watching the other man with nostalgia fairly glimmering in his eyes, "but it's the closest to freedom you can find on this wretched world anymore."
James smiled bitterly at the irony of his words, a wretched world indeed. The two young men on the wall went back to contemplating the rift, like so many countless others had done from these walls before them. Esperanza, the city of Hope.
The dark-haired man wasn't sure whether to laugh... or scream.
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Skies of Arcadia Legends belongs to someone else.
All here that is not found in the canon... is mine.
Never steal if you value your spleen.