Chapter Twenty-Four: A Taste for Freedom
It was morning, and we were back in the Golden Grasses; that much was obvious. We'd materialized in front of a giant Baobab tree that rested on top of a ridge. I wondered if it was one of the various trees Scales and I had taken shelter in during our trek across the Golden Grasses, but I quickly dismissed the idea as ridiculous. There were thousands of trees.
There was something…something…off about the Golden Grasses, however. It wasn't quite as…Golden. It seemed grayer, more dead. The violet rainclouds hung low in the sky, gently raining a light shower over the land. But all throughout the Golden Grasses was a kind of haze, a kind of fog…
"It's dust," Anna said. "You were wonderin' what all the crap in the air was—it's dust. Now c'mon, let's take a walk." She started to head down the ridge, back into the grasslands, pointed to the next ridge over. "See anythin' interesting up there?" she asked me.
I squinted, trying to make out anything that could be qualified as 'interesting'. That was when my gaze settled on a tall, dark shape… It was a tower, I realized. I pointed this out to Anna, and she gave an affirming nod. "It's a guard tower," she said. She then wiggled her ring finger, the one with one of the light-bending rings Gwen had given us. "Can't see us, obviously, so don' worry!"
"What's it guarding?" I asked.
Anna's initial response was a giggle. "Sorry, I jus' think it's funny that I know more about your own consorts than you do! But I really don' have to explain anything, right now. Once we get to the top of that ridge, you'll understand jack shit."
We made the next part of our journey in silence, thank Christ. I found I enjoyed Anna a hell of a lot more when she wasn't talking. It took us about half an hour to make it to the other side of the valley we were currently in. We passed by three more Baobab trees and crossed two creeks, and still the silence persisted. I was loving every moment of it.
When we reached the top of the next ridge, however…the silence grew oppressive.
I was looking down at…at… I saw fences. Lots of fences…a great big, circular fence, maybe three or so miles in diameter, dotted with guard towers… Within the giant fence, I saw ramshackle, wooden buildings. Slums. In the center of the compound was an open area of dusty ground. There was no grass inside the compound…just mud and rock.
And nestled within the northern end of the compound was a smaller, sub-compound comprising of several purple buildings that almost resembled mansions. The sub-compound was surrounded by a solid rock wall. I could see shapes, figures moving about within the compound, but I was too far away to get a good look at them. But the compound wasn't even the thing that captivated my attention.
What captivated me the most was the ridge to our east. Or rather, what was left of the ridge to our east. The earth, grass, and trees that formed the top layer had all been stripped away, exposing the bare rock underneath. And though I really couldn't get a good look at this distance…it didn't take a genius to see that there were people down there, picking away at that rock. This was a quarry. A giant quarry.
"Startin' to remember your consorts' history?" Anna prompted me. "C'mon, we're gonna pay a proper visit." She then continued to walk, beginning the descent down the hillside, into the valley below. I had no choice but to follow. We walked straight past the guard tower without raising any alarms, so it was safe to assume that Gwen's One Ring knockoffs were working properly.
I didn't break the silence until we were already a good ways away from the ridge we'd just come off of. "So, when are we? Not the same time we visited last time, I'm assuming?"
Anna shook her head. "Like I said, time travel's really screwy for me… But there are various points in time that are extremely easy for me to travel to. I like to call 'em Events, 'cuz they play a critical role in maintaining the stability of the alpha timeline. Some of 'em are jus' a few hours long, some of 'em can be years long. It's much easier for me to time-travel within an Event than it is for me to jus' jump to random points on the timeline."
"So…is this an Event that we're in right now?"
"Yepperz!" Anna beamed. "See, whoever said Knights couldn't use their brains; you're gettin' the hang of it already! This is the first Event we'll be visitating. Right now, we're still in the same Event we were in when we dropped off your friendz—just a later part of it."
"Oh-kaay…" I murmured, still trying to wrap my head around this sudden influx of Anna's made-up Time jargon. It was a lot to take in, okay? Of course, due to the absence of a certain winged psychopath who was supposed to be my guide through this nightmare, I've become quite adept at learning shit on the fly. "Okay…so then, how long has it been since we left Scales and Xolotl here? Relative to them?"
Anna paused to think about it for a moment. "About three months," she replied.
My stomach nearly did a flip-flop. Three months? Scales has been stuck in a quarry for three goddamn months? Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and Ringo; he must hate my guts, by now!
"Three fucking months?" This time, my mental outburst translated quite smoothly into words.
"If ya think he's gonna be pissed, don' worry!" Anna waved a dismissive hand. "You'll be one of the last things on his mind, trust me on that one…"
We fell silent once more as we approached the fenced compound. There was a gate built into the eastern part of the fence, but we'd approached it from the south, so we just headed straight for the fence itself. It was a chain link fence, maybe twenty or twenty-five feet tall, with barbed wire at the top. And when I reached towards the fence, Anna grabbed my wrist.
"Don't," she warned me. "It's electrified. You'll need to get us in."
"How'll I do that?"
"Gee, I dunno," the Bitch rolled her eyes. "Maybe you should do a Forcey thing. C'mon, let's go."
When I motioned for her to grab my hand, she knocked it aside and wrapped her arms around me, holding me close. I bit down on the inside of my cheeks once again, biting back the stream of profanity that attempted to burst forth. I'll admit, it was much easier for me to use my Aspect to levitate us into the air when we were…like this…instead of just holding hands, but…
Just kill me now.
I focused on my Aspect and used it to lift Anna and myself up into the air, slowly clearing the fence, drifting over the barbed wire, and gently lowering ourselves to the ground on the other side. I kept resisting the urge to wrinkle my nose the whole time. Anna didn't smell bad, or anything…it was just her breath. It was like she was breathing out vodka, the smell was so powerful…
I nearly threw her off me when we reached the ground, but I forced myself to be more gentle. She was the time-traveler, and I was stuck three hundred years in the past—she kinda had me by the balls, here. I could act civil when I needed to…especially when I really didn't want to…
My thoughts of Anna quickly vanished, however, as we started making our way into the giant compound. The place looked and smelled like shit. Actual, literal shit. There was defecation piled in some of the alleys between slums. There was another smell about the area that I really couldn't identify very well…but when we saw the first few corpses, I realized that it was quite simply the smell of death. Dead, rotting bodies lying in the mud…
As we got nearer to the camp, we'd gotten off the ridge, so I wasn't able to get a good look inside until now. It was not until now that I realized that the people living in this compound were my consorts. Thin, emaciated cobra-consorts. Scales of cyan and green, of yellow and light brown. Slanted eyes, wider neck hoods…these were consorts from the clans of the Desert Fires.
Enslaved. Working in the quarries, just like the slate-scaled elder had said.
We wandered through the camp, Anna doing her best to avoid stumbling into anything. Yeah, she was pretty drunk, but she's been like that for years. Learning how to walk while intoxicated was one of the first skills she'd mastered. As for me… I had to keep from stumbling over shit because I was too busy taking in everything around me.
As we got closer to the center of camp, we began seeing more of the consorts who were imprisoned here. They just kind of milled around aimlessly. The ones who were here were either extremely young, or gray-scaled elders. The ones who were alive, at least.
And patrolling the camp, as well as manning the guard towers that dotted the giant fence, were armed Dersite soldiers. Every so often, I would see a Dersite brutally club down a passing consort for no apparent reason. Sometimes it would be because the consort failed to show a proper level of respect, other times I guess the guards were simply bored, or feeling a cruel streak. The first few times I saw this happen, a red-hot rage ignited in my stomach…but when I moved to help the fallen consorts, Anna would stop me. Then I'd remember her warning about interfering and creating doomed timelines, and I'd grudgingly relent. It wasn't easy, though.
I broke the silence when we arrived at the parade grounds in the center of the compound. I felt nauseated by what I just saw, by what I was still seeing… But I didn't dare throw up, for fear of alerting anyone within earshot. "Jesus Christ, it's like fucking Auschwitz in here…" I murmured, my voice quiet and subdued. "This is what the Desert Fires went through?"
"It's not quite so bad as Auschwitz, I think," Anna sighed. Even Anna's eternally cheerily drunken self could not remain unaffected by the atmosphere of this hellhole. "This place is just a labor camp—the consorts are worked to the bone 'till they keel over, 'till they catch some disease, or until they get old and die from that. It's absolutely terrible, and it's designed to work the poor snakes to death…but it's not designed to fuckin' exterminate them. I'd say this is probs closer to a Russian gulag."
I could see the point she was trying to make…but it really didn't matter to me. Saying something isn't 'quite as bad' as Auschwitz doesn't mean jack shit! That's like saying something isn't 'quite as greasy' as a burger from Five Guys. It doesn't mean a thing. It could be 'not quite as greasy' as a burger from Five Guys, but still be pretty damn greasy!
I'm sorry, I just… Those kinds of similes are one of my 'run home to mama' ticks that come out when I can't really deal with something…
As I took a moment to fight down my nausea and catch my breath, I thought back and reflected on the Story the slate-scaled elder had told me, back in the temple of the City In The Center. He'd spoken of the enslavement of the Desert Fires, but then…then he'd mentioned how someone known as the 'White Warrior' came to the enslaved clans and, in a nutshell, liberated them. Damn, I was kinda pissed that it'd taken me this long to connect such blatantly obvious dots.
"You said you knew the history of my consorts?" I asked Anna. When she nodded, I went on. "Okay, so… So, the elders then told me that this guy shows up, and-"
"Xolotl is the White Warrior from the Story," Anna interrupted, stifling a yawn. "Sorry, didn' really feel like draggin' out the suspenz—suspense any longer. That's why I said Mr. White Scales was the man of the hour. For the past three months, he and your red-scaled friend have been planning an uprising in this camp. Today is the day they put that plan into action."
"Okay, great," I cleared my throat uncomfortably, resisting the urge to start tapping my foot. "So we take Xolotl and dump him in the past. Xolotl does his thing, makes friends, inspires peeps and all that jazz, and sparks an uprising. Then we bring him back?"
Anna hesitated, unsure of how to respond to what I thought was a very cut-and-dry question. Then she said, "I wish it were that simple." And that was all she had to say on the matter. No matter how hard I tried to press her for answers, she refused to give any. After a few minutes, she finally relented…but only a bit. "This is only the first Event we're visiting, and this one won't need any interfering until the very end. Whatever happens…all we can do is observe."
Something about Anna's tone of voice gave me the feeling that whatever was going to happen… I wasn't gonna like it.
Anna clicked her tongue impatiently and held out her left hand. A large, red and black wine glass appeared out of nowhere, hovering in the air under her hand. "Let's move things along a tad bit, shall we? Give me your hand." And with that, Anna turned the wine glass ever so slightly clockwise.
The effect was immediately noticeable. The rainclouds, which were always constantly moving at a snail's pace, suddenly rushed past overhead, and the very daylight was altered. The morning flew past, then the afternoon. When Anna stopped turning her wine glass, it was evening.
Anna released her wine glass, and it vanished. "My Chronograils act kinda wonky if I overexert 'em, but they're super awesome for little jumps. I use 'em for fine-tuning."
I didn't even ask. Weird time shit just made my head hurt.
There was a commotion coming from the eastern side of the compound. I turned to see what was going on just in time to witness the entrance gates of the compound opening. There was a…well, it would be a stretch to call it a road. It was more like a long aisle that stretched from the parade grounds to the entrance gates where the wooden shacks and buildings parted, allowing a large group of people to walk directly from the gates to the center of camp.
And through the gates, returning to their hell of a home for the night, was a mass of several hundred consorts, both male and female. These were the youths and the middle-aged consorts—those who were still in their prime. They must have been out working in the quarry all day long; that would explain why it seemed so lifeless in here before…
And with them came a complement of several dozen Dersite guards, every one of them armed to the teeth. They marched in lockstep in two columns, on either side of the mob of laborers. When the gates were sealed, the guards jogged forward into the parade field, then headed north towards the walled-off sub-compound. The purple buildings made sense, now; that was where the Dersite guards resided.
When the guards passed them by, the mass of laborers dissolved as the consorts began to slither back towards what passed for their homes…wait, no… No, they weren't heading back home…they were all heading into the largest of the ramshackle wooden buildings, located in the southwestern reaches of the compound.
Without a word, Anna started walking towards it. Because of the compound's vast size, it took us a little while to reach the giant building, which gave me the chance to press for a few more answers. "All the clans of the Desert Fires…they can't all be here. This isn't the only one of these camps, is it?"
Anna shook her head. "There are over a hundred quarries throughout the Golden Grasses," she explained to me, already beginning to sound slightly less drunk. "This is just the largest one. And by far the most important…"
"So, then… Would you mind explaining what the fuck Dersites are doing here?"
"Can't," Anna's grin widened a little more. She took another drink from her flask…which I swear had been empty just a few minutes ago. "Those's be mad spoilerz, silly!"
Just when I was thinking she was sobering up…
The large building was circular in shape, and it was two stories tall. Anna told me that the sick and infirm were housed in the upper level, while the lower level… I saw long, haphazardly-made tables of wood. There was an additional table in the back of the room that was made of rock, and I could see giant pots of burbling…gruel, I guess it was. Shit-smelling gruel. Probably tasted like shit, too…but then, to these consorts, even shit-tasting gruel would probably seem like a gourmet meal. Not like the Dersites were giving them very much to eat… I wondered how exactly they were making this food. Then I decided to put it out of my mind.
This place was a giant mess hall. Where all the consorts would gather for their meals. That was when I first saw them, and my heart nearly leaped into my throat. Scales and Xolotl were sitting at one of the smaller tables, deep in conversation with a select group of consorts. I started towards them, but Anna, yet again, grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back, shaking her head no.
"Who's he talking to?" I asked Anna.
"No one important," the Bitch shrugged. "Younger consorts who aren't smart enough to recognize a bad idea even when it fuckin' vomits all over their carpet. Let's jump forward a tad bit more…"
Anna led me outside, summoning one of her chronograils as we walked. She nudged it clockwise just far enough to send us past the evening and into nighttime. I watched as the consorts eating their evening meal filed out of the dining hall and returned to their homes, though it was like I was watching a timelapse video. Everyone was a blur.
Anna took me to the north end of the camp, where she instructed me to levitate the both of us to the top of the fortifications. I set us down just to the side of the entrance gate to the Dersite sub-compound. There was a trio of Dersite guards standing watch atop the gate, but they didn't hear us. We were pretty much alone up here.
"This should give us the best view…" Anna murmured.
"The uprising? Is it about to happen?"
"Jus' watch."
Silence had settled over the labor camp. There weren't even any crickets chirping. Hell, I dunno if my planet even has any crickets-
My thoughts were interrupted by the explosion. I saw a burst of flame suddenly brew forth somewhere along the eastern portion of the fence. It was the gate—the gate had been blown open. There was the sound of energyfire from below as the guards on patrol opened fire on something or someone…but it was swiftly silenced.
Alarms sounded, and the trio of Dersite guards abandoned their post. I could hear heavy footfalls and hollered orders as the Dersites within the walls mobilized to deal with the threat. Before long, I spotted Xolotl and Glimmering Scales, striding into the parade ground at the head of a force of perhaps two dozen consorts, all of them armed with stolen energy rifles. I could hear Xolotl bellowing at the top of his lungs, urging his fellow consorts to rise up and storm the Dersite compound with him. A few consorts answered the call, trickling out of the slums in twos or threes…but there were barely ten new arrivals. Of hundreds of consorts who 'lived' here…less than ten answered the call. Xolotl continued to try and rouse the consorts…but it was useless. He was alone.
I could see another small number of consorts, instead of joining Xolotl and company on the parade ground, making a run for it through the blown-open gates. Those who tried to flee vastly outnumbered those who chose to join the fight. Any guard who attempted to assail the gathered rebels was quickly put down.
Eventually, Xolotl ordered the attack to begin, despite his hopeless situation. All of the gathered insurgents charged towards the Dersite compound. As they grew near, dozens of Dersite guards scaled the stairs onto the walls, taking up defensive positions. They had clearly trained for a situation like this.
A tall Dersite, taller than his subordinates, dressed in a gray uniform, took up a position directly over the gate, right in the thick of it all. He was clearly in charge, judging by the way everyone seemed to defer to him. He raised his hand in a silent command, and all of the defenders primed their energy rifles and took aim.
"C'mon," Anna took my hand once again, summoning one of her chronograils a third time. "We don't need to watch this next bit. I think you already get the idea of how it's gonna go down… Let's skip to the end."
I didn't resist when Anna took my hand and turned time forward once more. I blinked once, and suddenly the wall was empty. There were fifteen or twenty fallen Dersite guards still lying where the consort insurgents had killed them, but…everyone else was gone.
Anna pointed my attention towards the southwest. It only took once glance to make me see that the uprising had failed. Xolotl and Scales must've rallied the survivors and fallen back to the dining hall. Well, that was all well and good…except Anna had dumped us here just in time to witness the Dersite guards storming the place. And while that was happening, I heard the unmistakable sounds of an engine humming by overhead.
A Dersite gunship had arrived… I expected it to light up the dining hall, but it soared right on past, banking off to the east. When it cleared the labor camp, however, its nose cannons opened fire, shooting at something farther away, outside the camp. That's when I remembered the groups of consorts who'd fled through the blown gates.
My nausea returned.
Anna, thankfully, turned her chronograil again before I had to see anymore, sending us forward. The night flew on past until the skies started to brighten again, signaling the return of morning. Anna stopped the jump just shy of the LORAR equivalent of sunrise. Skaiarise, I guess it could be called? I sent us floating gently back down to ground level, on the outside of the walled Dersite compound.
Like the open route that connected the parade ground to the gate at the eastern end of camp, there was also a smaller walkway that connected the Dersite compound to the center of camp. Anna led me down this route and we returned to the central parade ground just as the daylight began to return.
All of the consorts who were imprisoned in this camp had been assembled in the parade ground, the 'healthy' workers separated from the young and elderly. Surrounding the entire perimeter of the parade ground was the force of Dersite guards, every one of them armed with automatic energy rifles, waiting for the first sign of a riot. Some of them seemed eager for a riot to begin, while others seemed slightly anxious. Most of them, however, were completely unreadable.
"The Overseer's about to talk," Anna said.
The tall Dersite in the gray uniform strode forward from the northern end of the parade ground. He cleared his throat and began to speak. "Today is a very special day!" he proclaimed. "You all have been gathered here as witnesses! Some of you have forgotten your place as vermin. Some of you, just this last night, fancied themselves heroes! Well, perhaps they are. They certainly possess more bravery and courage than the lot of you combined. Perhaps they are heroes! And today, we shall make them memories."
The Dersite leader gave a subtle nod to one of his subordinates. The lower-ranking Dersite who'd been given the order barked out an order of his own, and the line of Dersite guards standing behind the Overseer parted. An additional force of guards jogged through the opening, hauling over a dozen bloodied, beaten, torn-up consorts into the parade ground along with them.
They must be the sad remains of Xolotl's failed uprising. They were lined up in front of the Overseer, facing the silent masses of laborers. I could see the defiance in their eyes and stances. I wondered if they'd fully accepted what was coming to them. I noted that Xolotl was not among them. And on the far right of the line, my heart nearly skipped a beat when I saw Glimmering Scales. He'd been bloodied up pretty badly, and I could see a hole in his right-hand neck hood where he'd obviously been shot by an energy slug. I started forward, but Anna stepped in front of me. "Trust me," she said. "I'll be right back. Meet me at our place on the wall in…tensies."
And with that, Anna left me alone, making her way across the parade ground towards the line of condemned insurgents. As she moved up, the Overseer stepped down from his platform and drew an energy pistol from the holster he wore on his hip, cowboy-style. He strode down to the far left of the line of condemned, aimed his pistol at the first consort, and shot the poor guy in the back of the head. I winced as the lime-scaled cobra flopped forward, half his face blown away, blood spraying through the air.
The Overseer stepped over to the second consort, a darker green-scaled female, and executed her next. As he made his way down the line, I had to really fight to keep my nausea from surging up my throat. I had to fight even harder to stop myself from sprinting forward and strangling that fucking Dersite with his own guts.
I've watched my fair share of Star Wars and Star Trek. I've seen a lot of battle scenes involving blaster pistols and phaser weapons…enough to think that energy weapons had evolved from the brutality of modern-day weapons that used metal projectiles. The deaths and wounds in those movies…they were all so clean and bloodless, for the most part… The Carapacian energy weapons were nothing like that. They were every bit as bad, every bit as gory… The Overseer might as well have been blowing out those poor consorts' brains with a Desert Eagle.
I found myself hating Anna even more than I ever have before. Why was she showing me this? How could she expect me to watch my own consorts get fucked up their collective asses like this and not intervene?
But I didn't intervene, I'm ashamed to say. Anna warned me about doomed timelines, and I found myself even more fearful of causing one now that Anna had left me on my own for a short while. All I could do was watch.
One by one, the Overseer made his way down the line and executed the surviving insurgents. None of the condemned gave shouts of defiance. No cries of rage or sorrow, no final words, no 'I regret I have but one life to give'…nothing. They died silently.
The hundreds of consorts gathered in the southern end of the parade grounds watched the executions silently, as well. No one cried or grumbled. There was no dissent or anger. They all stood still as statues, watching almost impassively as their brethren were killed. When I thought about it, they probably saw shit like this on a regular basis. Even if they weren't completely desensitized to it…if they showed any kind of dissent, perhaps the Overseer might have decided to execute a few more laborers.
Man, the quarries really fucked these people up… As I watched the executions, a lot of the hatred I felt towards Anna quickly shifted to the person whom it should rightfully be focused on—Hyperion. It was my Denizen who was responsible for all this. And I swore to myself I'd make him pay.
Anna reached Glimmering Scales at the same time as the Overseer. When the Dersite camp commandant aimed his pistol, Anna grabbed Scales and vanished into a flash of red light right as the Overseer's pistol fired. When the light cleared, both Anna and Scales were nowhere to be seen. The Overseer gawked at his pistol for a few moments before shrugging and holstering it once more. He turned back to the crowd of laborers and spoke one last time.
"If anyone else ever gets the notion of becoming a hero, if anyone else fancies themselves a Knight… Know that my men and I will be more than happy to grant you a hero's death. Now get to work." With that, the Overseer gave a nod to his second-in-command, and the contingent of Dersite guards who escorted the laborers to the quarry formed up and surrounded the consorts.
While the guards rounded up the laborers and started marching them towards the gates, the elderly and young consorts in the other group dispersed, returning to the slums.
The thirteen insurgents were left bleeding in the sand while the remainder of the guards returned to their posts—in the guard towers, on the walls of the Dersite compound, and in other various points throughout the camp. When the parade ground was empty, I walked over to the thirteen corpses, and I stared down at them for…I don't really know how long.
I'm a Knight. My consorts are supposed to help and assist me…but I'm still a Knight. I should be able to protect my own fucking consorts.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to the dead cobra-consorts. Overcome suddenly with a profound feeling of discomfort, I turned away from the corpses and ran. I ran as fast as I could, putting as much distance between me and the parade ground as possible. Within a few minutes, I found myself in front of the gates of the Dersite compound. I took in a deep breath and focused on my Aspect, imagined myself rising up into the air.
As I imagined it, I actually started levitating up towards the top of the fortifications. I landed off to the side of the gate, at the exact spot where Anna and I had watched the failed uprising.
"You're late," Anna was leaning against the parapet, tapping her foot impatiently. "You take the scenic route here?"
For once, I had no biting comeback. I was tired, and I wanted to go home. But it wasn't time for that, yet. So I held out my hand, instead. "Are we done with this Event?"
"Yepperz," Anna nodded, taking my hand. "Sorry you had to see that shit."
"Does it get any better?"
"Yeah."
"You're lying, aren't you."
"Yeah."
And with that, there was another flash of red light, and we vanished yet again.