Chapter Twenty-Five: Life Within Death

We were standing in a hallway. The floor was made of a cold, black stone, but the walls were made of a purple material. We must have been in one of those mansion-like dwellings, situated within the walled-off compound.

I asked Anna that one quintessential question that always came with any form of time-travel: "When are we?"

"Second Event," Anna replied, running a finger across the wall, seeing what the purple stone felt like. "Eight years have passed, I'm pretty sure… C'mon, we're just outside the dungeons."

"We're visiting dungeons?"

"No," the Bitch shook her head. "Don' need to."

Right when she finished speaking, almost as if it were on cue, the doors at the end of the hallway opened up, and the Overseer emerged, his gray uniform pristine as ever. Behind him were two of his guards. They were dragging a disheveled, painfully thin consort with grimy, light gray scales.

It wasn't until they passed me by that I realized the light gray was not the scales' true color—only eight years of accumulated muck and filth. The scales had been white, once upon a time. Had Xolotl really been rotting in a dungeon for all this time?

"Why didn't they kill him?" I whispered to Anna when the entourage was out of earshot. We started following them upstairs. "I mean, wasn't he kinda the ringleader of the whole thing?"

"Yeah, he was," Anna answered evenly. "The Overseer's kind of a dick, if you haven't noticed. He doesn't want Xolotl dead—no fun in that! He just wants our friend to be broken. White Scales is the first dude to resist the Dersites in a very, very long time."

"It'll probably take a lot to break Xolotl…" I murmured.

"The guy's been stuck in a dungeon for eight years," Anna pointed out. "He led a buncha friendz to their deaths, his plans completely blew up in his face, and the Dersites wouldn't even let him die afterwards. You'd be surprised…"

We followed the Overseer and company upstairs, through the front hallway, and outside. They hauled Xolotl up to the gates of the Dersite compound. "How does it feel to breathe the free air once again?" the Overseer asked Xolotl as they left the compound. Xolotl gave no reply. He bowed his head, not meeting the Overseer's gaze. The Dersite leader then gave his guards a nod, prompting them to release Xolotl, sending him flat on his face into the mud. "If you fear your thoughts will drive you mad, then I am happy to inform you that this will not happen. You will be too tired from working Hyperion's quarries to worry about your past failures."

And with that, the Overseer and his guards turned on their heels and returned to the Dersite compound, the gates booming shut behind them. Xolotl was left alone. He sat slumped against the walls, barely moving. The only parts of him that continued to move were his eyelids, his flitting tongue, and his chest.

I blinked several times, waiting for Xolotl to make a move, but nothing happened. Anna must have been feeling a similar kind of impatience, because the next thing she did was to summon one of her chronograils once again. "Jump time!" she grinned, starting to hum the opening chords of Jump, by Van Halen, turning the Time-infused wine glass forward. "I get up… And nuthin' gets me down…"

We emerged from the time jump sometime in the late afternoon. Xolotl was still sitting there, and Anna was still quietly singing to herself. I fixed her with one of my glares. "You really think now's the time for that?"

"Oh lighten up," Anna rolled her eyes. "This place isn't ezzactly enjoyable for me, either. Would you feel better if I looked sad an' cried the whole time? Gimme a break! Gotta jus' sing every once in a while."

"Why don't we at least help Xolotl up?" I suggested. "Won't become any kind of White Warrior if he dies of exposure here."

"No need," Anna shook her head. "He's about to get some help of his own."

As she spoke, I turned back to glance at Xolotl just in time to see an aqua-scaled female slither up to the white-scaled consort. We weren't close enough to hear what she was saying, but obviously it was working… She gave Xolotl some water and a few crumbs of something that I hoped was bread. After a whole lot of firm coaxing, the aqua-scaled consort was able to convince Xolotl to get up from where he was slumped against the walls.

Well, this had certainly come from out of the blue…

"Her name is Ahuilitzli," Anna murmured. "She has lived here her entire life, like everyone else. She's gonna be important to us."

"How do you know all this?"

"I've seen it already," Anna replied. She then pulled the hood of her god tier clothes over her head. Her hood was different from Theo's—the back hung low a little bit, and the front of the hood actually came down over her eyes. She then held up her hands like claws and, in a spooky voice, said, "I'm a Seer. I seeee things, woOoOoo!"

"Are the ghost sounds really necessary?"

"Oh come on, Sir Debbie-Downer McRaincloud von Bubbleburster, why you always gotta be a sourpuss?" Anna pouted, pushing off her hood. "That was always your problem; you should try smiling more often."

Beats being a slut. I had to bite down on the insides of my cheeks again to avoid speaking that particular thought, despite how tempting it had been. I settled for something slightly less acidic. "Pardon me for not smiling while we're in the middle of a fucking prison camp. Would you like me to take you to Arlington Cemetery and start telling knock-knock jokes? Would that satisfy you?"

"No, it wouldn't, Sir Sourpuss. Knock-knock jokes are retarded. C'mon, Miss Aquamarine is taking White Scales back to her place."

And with that, we set off after the two cobra-consorts. Xolotl had clearly been malnourished—more so than the average level of malnourishment in this camp, at any rate—by his time spent in the dungeons. The lack of physical activity must have also caused his muscles to atrophy. He'd have a long, tough road to recovery ahead of him.

Ahuilitzli led Xolotl deep into the slums in the western reaches of the camp, into one of the more stable wooden shacks. This dwelling actually had an upper level, which set it apart from many of its neighbors. Anna and I slipped inside before the aqua-scaled consort closed the makeshift door behind her. The inside of the shack was surprisingly cozy. I mean, relative to all the other shacks I've seen—it really wasn't all that cozy, but it was much better than I was expecting it to be.

"Who'ss that? Who have you brought here?" A stooped, light gray-scaled consort slithered gingerly down the ramp that led to the upper level, his tongue tasting the air several times. He stopped short when he recognized Xolotl. He drew in a sharp hiss. "Why have you brought an esscapee into our home? Have you any idea what the Dark Ones would do if they find him here?"

"He iss no runaway, father," Ahuilitzli corrected the elder. "The Dark Ones releassed him from the dungeonss thiss morning."

The old consort gave what sounded like the cobra equivalent of a snort. "Doess he have a voice of hiss own? For ssomeone who led thirteen young ssoulss to their deathss, your new friend iss awfully ssilent." When Xolotl looked up at the elder sharply, the gray-scaled cobra-consort gave a gravelly chuckle. "Oh yess, that'ss right, I remember you. The troublemaker. Filling the earss of children with your drivel and nonssensse, and ssending them to their deathss-"

"I have paid for my misstakess," Xolotl murmured quietly. "Leave me in peace, old man."

Ahuilitzli's father responded to that with more laughter. "You have paid, you ssaid? Oh, by the Knight'ss fangss, troublemaker…you will now face the resst of your life as a nameless, faceless laborer, working your life away in the quarriess. You will never sstop paying. And if you are lucky, perhapss you will not live sso long as I have."

And with that, the old consort turned away and slithered back upstairs.

I turned to Anna, whispering, "Knight's fangs? Really?"

"They tell their history through oral-" Anna paused for another giggle, "-through oral tradition. Details get lost after a few thousand years. They think the Knight will be one of their own people."

"Nice man, your father," Xolotl grunted, making his way over to the table as the aqua-scaled female placed down a bowl of some kind of soup.

"Everyone ssuccumbss to thiss place eventually," Ahuilitzli sighed. "You have not lived here ssince birth."

"Am I to expect ssimilar treatment from everyone elsse here?"

That made the aqua-scaled consort hesitate for a moment. "No," she finally answered. "Many of our youth were actually quite insspired by what you did, it iss jusst… A lifetime of conditioning iss very hard to overcome. I know many people who knew, even when you firsst began gathering followerss, that your planss would end in failure. Thiss iss why they did not join you."

It was Xolotl's turn to chuckle, though his was a very mournful laugh. "Perhapss Scales wass right… Perhapss I wass too hasty… I should have lisstened to him."

"Who iss thiss 'Scales'?" the aqua-scaled female coiled herself up on the other side of the table. I started drumming my fingers against my legs, impatiently. I didn't really want to stick around here, much longer, eavesdropping in on these conversations.

"He wass one of the Treefolk, the peopless who live in the foresstss of the wesst. He wass my friend, the one with red sscaless…" Xolotl was no longer laughing. "He fought by my sside againsst the Dark Ones. He bled by my sside…but he did not die by my sside. The Dark Ones robbed me of that honor by leaving me to rot."

Well, this was quite a juicy bit of situational irony. Much as I disliked White Scales, it felt…wrong… It felt wrong to see him in clear pain over the death of Scales, but not tell him that Scales was actually alive. Anna had seen to that. But one single glance at Anna was all I needed—she shook her head, knowing exactly what I was thinking. Don't say a thing.

I started wondering what exactly the point of this second Event was. The first one was pretty obvious—Scales and Xolotl arrived in this hell of a labor camp, attempted a failed uprising, and subsequently paid the price for it. Now Scales was out of the picture and Xolotl was out of the clink…but to what end? What was so important about this?

Anna took me by the arm and pulled me into the corner, as far away as we could get from the table. "We've seen all we need to see, here. Time to jump."

Out came the chronograils, and Anna nudged us forward in time by a much more considerable amount. I had a slight headache for a minute or so after we arrived at our destination time, but it quickly subsided. "How long?" I asked Anna.

"Over a year," the Bitch surmised. "There's no one home, right now. Our friend White Scales is at the funeral."

"Funeral? Who died?"

"Jus' come with me…" Anna led me back outside. I was actually beginning to get used to the acrid stench of this place. Not that it smelled any better…but when you don't smell anything else for a while, it starts to lose its edge. The consorts who've lived here their entire lives—I mean, if you can call them lives—probably didn't smell anything at all.

We went to the dining hall. The large structure had been burned down when the Dersites stormed it, eight or nine years prior, as they put down the last remnants of Xolotl's failed uprising. It had since been rebuilt, slightly shabbier than it had been before. Into the dining hall we went, inside…and down a ramp behind the cooking tables that I hadn't seen before. Down into the basement.

There was a pyre down there that had just been lit. A crude platform of wood and sticks, and lying on it was the light gray-scaled elder. Ahuilitzli's father. A few dozen consorts were gathered in attendance, watching silently as the fire consumed the dead consort. Ahuilitzli herself was the one who had set fire to the funeral pyre, lowering a burning torch into the wood at the bottom of the crude platform. The smoke from the pyre was ventilated up through a chimney that could be opened and closed at will. Right now, obviously, it was open.

Ahuilitzli slithered back away from the pyre as the heat began to increase, standing next to Xolotl. The two consorts stood closely against each other, and when I gave them a closer look…I saw their tails slowly twirling around each other, almost like a twizzler. That prompted a pair of raised eyebrows. "Are they…?"

"Yeah," Anna nodded. "You got the idea. Now I know this's gonna be mad annoying, buuuut we're gonna have to head back to their house for the next jump."

"Seriously? We just freakin' came from there."

"Shh!" Anna pressed a finger to her lips. I realized that I'd spoken a bit more loudly than I'd anticipated, and a few of the nearest consorts had actually glanced over in my direction. Gwen's rings prevented them from seeing me, though, so they just chalked it up to their imaginations.

Anna and I left the dining hall, heading up the ramp to the ground level and back outside into the camp. The Dersite guards were out on patrol, and we were forced to take a few unusual shortcuts to avoid them. Yeah, this was kind of annoying—this was a big camp, and it took us over fifteen minutes to make our way back to Ahuilitzli's home. But we made it without any problems, which I guess I could be thankful for.

It was nearly nightfall by the time we made it back. Before we went inside, though, Anna took my hand and whipped out the good old chronograils, sending us forward in time. When we emerged from the jump, it almost looked as if nothing had changed. We'd come out at the exact same time of day…just a bit further in the future.

Anna didn't even wait for me to ask, this time. "Six months. Or maybe five…or seven… Jus' pick one of those numbers."

There was a cracking noise coming from inside the house, followed by… It almost sounded like a mix between crying and very high-pitched hissing… It was kind of impossible to describe. I shared a glance with Anna before ducking inside. There was no one on the lower level, so the two of us quietly moved up to the second level…just in time to see Xolotl and Ahuilitzli gently lifting a small, pale blue cobra from the remains of an egg.

I think… I think White Scales was a daddy, now.

This was probably the happiest I've ever seen the white-scaled consort. Sure, I hadn't known him all that long, but he'd never struck me as the…well, happy type. As in, every single time I'd seen him, he was acting like a supreme douchenozzle. Trying to have me sacrificed, for example… But here he was, smiling and laughing with his…I guess Ahuilitzli would be his wife? Smiling and laughing with his wife, playing with his newborn child. Ironic, wasn't it, that the happiest moment of his life was happening not when he was the most prestigious warrior of his people…but when he was a slave in a labor camp.

"Well, tha's it for this Event," Anna declared, gesturing for me to take her hand, again. "On to number three."

I was still staring at Xolotl's moment, almost hesitant to leave. "This wasn't exactly worse, you know," I pointed out to Anna. "You said it was gonna get-"

"Don' say anymore," Anna cut me off with an uncharacteristic glare. "This ain't the last Event we're gonna be visiting. This one ended on a happy note, yeah…but the next ones won't. Don' say anythin' you'll regret later on."

Almost reluctantly, I took Anna's hand, squeezing my eyes shut against the headache that I knew would come. There was a flash of red light, and then we were gone.