Before notes:

This chapter starts about a month after the last one ended.

Sorry for the long wait before releasing this chapter – I was busy.

A review always makes my day :).

CHAPTER 15: THE CAVERN
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An island far out in the sea, south of Angara

The food they were giving Tyrell looked like sludge and tasted like it too. Tyrell had no idea where this goop could've come from or what it even was. Perhaps he didn't want to know. Unless he wanted to starve and die, though, he had no choice but to eat it. Tyrell had no desire to starve and die. He had better things to do than that.

As he forced the muck down his throat, Tyrell reflected on how he had arrived at his current position.

After being captured by Latakia, he'd been deposited in a small, dark cell within the Tuaparang Airship. He'd been fed this crap from then on. Latakia had come in from time to time to torture him, supposedly to punish him for "insubordination" or something like that. But despite all the pain she inflicted, Tyrell found that he was rather unfazed.

Eventually, he and Karis had been herded like sheep onto an island somewhere in the middle of the sea. From there, they'd been taken into a cave on the side of the isle's enormous volcano.

Within this enormous cave there was a fairly developed prison facility run by the Tuaparang. He and Karis were imprisoned there. Along with all the other prisoners, Karis and Tyrell were directed to do various odd tasks, mostly excavating areas.

Tyrell couldn't fathom where all the prisoners could've come from or what use the Tuaparang had for them all, but he definitely didn't like the look of it. Clearly the Tuaparang were executing some major operation here, and had coerced him and Karis into collaborating.

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Island

"Father," said Myalkni, "there's something I've been meaning to ask you."

Arcanus looked at his son expectantly.

"What… was my mother like?" he asked hesitantly.

"Your mother?"

"Yeah, I…I wanted to know. I've always wondered… If you're okay telling me..."

"It's fine," replied Arcanus. "Well, she was like you in a number of ways. Like you, she was thin and short. She hated the nobility in Ayuthay like you do too."

"Yeah, you mentioned that before, her hating nobles," Myalkni recalled. He'd seen all the pictures of her too. "What was she like though?"

"What do you mean?"

"What was she like as a person? How did she talk, how did she move?"

Arcanus gave an irritated expression.

"Are you asking me to resurrect her from the dead or something?" he sneered.

Myalkni recoiled. He hadn't expected Arcanus to react this way.

"I'm sorry," he said quickly. He definitely didn't want to anger Arcanus.

"You have nothing to apologize for," Arcanus said flatly.

I've never seen him react this way before, Myalkni noted. He considered the possibility that it was a sensitive topic, but the idea that something could be a sensitive topic for Arcanus seemed rather bizarre.

"…were you two in love?" Myalkni asked a long pause.

Arcanus blinked.

"Love, my son," he began, "is a worthless illusion performed by a weak mind."

Myalkni had actually contemplated this idea before, whether "love" really existed or whether people merely convinced themselves that they felt it. He had never really made up his mind on the matter though. What could he know, when he had never experienced it?

"So, what is it really then?" Myalkni posited. "Is it that people just wrap their reproductive instincts in a cultural construct of some special bond that doesn't really exist?"

"Exactly, it is the mere animal instinct in disguise," replied Arcanus. "You have a good mind. You think like me."

I'm not the slightest bit like you! Myalkni protested silently, as he nodded his agreement to Arcanus. At least, I really hope I'm not. He shuddered a little.

"You must never waste yourself on such pointless things," Arcanus continued. "All emotions are the same. They are mere survival and reproductive instincts, yet most humans attach an unwarranted value to them, treating them like prophecies of destiny. They convince themselves they have some deep conviction where there is really nothing. Once they are convinced, these illusions of 'emotions' make them act in ridiculous and irrational ways."

"One must learn to ignore these sorts of illusions," preached Arcanus. "If you let your emotions, rather than reason, dictate your actions, you will end up making tragic mistakes."

As much as he hated to admit it, Myalkni realized his father had a good point, as he considered it. After all, if he didn't have the emotions of fear and loneliness, Tyrell and Karis might not now be on this island. If he had been able to think only rationally, that wouldn't have happened.

"That was your mother's main flaw," Arcanus reflected.

Myalkni's eyes opened wide. "What was?"

"She let herself get attached to sentiments," Arcanus said. "If she hadn't been so, she might have survived."

"What... do you mean?" asked Myalkni. Hadn't she just died in childbirth? How could that have been averted by suppressing emotions?

"That," Arcanus said, "is a conversation for another day. We both have business to attend to."

And with that, he exited the room, leaving a troubled Myalkni with many more burning questions than before.

-~:|~~|:-:|~~|:~-

Ayuthay

Prince Chafko let out a pained sigh. His father had been so mysterious about the whole affair of Amiti's disappearance. For some reason he seemed oddly undisturbed by Amiti's disappearance and seemed somehow sure that Amiti would return. Chafko was sure that Paithos had known something he didn't. Chafko wished he'd pushed harder to get it out of his father. Now, of course, Paithos wouldn't be able to say a word. He'd taken his secrets to the grave.

Things had spiraled out of control, and Chafko was clueless on how to handle the situation. After Paithos died, General Thavan had seized control, supposedly to "prevent conflict in troubling times". Thavan succeeded in seizing all effective power for a time, but he utterly failed in preventing conflict. The country was struck by a counter-coup on the part of Lord Genvalys and his son Tsaksido, and the situation quickly escalated into a civil war. Chafko was utterly powerless, having been reduced to a mere figurehead. He could only watch as his homeland was torn apart.

Now, the peasants were entering the fray. Before, they had merely observed as their fields were ruined in a fight between their masters. Now, they were rising up in revolt. The rebels claimed to be fighting in the name of Prince Amiti, the "Prince of the People", who they considered the only legitimate heir to the throne. This probably stemmed from the widespread belief that the missing prince was sympathetic to the condition of the peasantry and hostile to the excesses of the gentry.

In the view of the rebels, Amiti had actually fled from an assassination attempt on the part of the nobles. Amiti's existence was already beginning to take on a sort of legendary essence. "Our sovereign", they claimed, would return to rule them once they had taken the capital. Considering their stunningly rapid advance, that wasn't impossible, despite their army consisting largely of untrained peasants. Chafko strongly suspected that, if that ever happened, an imposter would probably pretend to be Amiti to claim the throne. Perhaps it was a future imposter who had helped stir up the rebellion in the first place. On the other hand, if no imposter stepped forward, Ayuthay could quickly return to anarchy and civil war.

The best thing that can happen, Chafko thought, is for Amiti to somehow return. Chafko supposed it was ironic that he was hoping for that, considering that Amiti was supposedly his rival for the throne. But Chafko wasn't particularly interested in the throne. There were only two things he cared about in life: he wanted his motherland to thrive and he wanted to enjoy his own life as well. The crown resting on his head was not required for the fulfillment of either. Amiti's return might be the only way this movement could be brought back under control.

At least, Chafko thought, of all the people I know, Amiti is probably the most likely to break out of captivity.

Chafko knew his cousin well, having observed him for 19 years. Amiti had been a rather rebellious, and often problematic, child. The adults had always struggled trying to instill in him the etiquette that was expected of his position. Young Amiti frequently rebelled against it, openly calling it stupid and pointless. Later on, he came to understand that it was better to go through all the motions, but still retained his disdain for them.

It wasn't only the adults of the court that Amiti rebelled against, but also his noble peers. He rejected conformity, refusing to present himself the way his peers did and refusing to take interest in many of the "stupid" things they did. The king's advisors noted this aspect of his personality with alarm, arguing that a potential king could not be allowed to grow so distant from his nobles.

Amiti always replied by asserting that he was inherently different from his peers, and that no one, even himself, could change that. In some ways, he was right. He was an Adept. He had blue hair and lighter skin than his peers. He was supposedly conceived via his mother's supposed magic, but in reality he was the bastard son of a foreigner. It didn't help that many of the noble children resented his higher status. In his early childhood, he was physically weak, and thus floundered in the various physical competitions the boys of the court enjoyed. Thus, from very early on, the noble children held him in low esteem, for reasons that largely weren't his fault.

Chafko himself had also originally lacked respect from many people in the court, but he'd worked hard to win their approval. Amiti could have done the same.

Instead, Amiti distanced himself further. He mocked and rejected the court customs that his peers were learning to treasure as key to their identities. His macho peers occasionally mocked him for being "girly", but instead of trying to redeem his manhood, he grew out his hair. His physical development caught up, but he continued to shun the sports he could've won approval in. He preferred the sword over the bow, while in Ayuthay culture the bow was considered a more "noble" weapon because archers didn't engage in direct combat.

Most gratingly, on a couple occasions as an adolescent, he openly lambasted the extravagant lifestyle of the court nobles and blamed them for Ayuthay's problems. Unsurprisingly, each of these instances was followed by an uproar of outrage in the court, and each time, King Paithos had forced an apology from Amiti.

Chafko knew Amiti actually had a point- Ayuthay's famines were in fact caused in part by the nobles' grain hoarding- but Chafko would never state such controversial opinions so openly. Chafko couldn't understand what drove Amiti to make his life more difficult, but he did get a sense that it stemmed from a powerful sense of self. Amiti, he thought, had a rigid view of who he was, or at least who he should be, and this trumped all the attempts by others to change him. Even in the instances where he modified his external behavior out of necessity, on the inside, he remained stubbornly the same.

Although it clearly caused him problems in Ayuthay's court, Chafko thought oddly that this sense of self would help Amiti endure his captivity. Many prisoners would eventually give in and do whatever their new masters demanded of them. Indeed, they'd be treated better as a result. They might even profess new loyalty to their captors. Chafko knew Amiti would never be one of those. His drive to preserve and assert his identity would drive him to continue resisting up to the very end.

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Island

Tyrell had lost count of the days he'd been locked in this cave. In fact, he wasn't really sure anymore when days started and ended. Inside this mass of rock and fire, the passage of time was forgotten. Nothing ever changed. It was always dark in the cells that the prisoners slept in, while the rest of the facility was always lit up by the smattering of eerie orbs the Tuaparang used for light.

Today would be different though. Tyrell had important business to attend to. He had been told by his current cell guard that he'd soon be moved to a new facility, where he'd be isolated from other prisoners and assigned a new "special" cell guard. He had to talk to Karis before he'd be moved, because it might be his last chance.

"Hey there," said a gruff voice beside him.

Tyrell turned around, surprised. He hadn't expected friendliness from any of the other prisoners. Tyrell steeled himself. There was a good chance that this was an informant.

"Hey," Tyrell replied. "I'm Tyrell. Who're you?"

"Who am I? I used to have a name, but it doesn't mean a thing now," the man replied. "You're new here, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I got here fairly recently," answered Tyrell. "You've been here awhile?"

"It was ages ago that I first found myself here. Sometimes I wonder if my life before that ever even happened, or if it was just a dream. This place seems like eternity."

"Do you know why they keep us here? What is the purpose of the work they're making us do?"

"Who knows?" the man sighed. "They're clearly interested in something in this mountain, but I have no idea what."

At this point, Tyrell was pretty sure this guy wasn't an informant.

"Doesn't everyone here want to get out of this shithole?" he asked bravely.

"A lot of people forget that it's even possible, and the rest don't think it is," he replied darkly.

Tyrell opened his mouth to reply but the man cut him off.

"I know what you're thinking," the man said, almost dismissively. "'Maybe if we all fought together, we could beat the guards and escape', right?"

"You're afraid of the consequences of failing? Would do they do, execute you?"

The man let out a cold laugh. "Let me tell you, boy, if the punishment was merely death, every last prisoner here would try to escape."

"What is it, then?"

"They put you through unbearable pain and force you to do horrible things."

"It doesn't matter how much they'd torture me, I'd never do as they said," Tyrell said.

"You see it differently after going through the ordeal," the man replied.

"I know for sure that I'd never break," Tyrell asserted. "I'd die before that. And besides, they've already done stuff to me. Latakia did."

"Well, even if you're as tough as you think you are," the man said, "most other people here aren't. Most of them would betray each other in the blink of an eye."

"Why? Aren't we all in this together?"

"You don't understand this place. There's no 'in this together'. For most people, there's no good or bad in this place. There's only power. Those with power oppress those without it, and most of the oppressors are in turn oppressed by those above them. The only way to reduce your own suffering here is to inflict it upon others."

"But… don't people here have any care about what they become?" Tyrell protested.

"Some people desperately cling onto morals for the sake of their own identities, but they're the ones who suffer the most here, and they usually die quickly. The rest lose themselves, but survive."

Tyrell wondered if this was what it had been like for Amiti.

"Maybe you don't know this yet, but most of the guards here are former prisoners. In order to be relieved of their own suffering, they variously torture, rape and execute their former cellmates."

"And they don't feel any bit bad about it?" Tyrell asked, sickened and outraged.

"Sometimes they do," said the man. "Sometimes they enjoy taking out their own suffering on others. Sometimes they justify it to themselves in a number of ways. Sometimes they become proud and loyal members of the Tuaparang.

"All the prisoners here hate their guts," he continued, "ut I think most of them would act no differently if they were in that position."

"One day, once the whole Tuaparang is crushed," Tyrell vowed, "and those traitors will be punished."

"Nobody thinks about things like that anymore. People are reduced to their basic instincts: avoiding pain and avoiding death."

"What about you?"

"I gave up ages ago," he said. "I used to cling to hopes and ideals like you, and I paid for it. My wife and I tried to escape from here, but we blundered. They forced me to kill her with my own hands, by choking her to death. I would've rather died, but she wouldn't let me. She was the stupid one."

Tyrell was reminded of how Amiti had been forced to chain him. "She died so you could live," he thought aloud.

"You don't really 'live' here. You're just a nameless slave without an identity or any sense of fulfillment or enjoyment. All I've been doing is surviving, the same way that the cockroach survives, without any meaning," the man replied.

"Why, then," Tyrell asked, "have you been talking to me? What's the point in conversation, if all there is to life is surviving?"

The man paused for a moment.

"I guess that even though I'm only half-alive, I still do feel emotions on a rare occasion. I've watched you working. In you, I see myself from ages ago, and a part of me still misses myself. Even though you're a poor fool, I admire you for it."

The conversation came to a short lull again before the man spoke.

"You're the one who's going to be transferred soon, right?"

"Yeah, I am."

"You'll have Lord Myalkni as your custodian," the man noted.

"Who's that?"

"Arcanus' own blood. Hang in there."

"I'm sure I can handle him," said Tyrell.

"Good luck. You'll need it- he's one of the worst."

"Thanks," Tyrell replied. "What's your name? Even if it doesn't matter to you anymore, it matters to me."

"…Terken."

"Don't ever forget it," said Tyrell.

-~:|~~|:-:|~~|:~-

Tyrell didn't waste a second after he first caught sight of Karis while doing the daily mining work. Luckily the overseers didn't seem to be around, so he seized the opportunity and made his way over to her.

"Karis," Tyrell said, "I've been looking all over for you!"

"I've been looking all over for you too," Karis replied.

Tyrell quickly glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching them.

"Any news from the Echo Gem?" he asked furtively. "You still have it, right?"

"Yeah," Karis said, "somehow the guards still haven't figured out where I've been hiding it."

"What does the Echo Gem say about where Matthew is?"

"Close, now. At the rate he's been moving, he should be here in a couple days."

"That's really good," said Tyrell, "because we won't be able to meet like this again. I'm getting transferred to another cell way on the other side of this place."

"I suppose you should be flattered," Karis said wryly.

"Yeah, I guess. Did you ever get any idea of what the Tuaparang wants from this place?"

"I did overhear a few things. It seems the Tuaparang has many uses for this place, but they're particularly interested in some chamber deep in the volcano, for which they need adepts."

"We gotta get outta here as fast as possible."

"Yeah," Karis agreed. "I've been considering how to do that for a while. We don't want to risk having to go against Arcanus and all the guards. What sense did you get about the possibility of a jail break?"

"It's a mixed bag. They still yearn for freedom, but they're terrified all the time and always want to save their own asses. Also, most of the guards are actually former prisoners who betrayed their inmates. What do you think?"

Karis paused for a time.

"I'll give it a try," Karis said. "The place where they keep me is fairly under-guarded. There's about forty or so prisoners in it, and the only guard is a middle-aged woman. I think the fact that I'm an adept can give them hope. Furthermore, anyone who stands in the way can be reminded of what I can do to them, so the element of fear can work in our favor. Hopefully, the revolt will spread, and in the chaos, you can escape."

"Okay, good luck," Tyrell said. "When will the jailbreak be?"

"Three days from now," Karis replied. "By then, Matthew should definitely be here."

Tyrell nodded.

"I'm not sure about this though," Karis said. "There are so many things that could go wrong."

"Yeah," Tyrell said. "But it's much better than trying nothing."

"Tyrell…you aren't going to try to rescue Amiti again here, right?"

"No, not really," Tyrell replied. "I have no idea how I'd even try. I dun' even know where he is, or anything."

"Yeah, we're set back to basically zero on rescuing him," Karis agreed. "Are you mad at him?"

"Mad? Why would I be mad at him?"

"He could've refused to obey that girl Latakia and it could've been three against one."

"I'm bet there's stuff we don't know," Tyrell said, "like what they've done to him."

"Yeah," Karis agreed. "And I remember that girl saying 'you know what happens if you don't obey me' or something like that."

"One day I'll ask him everything," Tyrell said. "If I ever see him again…"

"I don't think we will any time soon," Karis said regretfully. "Right now, we should focus on getting out of this place."

"I've been told my new custodian will be some Lord Myalkni who is 'Arcanus' own blood'," Tyrell mused, as he rubbed the Heirloom Ring.

"I wonder what he's like," mused Karis.

"Yeah," said Tyrell. "I didn't know Arcanus had kin in the Tuaparang."

"Hang in there," Karis said. "I should be going now- we've been talking for a while."

"See you…good luck."

-~:|~~|:-:|~~|:~-

Island, three days later.

Tyrell was caged like an animal. His cage was small and rectangular. He could see the other side of the steel bars.

He had no idea what time it was outside, but he felt strongly that it must be morning— the morning marked the beginning of a new day.

Tyrell's eyes followed the door handle as it turned. He had been waiting for this.

Lord Myalkni bore a long, hooded black cloak, not unlike the one that Arcanus often wore. He entered slowly, gracefully, appearing both determined and reluctant at the same time. His blue hair was about shoulder length, and his cyan eyes locked with Tyrell's for a time. At first glance, his face was as stiff as stone… but the side of his lip twitched on intervals. Amiti's gaze lingered on the ring on Tyrell's finger.

Even if he hadn't realized it before, it now dawned upon Tyrell that he had known deep down whom "Arcanus' own blood" was the moment he first heard it. He had known all along whom he had been waiting for, even if he hadn't been able to admit it to himself.

Tyrell returned Amiti's gaze and failed to suppress an ironic smile. His beloved old companion was also his nemesis' kin and now his captor.

"It's been awhile," Tyrell said.

"Yeah, it has," Myalkni and Amiti said simultaneously.

-~:|~~|:-:|~~|:~-

Next Chapter: The Light

Author's notes:

The name Terken comes from Georgian tarakani, cockroach.

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