Everything had gone nightmarishly wrong. What kind of a place was this, thought Bron, where the only way to survive was to betray anyone and everyone who showed the faintest bit of trust?
The cloddertrogs had pulled them roughly through the streets of Northern Outer City, and they had arrived at a small glistercraft. Bron, Durix, Celestia, and Raziel had been shackled and chained before being stuffed roughly into the back of the vessel. The leader of the cloddertrogs then fired up the engine of the glistercraft, which began to shriek and wail as the glisterjet pulsed red and the propulsion ducts roared.
Until now, Bron had never really grasped how monstrously evil these mechanisms were. Glisterships themselves had never been a particular source of revulsion for him; it had always been the people who piloted them, and the nefarious uses to which they were put, that fueled his anger towards the Empire. But now, as he watched the imprisoned glister spark and vibrate, its essence draining into the engines, he understood that glister technology was inherently evil.
It was from glisters that life itself emerged, and as primitive as they were, they thrived on, and reflected, emotion. What if they could think, or feel pain and anguish? Bron couldn't shake the feeling that the Phraxguardians and slavers and military and everyone who played a part in this regime were ripping apart an emergent system, a grand framework older than the Edge itself, and treating it like some sort of commodity. How could they not feel the slightest pang of conscience as they sapped the life out of the fundamental building blocks of creation?
Bron could not remember much about the New Undertown slave market that they had been brought to. It had all been a haze of bidding and bargaining and miserable creatures and persons who were penned up or tied together. Before long, Bron and his four companions were all being ushered through Great Glade in the midst of a much larger group of freshly purchased slaves.
Soon, the office complexes and market squares of New Undertown had given way to the cobbled, misty streets of Copperwood. They passed by a statue of Mangobey Cartshank, the individual who had founded the district back when Great Glade had been a free city. How would you feel about what Copperwood has become? thought Bron glumly, looking at the statue. About what the whole Edgeworld has become?
The slave gang suddenly came to a halt. The slaver keeping them in line—a menacing shryke in the uniform of a New Undertown auctioneer—gestured with a single talon at the building in front of them. Bron looked up…and groaned with dread.
The factory was mounted on poles in the distinctive "stiltshop" style of Third-Age Copperwood workshops…but much, much bigger. The entire building was constructed from what Bron recognized from his studies as lightwood lumber. Cut from an extremely rare tree found in scattered stands throughout the Western Woods, lightwood was of the first order of wood and, like sumpwood, remained buoyant even at low temperature. Unlike sumpwood, however, lightwood was hard and metallic, and did not burn easily—the perfect construction material for a factory such as this. The towering structure extended high into the air, and the top was impossible to see through the thick smog hanging over Great Glade. But the thing that had made Bron groan was the complex series of gantries and cradles loaded with sky vessels in varying stages of completion.
"Glisterships," he whispered. "That's what we'll be making."
"Through the doors! Snap to it!" screeched the shryke. As one, the group shuffled forwards, up the steep steps leading to the doors of the great factory.
They found themselves inside a great, open chamber which seemed to fill most of the factory. Above their heads, conveyor belts creaked and clanked on countless levels, and various pieces of glisterships were being assembled and attached. The whole place stank of metal, and the noise was almost unbearable.
A hammerhead goblin overseer appeared through a door at the other end of the room, and marched up to the gang of slaves. "We'll start right away," the hammerhead barked. "Vartolius Xax has commissioned fifty new glisterships to patrol Riverrise, and we have been charged with the manufacture of ten of those vessels. Come forward in pairs, and you will receive your assignments."
As the slaves approached in pairs, the hammerhead shouted out the position they were to take, and the floor they were to work on. "Propulsion Duct Fitting, seventeen!" he commanded a pair of lugtrolls, who shuffled off hastily for the line of elevators near the door the hammerhead had entered from. "Glister Snaring, five!" he then shouted at two stooped fourthlings.
At last, the hammerhead reached Bron and his companions. Durix and Raziel approached the hammerhead. "Connection Quality Control, twenty-three!"
"We'll get through this," said Celestia with an intensity that startled Bron. He had never seen Celestia sound so harsh before. After a few seconds, he realized that the girl was fighting back rage; the idea of constructing glisterships seemed to have infuriated her more than anyone else.
"HEY! Get over here!" yelled the hammerhead. As they stepped forwards, the goblin struck out with a vicious whip that had been hanging at his side. Bron gasped with pain as it hit his back. Chuckling nastily, the hammerhead considered for a moment, then said, "Interior Construction, thirteen. And I'll be keeping my eye on the two of you…"
Bron and Celestia marched to the elevators and stepped inside an empty chamber, pulling a lever on the side into the "thirteen" position. The elevator juddered upwards. There were no doors; Bron could feel the wind whistling through his hair as metal platform after metal platform passed by. At every level, sweating workers were sitting in front of roaring machines, fitting together bits of unknown mechanisms as they passed on conveyor belts, and walking through openings in the side of the tower to walk out onto the platforms, where they worked on the glisterships themselves.
The elevator juddered to a halt. Bron and Celestia stepped out onto the platform, and a couple of slaves stopped what they were doing and walked over to the two new workers. "Let me show you what to do," one of them wheezed painfully, taking them over to a strange mechanism…
As the days passed, Bron and Celestia slipped into a routine. They were part of the night shift—although their resting period was so short that the term "night shift" had little meaning—and, as work partners, they were kept together at all times, but were sent to a different floor each evening, where they worked on some other element of the new glisterships. The atmosphere was hot and noisy, and Bron didn't feel fully awake most of the time. Whenever he got too drowsy, however, one of the hammerhead overseers would lash out with the whip or, worse, jab a sparktaser into his flesh. Every time this happened, a searing jolt would course through Bron's body, and his chest would ache horribly. He sometimes wondered how many more jolts could he take before his heart stopped.
However, his heart did not stop. Gradually he became aware of the unwritten rules of the factory, and, occasionally, a fellow slave would conspiratorially offer him and Celestia advice on how to appear to be working when, in reality, attempt to massage his aching muscles. As they became more experienced, the overseers punished them less and less.
Twice a night, a horn would whistle, signaling a five minute break, during which the slaves would try to shovel down as much bluebean porridge as they could before being sent back to work. They were also given four hours of rest from noon until four o'clock, which, despite being woefully insufficient, was the high point of Bron's day.
Every so often, the idea of escape crossed Bron's head. But he could not see how it was possible; after orientation, slaves were forbidden from the ground floor, so if they tried taking the elevator all the way down and making a dash for it, they would be immediately captured. What was more, since he and Celestia were rarely working on the same floor as Durix and Raziel, there was next to no opportunity for the four of them to try to form a plan together…not that there was any way Bron could think of to ensure that their plans were not heard by the overseers, in any case.
Lacking any ideas, Bron had no choice but to work. He lost track of all time. Had they been working for a week? A month? Five years? The days blended into each other in a haze of mindless toil. And then, finally, something happened that shook Bron out of his miserable routine.
One day, Bron and Celestia awoke from their hammocks, roused by the shrieking horn. Every day, they slept in different hammocks, but they were always suspended from a lightwood beam, above the whirring machines and conveyor belts as the day shift workers continued on below them—their allotted rest hours were from midnight to four in the morning—and praying that the frayed cloth would not tear and send them plunging into an arc welder or gear system many floors below. This time, they had been working in Weights and Ropes, on the twenty-fifth and highest floor, and the hammocks offered a clear view of the domed ceiling above.
The pair of them swung their sore legs up onto the beam above them and shakily pulled themselves up. "Rise and shine, lazy lumps!" roared a hammerhead overseer, cracking his whip menacingly. "Get in line to receive tonight's assignment!"
Bron, Celestia, and the other slaves shuffled wearily forwards, and the hammerhead began to call out tasks. After a few minutes, it was their turn. They stepped up to the overseer, who looked down at them, evidently considering.
"Glister Snaring, five!" he called out.
Celestia gasped. Bron groaned.
"Don't like it?" sneered the hammerhead. "I'm flexible. If you'd prefer, I'll change your assignment to Flogging Posts, ten…"
Bron and Celestia shook their heads imploringly, and the hammerhead cackled horribly. "I thought not. Off you go!"
As the elevator descended, Bron clutched at the side of the chamber, feeling sick with horror. Glister Snaring, the imprisonment and fitting of glisters inside the jet chambers, was one of the easiest jobs in the lightwood factory, but also the most morally upsetting. They would be the glisters' jailers, the ones who trapped them within the mechanisms, confining them to an average of ten years inside the glisterjets before they fizzled out, their energy spent. So far, they had not been assigned the task, to their immense relief…but their luck had finally run out.
Soon, the elevator ground to a halt, and Bron and Celestia stepped out onto the fifth floor. Bron suddenly noticed something that made the bands of dread around his heart lessen slightly—Durix and Raziel stepping out of the elevator at the far end. For the first time since they had arrived at the factory, all four of them would be working together.
Durix was in a bad way; his clothes were torn, revealing angry red slashes across his back, and although he was capable of walking on his own, Raziel had her arm around him, looking grim. The instant she caught sight of Bron and Celestia, her eyes widened, she looked around furtively before hastening over to them, a wincing Durix following suit.
"Are you two all right?" muttered Raziel. Bron and Celestia looked themselves over, noticing for the first time the layer of dirt and sweat that clung to them like a second skin. "We're fine," said Bron. "What happened to you?"
"Durix's rib has been sore ever since it was fractured during the Vilnix Pompolnius's attack on Twilight's Edge," said Raziel. "As a result, he has been consistently slower than most of the other slaves…two days ago, the overseers lost their patience with him, and whipped him raw. He's been working harder now, but he's exhausted and in a great deal of pain. If only Riverrise water was still on the market…but there's no way we could afford it anyway, and besides, I don't think we'll be taken on a shopping trip any time soon…"
"We've been here long enough," whispered Bron. "Now that we're together, we can try to come up with an escape plan."
"Well, we can't think of anything," said Raziel. "It's just too heavily guarded. And we're not going to get much time to come up with something…we're going to have to spend the whole time under the scrutiny of the overseers, and after that we'll more likely than not be separated again."
"OI!" roared a hammerhead goblin, brandishing a sparktaser. "Get over to the snaring-pods at once!"
The four of them scurried off across the narrow platform without another word.
At the end of the platform was a line of towering clearwood bell-jars, each one sparkling and flashing with dozens of tiny glisters emerging from a tangle of pipes connected to their bottoms. At the top of each was another pipe, which fed a tube connecting intermittently to a line of half-finished jet chambers moving along a conveyor belt. Each of the bell-jars contained a curving door on the front, and many of them contained slaves, wildly waving their arms this way and that.
"What do we have to do?" Bron asked a gnokgoblin heading for the line of bell-jars.
"Some glisters in the bell-jars are more energetic than others," the gnokgoblin explained, as the four of them walked beside him. "And they only want to put the best ones in the jet chambers. So you have to go inside the bell-jar, spot the ones shining the brightest, and catch them inside this." He held up a small jar with straps on the side, and fitted his hands into each strap. "Squeeze it to open and close the cover on the top. When you've got a satisfactory glister, reach up and feed the contents of the trap-jar into the ceiling pipe. The chambers are designed to hold a set amount of glisters at a time, only introducing a new one if an old one is removed. If there are too many dim glisters, catch them and press the red button on the side of the trap-jar to gas them. Got it?"
"Yes," said Bron, feeling a tiny flutter of hope. It sounded as though it would be easy to appear to do his job while actually refraining from trapping any of the glisters…which was precisely what he had been hoping for.
The four of them, grabbed their trap-jars, and stepped into a group of adjacent chambers. Bron had expected that the surrounding noise would be muffled, but he could still hear everything outside of the chamber, although the pipes overhead whirred constantly in the background. He looked around at the glisters in the bell-jar. It was like being in the middle of a multicolored snowstorm, with the gleaming, pulsing beads of light twinkling all around him. He stared around at them all. Did they have any idea that they were all doomed? All of them would either be loaded into jet chambers and perpetually drained of energy for years, or trapped and disposed of if they were too weak. Nothing they could do would conceivably put an end to the Phraxguardians' barbaric greed…but all the same, he, Bron Rackis, would not be a party to that greed.
He heard a sharp rap on the clearwood walls of the bell-jar, and turned round to see the leering face of an overseer, fingering his whip. "Now let's see you get one!" the hammerhead barked.
Bron fitted his hands through the straps of his trap-jar, and scanned the inside of the chamber. An extra-bright glister was hovering a foot away from his face. Repulsed by what he was doing, he swung his hands around in an arc and squeezed, trapping the glister. He slowly brought his arms up to the ceiling.
"That's more like it," said the hammerhead, and trotted off. Relieved, Bron glanced around, lowered his arms, and squeezed again, liberating the glister.
And so he continued in this vein, trapping glisters and bringing them up to the ceiling, before lowering them again and setting them free when he was sure no one was looking. He knew he wasn't actually saving any of them—if it wasn't him, it would be some other slave—but he couldn't stand to have any of that blood on his hands.
He snatched a furtive look at Raziel and Durix in chambers to his left, and Celestia to his right. As far as he could tell, they were doing exactly the same as he was. With any luck, they would be able to keep doing this.
The shift seemed to drag on and on…with Bron and the others anxiously awaiting the blessed moment when they would be dismissed to the hammocks, and hopefully, after their rest, say goodbye to the fifth floor for a long, long time.
After what seemed to be an eternity, the first break arrived…then, after a painfully longer stretch of time, the second. Bron and his companions had not actually fed a single glister into their tubes, and the overseers had not noticed a thing. They were almost there. Only a few more hours remained until the end of the night shift. Then, just as Bron was pretending to feed two glisters at once into the ceiling pipe…
"Hey…hey, you there! Girl!"
It was a hammerhead overseer, and he was banging on the bell-jar in which Celestia was working. She spun round, startled.
"I've been watching you for two minutes," snarled the hammerhead, opening the door to Celestia's chamber, but blocking her way. "I don't think I've seen you snare a glister once!"
He seized her by the neck, lifted her off the ground, pulled up her shirt to reveal her stomach, and jabbed his sparktaser into her flesh.
"Aaaaiiii!" Celestia shrieked, and struggled ferociously. Snorting in disgust, the hammerhead thrust her roughly away. She slid down the side of the clearwood bell-jar, and gazed up at the overseer in terror.
"Now, let's see if you're ready to start working again!" roared the hammerhead. "Catch a glister, NOW!"
Celestia looked the hammerhead straight in the eye, her face oddly blank. "No," she said finally.
"Excuse me?" bellowed the hammerhead, his eyes bulging. Bron dropped his trap-jar in astonishment and horror. There was a time for being brave, but this…
"I'll have no part of this," she snapped, rising to her feet and glaring at the slave driver. "I've had quite enough of building these horrible glisterships for that insane, power-crazed tyrant, Vartolius Xax. I'm not going to work another second just so he can throw his weight around more than he already is. And I'm certainly not about to condemn these glisters to a fate inside his rotten, depraved glisterjets!" With that, she hawked and spat in the hammerhead's face.
Nobody spoke for several seconds. Nobody moved. Nobody even blinked. Then, slowly, a hideous sneer the like of which Bron had never seen curled the corners of the overseer's face. "Fine. Have it your way. You'll never have to snare another glister again." He grabbed Celestia roughly, dragged her out of the bell-jar, and threw her to the floor. Before she could make another movement, he brought the sparktaser down repeatedly on her back.
Bron's ears were deaf to all but the tortured screams; his eyes were blind to all but the writhing figure on the floor. Not Celestia. Not his friend. Not the one who had always had the most positive outlook. Not the one who had demonstrated nothing other than pure, unfettered kindness and compassion for fellow beings. He couldn't bear it. He must do something.
Tearing the trap-jar from his hands, Bron thrust the door to his bell-jar open, leapt out, and lunged for the laughing hammerhead pinning Celestia to the ground. The force of the tackle sent the overseer flying sideways, and his sparktaser flew high into the air. Bron leapt and caught it, and, bearing down on Celestia's assailant, pressed it into the slave driver's exposed arm with all the force he could muster.
The hammerhead howled with pain, and kicked out, catching Bron in the chin and sending him staggering backwards. He dropped the sparktaser, and it skidded back across the floor. Regaining his wits, the snarling overseer drew out his whip, raising it high over his head…and screamed again. Celestia had grabbed the discarded sparktaser, darted around behind the hammerhead, and thrust it into the back of his head. The force of the shock caused the overseer to pitch forwards and fall flat on his face, out cold.
Noticing what was happening, Durix and Raziel had dashed out of their bell-jars, too. "We've got to get out now," said Raziel sharply, gesturing for the elevators.
"What did you bits of filth do to Theggut?" bellowed a voice. Bron spun around to see five more hammerhead goblins dashing towards them. "Come on!" Raziel shouted, and the four of them tore for the exits. Other slaves had noticed what was happening. Some of them cheered and urged them on; others looked too frightened to speak.
Bron, Durix, Celestia, and Raziel skidded to a halt in front of the line of elevators. None of them were on this floor. "We'll never make it!" said Durix, casting a terrified look at the approaching overseers.
"Yes, we will!" said Raziel. "We can slide down the cables!"
Without another word, each of them chose a cable, after glancing briefly upwards to check that the elevator they had chosen was above them, rather than below. If they landed on a rising elevator, they would be trapped. They then flung themselves off the platform, seizing the cables. The hammerheads roared with fury as their quarry disappeared over the side.
The wind whipped at Bron's hair. As he fell, he saw platform after platform rush past. Fortunately, they had only started on the fifth floor; they would be able to get to the ground floor before the alarm was sounded.
Bron and the others touched down hard, and the clerk started with alarm. "Stop!" he yelled, sprinting towards them.
"The gates must be locked!" yelled Bron as they tore across the room.
"It's electronic; we can short-circuit the lock with the sparktaser!" replied Raziel. "Celestia, insert it into the panel near the doors!"
Celestia did so, and with a loud bang and several sparks, the door began to creak open. The clerk was almost upon them. "Come on!" Bron urged the door. "Open!"
And then, it was wide enough for them to pass, and they almost flew out of the gates of the lightwood factory, bolting down the steps and into the darkness.
Though the air in Great Glade was thick with pollution, it tasted sweet after all that time trapped in the factory. The four of them felt the wind as they dashed on; it seemed to soothe their injuries, their fears, their doubts. They had made it! They had escaped the factory!
They did not stop running, even when the factory was far behind them. The lights of New Undertown twinkled on the other side of the river. They were by no means safe—nowhere in Great Glade was truly safe—but they were no longer slaves.
At long last, they ducked into an alley in Copperwood, gasping and panting for breath. "We…did it!" panted Durix. Suddenly, without truly understanding why, all four of them were laughing fit to burst.
"What do we do now?" asked Celestia, wiping tears of laughter from her face.
"Well, we need to find a secure, out-of-the-way place to sleep tonight," said Raziel. "We're all exhausted…we need to recharge. Then, we need to get to the Ledges."
"The plan's still on, then?" asked Bron eagerly. "We'll hijack a glistership and sail back to Omniphrax?"
"Of course," said Raziel. "But, if our experiences in Great Glade so far have taught us anything, it's that we can't trust anyone here. We'll have to be very secretive, and find our way to the Ledges on our own."
"That's all we need to hear," came a sneering voice from the end of the alley.
Celestia gasped with horror. Raziel and Durix stiffened. Bron turned slowly towards the other end of the alley…to be confronted by the site of two Freeglade Lancers, shining glister-spheres in their hands illuminating the alley.
"Come on!" shouted Bron, yanking Celestia and Durix to their feet, as Raziel sprang up too. They dashed for the mouth of the alley, with the Freeglade Lancers in hot pursuit. Then, Bron heard a volley of bangs…felt something sharp piercing the back of his neck…and he knew no more.
Bron roused himself groggily, completely confused and disoriented. Not only could he not remember falling asleep, but he also seemed to be in a standing position.
He opened his eyes slowly, and, after a few seconds of blurry shapes, the scene solidified…to reveal that he was standing in front of the lightwood factory, bound, gagged, and shackled. Glances to his left and right revealed that Durix, Celestia, and Raziel had met the same fate.
He tried to concentrate harder on his surroundings. An enormous crowd of slaves was standing in front of the factory, also bound and shackled. Flanking him and his companions on either side were Freeglade Lancers and hammerhead slave overseers.
"…so you see, you sniveling sacks of scum," a hammerhead was roaring, "nobody escapes from our factory! And you can rest assured that these individuals shall befall the worst punishments the Empire can hand down. I would advise all of you to keep working, diligently and cheerfully, unless you want to suffer the same fate!"
It was all too much for Bron. The gravity of the situation, the residual drowsiness from the tranquilizer he had been shot with…he slumped forwards, claimed again by the darkness.
The next time Bron came to, his surroundings were far less perplexing. This time, he was certainly lying down, and he didn't even seem to be tied up.
He opened his eyes. He was staring at a wooden ceiling, and he seemed to be lying on a straw cot. He swung himself down. He was sorer than he had ever been in his life, and winced horribly as he rose to his feet, but his crushing exhaustion had at last gone away.
After glancing around the room, he noticed that the other three lay on identical cots, but they were still unconscious. Bron decided not to wake them yet.
He strode to the door of their cabin, and tried to turn the handle. As Bron had suspected, it was locked.
Bron suddenly became aware the room seemed to be swaying gently, and there was a far-off roaring sound. Of course…he was on a glistership.
Noticing a porthole, Bron strode over to it and looked out over the Deadwoods. He noticed that there seemed to be a change coming over the shriveled forest as they sailed on. Here and there was a tree that looked alive…though extremely sickly. As they moved on, these trees became more and more numerous, and now he even began to see glades of large, green, healthy-looking trees. And that was not all…Bron was seeing animals. Flocks of snowbirds and gladegeese swooped through the sky. Looking down, he saw a sparkling turquoise lullabee grove. They soon passed close to a towering glade of ironwood pines, and Bron thought he could make out a giant tree fromp clawing at the bark of one of them.
One thing was certain. They were traveling west. They had left the Deadwoods behind them, and were now in the Deepwoods proper. It was one of the most beautiful things Bron had seen in his life. But there was no cause for celebration. Not now. Not here.
Not when they were being shipped to Hive.