Convict Fenix

by Alan Brickett

  But no one in orange.

  From his vantage point high up on the plateau overlooking the area, he observed Khanton and his crew come in to take the convicts Old Man Page did not choose. The scene closely resembled his own arrival, except that the Seductress Quelina and Torn the goat man were absent.

  After considering the path leading south toward the sky of soot and ash clouds and the length of such a journey, he decided that learning more about the area of the mines, and about the Warlock, would be beneficial.

  That was what eventually led him to be where he was now, after following a team from the Festering Warrens over another one of the stone bridges onto a new land mass covered in rocky mountains that dominated the skyline.

  There were two land masses to the east of the Warrens that paralleled each other, the one to the north floating a bit higher than the one to the south, which had most of the mountains, and the mines.

  Access to the mines was through both the land mass of the Warrens and the one to the north, where the Warlock ruled.

  And it was ruling.

  The convicts who served him may not have realized it exactly, but they did serve him, even if it was for the limited resource of Vitae. Tunnels had been bored deep into the mountains a long time ago, joining with natural caverns that followed even older strata.

  The tunnels led in convoluted patterns under the mountains to the northern plateau, and to the mining town on the west side of the mines themselves. It took Fenix a while to explore sufficiently, but he had needed to hide from discovery.

  Fenix didn’t want to be press-ganged into a workforce, and a fight against all of those convicts would not be in his favor. The land mass controlled by the Warlock had almost as much area as the Warrens, but only a select few prisoners served there.

  It had a long road of well-worn and packed dirt stretching from the Warrens bridge to a mansion built from the rock. Mountains rising up from the far eastern edge of the land mass stood sentinel behind the estate that sprawled in all the other directions.

  It was impressive and probably built long before the Warlock arrived, appropriated it, and added to it over time. From there, however, there was no way to another land mass.

  No bridge was visible, and no apparent means of leaving the Warlock’s little continent could be found. It seemed that it connected to the mountains and mines or the Warrens exclusively. Very defensible, and quite practical.

  A horde of prisoners and a wandering maze of tunnels as a buffer between the Warlock and the rest of the Prison.

  That was what he assumed until he found older tunnels carved out to lead deeper into the mountain.

  With the magic of fire and supernatural senses able to see the flow of heat, it had been easy enough to find drafts that sucked on air. Following the drafts led him through the caverns and tunnels to caves on the side of the mountains.

  One of these had come out above an old rockslide—an ancient rockslide. From there, he had found a hole in the side of the mountain that had fallen away to reveal tunnels going through the mountains themselves.

  The miners, and probably the Warlock, didn’t care about exploring, they just wanted the ore. The mines would be rich for decades at the rate they were able to go. But someone else had been in the mountains before, and they had tunneled far and deep.

  Right through the mountains to the other side.

  It took him a few days, but he eventually followed them out from under the high peaks to just above smaller dropped escarpments still attached to the mountain land mass, but lower in altitude.

  **

  From where he stood, he could see out across the expanse of the Prison that he had yet to explore, and it was vast. He could see due east over a plant-covered land mass with winding rivers that glinted under the sun. Beyond that, a cracked landscape of alternating vegetation and open sandy areas.

  Beyond even that, the tallest mountains he could see, with snow or ice-covered peaks.

  Fenix was sure that land mass off in the very distance was a floating island made entirely of ice. All three of these were more prominent than any of the previous land masses he had traversed over or under.

  To his right was an interesting and substantial floating expanse of rippled land that defied the eye’s ability to follow.

  Beyond that was a fog-shrouded lower plateau of land, at least he guessed it was land since he couldn’t see under the covering of fog. Strange spikes ruptured the bank of mist, their detail lost in the distance but there were many of them to be seen. Above that fog, to the far southeast, were even more sections of floating rock upon which he could barely discern greenery and more mountains.

  The entire Prison may well have been laid out for him to survey from here, aside from some views blocked by distance, mountains, and the higher floating land. But it mattered little if it was not, the Prison was enormous, and his sense of distance told him he had covered only a fraction of it.

  This changed things.

  He needed to be able to get around quicker, to travel further than he could on foot for days at a time. And he had an idea, gleaned from his own arrival, and most recently from the murals etched into the tunnel walls he had used to go under the mountains.

  The Wanani were a people of short stature, the tallest of whom would be four feet high on their stumpy legs. They were a race of furry mammals with big ears and large eyes, enabling them to see very well in the dark.

  The most remarkable aspect of the species, however, was not their biology. That was similar to many other rodent-like races in the cosmos. It was their minds that made them unique.

  The entire Wanani race shared a gift for telepathy so that every member was able to communicate with every other member across their homeworld. As such, their society was very communal in nature.

  A natural evolutionary development took place as those with less savory characters, as evidenced through their thoughts, was eliminated from the species since they were not found to be attractive mates.

  Their bonds grew and expanded, and eventually, the entire society became one of peace-loving harmony. They dug out vast warrens from the stone of their land, gnawed their way, quite literally, through many layers of rock and planetary crust to establish a civilization that still endured.

  They had endured in part because of how the Wanani had dealt with the foremost uprising of evil on their world.

  Nature abhors a vacuum, and mutations occur, creating genetic diversity. All sorts of philosophical and quite probably metaphysical debates could rage as to why it happened, but that it did happen was not in question—a Wanani was born as a psychopath.

  The miserable being was utterly unable to understand the emotional outpouring of its fellow Wanani, why they all got along, why they all did as they were told, and why they behaved in harmony.

  The psychopathic Wanani didn’t understand happiness, sadness, or even anger, although it had all the hormones that could drive it into a frenzy.

  The other Wanani couldn’t begin to imagine how alone and strange this one example felt, how utterly different to the entire race that birthed it. In a society where you were limited in perspective to your own tiny corner of a world, a village, or a town, it would be a question left unanswered.

  But this Wanani shared the telepathic bond, so it knew, irrevocably and without any room for doubt, that it differed from every single other member of its own kind.

  Perhaps if this Wanani, whose name was lost to time, were dimmer witted or less driven, there wouldn’t have been a problem. But it was smart, and without the inhibitions of its people, it went about gathering to itself all of the many naïve others who wanted to help it.

  And then it began to breed. In a time when long life was a given, this small discrepancy in the nature of the Wanani grew into a multitude.

  Almost every child of every litter born from this first example held the same psychopathic traits, and then went on to sire yet more children with the same tendencies. Like cancer, this new group kep
t its own level of telepathic bond and grew into a society within the greater community of the Wanani.

  Over time, there came to be a few hundred of the new thinkers, the different ones who the race had no name for.

  The thing of it was, these new psychopaths didn’t hide their intentions; the telepathic bond meant that every member of the race, several million of them who outnumbered this small tumor of original thinkers, were utterly aware.

  Every thought and desire the new family had was evident, even their breeding mates knew their innermost desires and secrets. So when their thoughts turned to violence and conquest as a means to an end, they all knew of it at the same time.

  A global consensus was reached before the day was out. The Wanani were established as a part of the cosmic alliances. They were, in point of fact, a protected world, considered so peaceful and harmonious that they should be preserved at any cost.

  So when they made their plea to the cosmic agents, there was an immediate response. The deviant family was uprooted and sent to the Prison. Their crime needed a whole new category just to fit it, but the sentence was final.

  The Prison was deemed the best place for them without any room for alternatives.

  This small group of Wanani proceeded to make quite a name for themselves within the Prison itself. Twenty millennia into the prison’s existence, they traveled from the arrivals area, which was arranged in a very different set of power struggles in those centuries.

  Into the mountains on the land mass second furthest to the north, they did as their people had always done. They dug, clawed and ate their way into the bedrock and built a new home.

  Then they continued breeding, a small design flaw in the Prison setup it seemed, the prisoners could in fact procreate.

  The Vitae required was as much as any consumption of food and necessary sustenance, but the result could be a healthy newborn. And the Wanani, with their telepathic powers and harmonious connection to magic, were adept at survival and hence also at the acquisition of Vitae.

  For close to half a century they dominated the northern land masses, taking what they wanted when they wanted. They established the means to travel quickly through the use of teleportation markers that they built through great expense at points of note on the different land masses.

  As they expanded their territory, mainly for hunting, they would place new markers. Their travels took them ever outward, spreading across the Prison like an infestation.

  So very different from their humble, and quite peaceful, origins.

  Clashes with the Wardens’ guards on the central plateau around the Emerald palace would likely have meant that eventually something would have been done about them. But in the end, they were undone by a much simpler, though no less deadly, foe.

  The first of the Wanani inmates to figure out that the Prison traveled on a giant creature communicated this to their leaders, the elder parents. They then decided to see if this creature could be killed, a simple experiment which they saw no harm in at all.

  Their psychopathic tendencies had moved to full-blown psychosis.

  Several new markers were set up to allow quick passage closer to where they could get to the creature in a place it was vulnerable to attack. This meant that by the time they were able to try to kill the giant being they had covered most of the Prison with marker stones and teleportation access.

  Their attack on it had unforeseen consequences, however.

  They didn’t attack in masse, although that would have made very little difference anyway. The initial attack bored into a relatively soft portion of the giant being’s hide and managed to hurt it.

  The enhanced and magically assisted metabolism of the entity then proceeded to develop antibodies for what seemed to be a viral threat. After all, they were such small things in relation to the Titanic being that its immune system did not differentiate.

  The counterattack came in the form of a pathogen released by the creature with the unbiased intent of wiping out all threats of that kind. The interior planar dimension volume was so big that it took a few weeks for the pathogen to circulate completely.

  The Wanani fell dead after taking in a relative lung full of the air with the new pathogen in it.

  Complex antibodies of a microscopic physical and magical nature ended their lives.

  They were not brutal deaths; the immune system response was eradication, not violence. They merely passed out and quietly died, more than six thousands of them by that time, with the last ones left to die trapped under their mountains where they collapsed the tunnels to keep the air safe.

  These were the last ones to die, eventually suffocating and dying more painfully than those killed by the pathogen.

  These last representatives of their kind, unique in the cosmos even from their origins, completed the last murals to tell their story within the tunnels they had dug. Long chains of pictures done in artistic carvings of a monumental nature, for the miles the tunnels spanned, they told the story of the sub-race that fought and lost.

  **

  Fenix could not interpret the name of the race who had dug the tunnels, nor read any actual words to learn about them.

  Even if he had cared at all.

  That they were dead and gone meant they were no threat, which suited him perfectly.

  That the murals depicted the teleportation network in detail was what interested him. Considering the expanse over which the Prison spread and the nature of fast travel over such distances, he knew it was a strategic asset he had to have.

  His drive to escape meant he wanted to do things quickly, and traipsing about from one floating chunk of rock to another was going to take too long.

  The burning itch within him meant he had to act, and he knew the teleportation markers still worked. Those others who had greeted him so warmly had shown their hand, probably ignorant of the source of the magical devices, but using them nonetheless.

  All he had to do was figure out the best way to collect one of the teleportation keys, and from whom.

  His first step was to gather some more information, learn about the possible forces arrayed against him. His chosen target was, of course, the teleport stone of the Warlock since Fenix knew that Torn had used one and he knew where they were.

  He knew the other two had keys since they were able to teleport, so perhaps there were others. The Seductress and Old Man Page stayed somewhere else on the Prison. Maybe he could find out where on this particular outing.

  He had made it back to the mining settlement that housed the workers while they were away from the Festering Warrens. There he observed the place and made some careful forays in and out, all intending to find the one being who had the answers he wanted: the yellow slug called Khanton.

  All of the other convicts obeyed him as if he spoke for the Warlock.

  In a way, the slimy being did, through Torn, and via power granted only because he was more useful as a supervisor than as a laborer. But someone like that learned many things to survive, and now Fenix wanted to learn those things, too.

  He was taking it easy on a rooftop overlooking Khanton’s residence in the mining town, at ease in the dark and the cold night air. He found it strangely comforting, actually. Perhaps not strange at all, just as if he hadn’t done it for quite some time.

  From his brief glimpses of his own past, he knew that his life was a varied one. He couldn’t even tell how old he was, aside from knowing he’d had quite a long experience so far.

  The gray-skinned man shook himself, his hand unconsciously stroking at the longer scraggly hair of his beard. He was slightly tanned, which for his kind seemed to mean a mottled gray instead of a smooth darkening of the skin tone.

  The time spent outside and the number of days he’d been there had meant all his hair had grown out.

  A far cry from the way he had looked on arrival, another sign he had lived differently than he now did. Although at some point, living like this had been natural, too.

  Down below, he wat
ched the yellow slime crawl its long body covered by the jacket with the many leather pockets up what passed for a road in the mining town. It was escorted by three tough-looking convicts, chosen for muscle rather than brain.

  Fenix had surmised after observing the activity for a few days that the genuinely intelligent and robust convicts served the Warlock directly, or escaped the mines as quickly as possible.

  The best, if you could call them that, of the remainder got handpicked by Khanton for various duties, like the enforcer Fenix had encountered back in the Warrens. These were likely his own guards, not smart enough to be a threat so he could keep them close.

  In the Prison, it would be unwise to challenge three other inmates at once; considering their backgrounds, the real fighters were obviously astute killers.

  But Fenix was comfortable with the idea of fighting other killers. His entire race had been trained warriors, and they had fought each other and gone to war regularly.

  Khanton entered his log cabin home.

  It had a foundation built from the crushed rock so that it sat a foot above the ground. Logs laid horizontally formed the walls while a slightly peaked roof covered in thatch and mud protected the inside. His abode was set up just off from the middle of the mining town, with space on all sides to see signs of anyone approaching.

  It was not a stronghold by any means but well established enough that Fenix expected it had been built by a predecessor.

  **

  At that very moment, Khanton was considering much the same thing.

  He always enjoyed his stays in this house. He had won it over from the convict who had arranged the construction of the mining town. Every time he came inside he could appreciate how far he had come in the Prison, how much his nefarious mind and various schemes had earned him a rightful place.

  He even thought that the Warlock considered him a valuable asset, one who could grow further, given time.

  But that was to be considered only later. Being useful now would ensure Khanton’s survival, while also keeping a good eyestalk out for any possible threats. There had been five attempts on his life since he had taken over, and more frequently than when he had worked for the previous supervisor. But of course, with prominence came those seeking to take it from you.