Memorias: Deep in the Arnaks

by Serabian, Charles

  [ It’s night now. ] Valor signed back. [ Did you sleep the day away? ]

  Orrin nodded. Jerryl closed the book in his hands and pushed it towards Valor. “You should read this one, Valor. It could be helpful.”

  “Not today, Jerryl.” Valor knew what he meant. He knew the words could be really meant if your next escape attempt works, which was unlikely. They had few friends left, and what few had survived previous escape attempts no longer had the gumption to try again.

  Valor undid the tie in his hair, redoing his wild ponytail, counting the remaining friendly cellblocks in his head. They were just too few, and many had fallen victim to the white death, preventing them from having the strength for revolt.

  He looked at Jerryl. “Maybe you could tell us the tale of the brave warrior that shoved his stick up Gakkamon’s rear. He even walks like it.”

  Jerryl laughed, eyes never leaving his scrawled notes. “Your next lessons aren’t for a few days. I’ll see what I can research.”

  Valor looked at Jerryl, wondering what had kept him so distracted lately. “You seen the Scarlett Ring lately, Jerryl?”

  Jerryl nodded. “I have. The Warden has me monitoring his men, which is why I’ve been cutting your lessons short as of late.”

  “I bet they hate that.”

  Jerryl turned over some papers on their shared desk. “You have no idea. You remember the fights begin tomorrow?” He said this with a sudden intensity.

  “Yes,” Valor said. “Probably some poor fool has already been splashed with sleep powder… why do you ask?”

  Jerryl tugged on his beard, shuffling through his papers. He looked at Orrin. “No, but keep your eyes open. He’s got some big beasties tied up for this one. As if this was the final show… just take care. Watch each other as often as you do the crowd.”

  Orrin signed, [ Yes, Jerryl. ]

  Valor yawned and laid down on his hard bed, thinking about the black arrows. He had never thought about giving up completely, but hated to admit that in the last few years, he’d come to accept his place as a slave with golden chains.

  Valor shot a burst of air from his nostrils. He visualized the ancient front gates of the Arnaks swinging wide open, his legs calmly moving him from the darkness and into the suns rays, never looking back. It did nothing to curb the path his mind was taking.

  Gold chains are better than iron ones.

  With that, he fell into the dreamscape.

  Chapter 4

  A startling image entered Valor’s dreamscape. It was one he had seen before, one that he expected, even while dreaming.

  A grassy field overlooking a silver tinged city, unlike any he had seen or read about, burning in black flames, scarring everything and everyone in its path.

  Valor ran forward in a mixture of terror and hope, grass as tall as wheat stems, whipping by him. For some reason, he felt a need to stop the screams of the dying that multiplied every moment. But with each passing step, his body became as heavy as the mountains he dwelled in. His knees became like stone, and he fell to them. Suddenly, an overwhelming sadness overtook his mind. It stifled his breath, and tears began to roll down his face. He brushed them away, wondering in vain what was happening to him.

  Beyond the city was a silver black ocean. People ran towards hundreds of elegant wood boats, of all shapes and sizes, escape so near, but the fire seemed to have a mind of its own. It quickly spread from the docks to the escape vessels, burning the men and women already inside. Many who caught aflame flailed wildly, attempting to reach the sea, but for most, the fire ravaged them from the inside out. Some who did make it survived, some simply prolonging their deaths. As the citizens of the silver city jumped in, only a few resurfaced alive.

  Soon, the sea became pock marked with floating bodies, charred black by the mysterious flame, drifting out towards the underworld of the horizon. Just when Valor thought that he could take no more, a white light appeared in the middle of the city, shooting through the clouds, separating into orange white rings, wide as islands. It entranced Valor as it quickly shifted color from white to black. It expanded towards him, expelling all sound, leaving him in a silent void.

  He turned to avoid the white light, and saw something that had not been there before.

  Orrin was standing there, looking at him, as if he was sorry to be late for dinner.

  Chapter 5

  Valor woke in a damp sweat. He turned towards his brother, who was sitting alone in the darkness, laying his books in order. Jerryl was already gone.

  [ Morning, ] he signed. Valor shook off the dream, not wanting to disturb his brother.

  [ Yes, ] he signed back to his brother, quickly getting up, touching his toes for a morning stretch. Orrin signed to Valor again as he straightened his back.

  [ Same dream again? ] he asked.

  [ How did you know? ] Valor responded.

  Orrin looked his brother up and down. [ You’re sweating. ]

  Valor looked at his drenched shirt, pulling it away from his skin, airing it out.

  [ Yes, ] Valor signed reluctantly. Orrin nodded in understanding, patting his brother briskly on the back. Valor signed again. [ Orrin, was I in your dream? ]

  Orrin waited a moment before answering, as if trying to remember. [ Yes. You were. How did you know that? ]

  [ I just - ]

  The call of a guard came down through the upper tunnels, a graceless noise that filled the walls with its disgusting syllables.

  “Kah - Hu - Tah!”

  From the entrance of the cellblock, Valor heard the familiar dragging of floppy feet.

  Bowler, one of Lobosa’s ring trainers, appeared before them. Bowler was lame, almost to the point of being silly. But his mind was always thinking about fighting, through which he had attained his position with a combination of sheer physical force and a single-minded life.

  Valor remembered that, allegedly, Bowler had once sat on an opponent’s head, crushing his skull beneath his massive buttocks, a sight that he wished to both see and not see.

  Bowler appeared from the darkness with the biggest smile Valor had ever seen him wear. It was the one thing Valor liked about him; Bowler was too dumb to be intentionally mean. If he killed you, it would most likely have been from him mistaking you for a training dummy.

  “Bowler,” Valor said. “Nice to see you.”

  “Good morningth boys.” Bowler smacked his lips, crusted with leftover food, the innocence of a mad child behind his every intention. “Games begin today! Sho’ happy, I am! Sho’shiteing!”

  Valor assumed he meant exciting. “Yes, exciting! Of course. But why aren’t you helping prepare?”

  Bowler laughed. “Haghagh! Warden shent me! Make shure you know you both guard him todayth! He shed to be prepareth!”

  Valor nodded, looking at Orrin. “We will, Bowler. Tell him not to worry.”

  “Excellenth!” Bowler jumped from his heels a bit, smacking his hands together. “You do good jobth todayth! Alright? Alright, goodbye boyth! Goodbye, goodbye.”

  With that, the big feral disappeared as quickly as he came.

  Orrin turned to Valor and signed to him. [ I thought he’d want us to fight. ]

  [ No, ] Valor signed. [ I’m telling you. Something’s going on… where’s Jerryl? ]

  [ Enforcers took him to the Golden Sands, ] Orrin responded.

  Valor nodded. [ Strange that they don’t want him with us. ]

  Orrin shook his head. [ Best be prepared then. ] Orrin began to stretch, and Valor turned, sitting cross legged, facing the wall by Orrin’s desk.

  If Jerryl’s teachings wouldn’t help him, then perhaps his meditation method would.

  Valor closed his eyes, and stared at the black bar of empty space in front of him. He breathed in through his nose, filling his belly with air, exhaling slowly. After a few breaths, he focused his concentration between the eyebrows. He inhaled in eight rapid bursts, and exhaled again.

  “Thp, thp, thp, thp, thp, thp, thp, thp.”


  A buzzing occurred in both of Valor’s temples. His body felt both heavy and light. In the initial moments, bad thoughts always came to him. Thoughts of things Lobosa had made him do. Memories that made his stomach ill.

  Blood pumped in bursts through his hands. His fingers became full, as if the purest air was pumping through his veins. His spine lifted, and the knots in his stomach melted away, along with the memories, bathing in the cool waters of concentration.

  Valor felt himself awaken. The signs were all around him. This was not the time to give up, nor waver in determination.

  He remembered a rule of the silence.

  Stillness in motion.

  This was the time to be still, he thought, and the time to be awake; to watch and be aware.

  We will be free, he thought. Soon, he would run.

  His mind became dark. Before his body was taken by the meditative trance, he saw one more image.

  Black arrows, drawn and ready.

  “Thp, thp, thp, thp, thp, thp, thp, thp.”

  Chapter 6

  In the vast Gorabund Desert, surrounded by the Arnak Mountains, hardly anything could, or would choose to survive without the use of magic. And yet, people, plants, and animals alike vied for supremacy, checking each other with nicks and notches, like old men in a game of two fates, ever trying to be king of the wasteland.

  The Raging Sands; a swirling, everlasting storm of flesh rending grains, waited for its victims at the end of the desert and before the Arnak chain.

  Armun Murleia sighed heavily. Harma’s grace, he thought. I’m too old.

  Armun turned to look northeast, back from where he came. The simple sight of grass was a few hundred miles back. To the east lay troll country, a place few had been in decades. To the west was Kashrii, the jeweled city of the desert. To the north, the Arnak Mountains followed a trail back to the grasses of the Fertile Plateau’s.

  Grass, he thought. Green, green grass.

  Though sheltered with decent desert clothes and enough food, neither of those things would help him against the magic storm. What was worse, he could only use a minimal amount of magic in order to avoid whatever detection lay beyond its borders. The moment he allowed his aura into its natural state, any person of developed magic would notice. His mission required secrecy.

  Armun looked between the storm to the south and the clear sky to the north. It was not that he couldn’t do it. He simply didn’t want to.

  However, returning without a member of the Orange and Black would not sit well with the queen, no matter how many times he had come to her aid. She was the queen, and her orders were law, and Armun would never abandon his duty. But staring at the Wall of Sand, he suddenly felt the need for a walking stick.

  He held out his hand in front of him, concentrating on the middle of his palm. A tiny sprite appeared, playfully bouncing across his fingertips, shimmering with life and exuberance.

  “Repeat memory,” he commanded the sprite.

  The sprite moved to the center of his body, causing him to tingle and shiver, energy coursing through his veins. He heard the voice of his queen.

  Armun. Suddenly he was not in the desert, but in a grand meeting room, the curtains drawn for privacy, secrecy. The queen sat at the table’s head, her councilors to her right, and the Elder Council to her left. The bodies, furniture, and room itself flooded over the yellow white desert.

  Armun. She said again. Armun shivered again, despite the desert heat, as he remembered the tone of the room.

  The queen continued.

  We have a mission that only someone of your caliber can complete.

  Armun felt himself mouthing the words he had spoken as the magical image of himself repeated the same phrase.

  My lady… it’s been a long time since you’ve put me in the field.

  The image of the queen smiled. I wouldn’t want you to lose your edge, she said. This mission is two fold. My personal guard, the Orange and Black, and I, have located Sir Jerryl Trought. As you know, we lost him years ago in the Gorabund Desert, near the Raging Sands. We need you to find him.

  Armun had never met Sir Jerryl, but knew of his reputation as a good man and a great military mind; in essence, a man worth saving.

  The memory wavered a bit in his vision, but quickly came back. The queen continued.

  The second part of your mission is something I have feared for some time. For several years now, we’ve had mass reports of prisoners who have simply up and vanished. Disappeared. All my spies can discern is that they are secretly being transported southwest, into the Gorabund Desert, to the southernmost point of the Arnaks. Feral territory.

  The queen folded her hands and sank back into her chair, enveloped by the dark room.

  And not just prisoners. We’ve had many reports of people vanishing from festivals and other events as well, all across Harmenor. But the Gorabund Desert is a big place. I have no doubt that you’ll find the ferals are behind all of this. For too long, we’ve left them unchecked. I fear people have suffered due to our negligence.

  “Stop,” Armun said. Just as quickly as the magical illusion came, it flicked away at the speed of his snapping fingers. Negligence, he thought. Negligence.

  Regardless of who he needed to find, and regardless of who ordered said finding, he and a few others he trusted had sensed a darkness beneath the Arnaks. Whatever was there, it needed investigating.

  Armun checked the wind with his fingers, purely out of habit. He knew which way it was blowing, though it would not matter in the sand storm. He raised both arms out to his side, fingers pointed up.

  He took one heavy breath with eyes closed.

  Once opened, he released his aura. Millions of tiny beads of energy lay ahead of him in the Raging Sands, each the size of the sand grains below his feet.

  Armun had been certain the storm was magical in nature. He had never seen a stranger creation spring from the ground with no cause, except perhaps the anger and frustration of the earth.

  He closed his eyes with another heavy breath, shutting off his attunement to the energy around him.

  The sand swirled into itself like a deadly mother’s embrace, welcoming him inside. Years ago he had seen this very storm rip the life from a group of bandits that wished to lay claim to the desert. He hoped his second visit would not end so viciously. Armun simply didn’t have time for it, nor time enough to go around the northern or southern edge of the storm.

  Armun thought he felt a tremor, and quickly scanned the area. Avoiding ivory maws was always on his mind. Though their sitings had become rare, coming across one was an unspoken death sentence, filled with slime and a twenty-yard jaw span.

  Armun trudged forward across a high ledge towards the storm. His nervousness turned into irritation as he realized that the worst part of his ventures had always been in the beginning.

  Why is that?

  He squinted into the storm, but the Arnaks were invisible to him behind the sand wall.

  A moment later, Armun was within arms length of the storm. He reached out with a fingertip, tracing the churning mixture with a circular motion. It bucked against him. He stepped back, and the moment his finger left it, its motion stopped. The appearance was deceiving, he knew. In order for the storm to conserve its own energy, it only whipped enough to kill when something living entered into it.

  With his suspicions confirmed, Armun kneeled to the ground, taking his first two fingers, firmly placing them in between his eyes. He felt his insides glow as the spell took effect. Armun looked to his cloak and other garb, muttering an enchantment. With his thumb, he pressed against his forehead, transferring his energy to his body.

  His skin became harder, thicker. Inside of his body, he could hear the bones creaking and bending, and his skin, which folded over itself on a scale the eye could not comprehend.

  The spell worked. He had not tested it enough, a fact that irritated him. But it worked.

  Armun stepped towards the sand menagerie, holding his breath. He hear
d the wind groan as it whipped his cloak wildly. He took two steps closer to the storm, face to face with its raw power. Armun placed his hand upon the surface, walking in with a smile on his face, as if entering a bakery, with the scent of fresh bread to carry him inside.

  The storm raged so loud he could not hear. The wind instantly picked up, blowing away his ability to see and feel. It was as if all his nerves had gone dead, and all the blood drawn from his body. He closed his eyes, and released into his aura again.

  It only became worse. All his eyes could make out was pure energy, frothing like sea spray. He shut off his aura, shaking his head.

  Armun was aware enough to know he was walking forward, his mind telling his legs to move. Armun exhaled deeply, powering through the opaque gale.

  Too old for this.

  Chapter 7

  Lobosa’s fingers halted over the thick piles of papers on his table. The immediate desire to ignore them was strong.

  He sighed aggressively, curling two long fingers around his tall cup of red tea, lapping it up with his long tongue in a few quick, silent slurps. He motioned to his assistant Riffhel for more. He knew he’d have to remember to sip the stuff while in front of the human nobility later, during the first match of the Scarlett Ring.

  In a few months shy of five years, he had accomplished what neither his sire nor grandsire had been able to do. There now existed working, if terribly flawed, relationships with Kashrii, and a secret cache of wealthy lords and ladies, all of whom were excellent at keeping secrets. He had, through deviation and coercion, convinced them all of a narrative of half truths and fantastic white lies. He had wood from the trolls, weapons and armor from his own smiths, and gold for the best fights no one ever heard of.

  Our time of suffering is almost gone…

  Almost gone were the days of elaborate raids, planned meticulously, but sometimes to no avail. Gone too was starvation, and fear of the nameless things. But everything was almost. Almost here, almost there.