Raven's Song

by Launnie Roush

  Suddenly, a screen-cloud at the front end of the transport’s passenger hold blinked to life, revealing a stylized image of a red scarab beetle against a field of black. The ranger on guard duty ordered the prisoners quiet, an order they immediately complied with.

  A narrator began speaking, his voice maddeningly pleasant:

  On behalf of the Federation, the Governor of Scarab, and, most importantly, the CEO of Mundi Incepta, please allow me to welcome you all to Dis, on this the twenty-third of February, 3182, making this the last time you’ll ever know the true date. Dis, your new home and the Federation’s only prison facility, is an ultra-max security facility maintained by Mundi Incepta and is located on the southern end of what was known to our ancient ancestors as Long Island. The prison is concealed within a massive dome of opaque black glass, from which escape is virtually impossible. Once inside, you will have free reign to do what you must to survive, and all we ask is that you obey the following rule: do not approach any Legio Mundi troopers, or any facilities designated as Mundi Incepta property, including the dome itself. Doing so will warrant your immediate execution. I once again welcome you to Dis and urge you to do the time, do not let the time do you.

  The screen-cloud blinked away, and at this point the prisoners were once again given permission to speak.

  “We almost there?” Ronald asked hopefully.

  “Not sure. All I’ve seen out the porthole is blurry landscape,” Caitlyn answered.

  “Damn! I wish this was over. I’m absolutely terrified by this whole crazy scheme.”

  Caitlyn nudged his arm with her elbow. “Don’t be. We’re the Saviors, remember? We have a job to do.”

  Ronald nodded and gave her a cocky grin and a thumb’s up, “Yeah, we got this nailed down, don’t we, Little Kitty?!”

  Caitlyn smiled and nodded, then turned back to the window, said smile instantly vanishing. Though outwardly calm, Caitlyn was terrified as well. She had heard countless stories about Dis. All of them were the kind adults whisper to one another when they think their children are out of earshot, only to have the children overhear and recount them to friends during sleepovers. Stories of murder, rape, cannibalism, and other barbaric savageries were commonplace when discussing Dis. Though most adults claimed to believe these stories to be exaggerations, many still avoided mentioning the prison city whenever possible. The more Caitlyn dwelled on the upcoming task, the more terrified she grew.

  C’mon, damn it, she told herself, your son’s somewhere in that Abyss, and you have to save him! If you have to mow down shrieking, slobbering freaks by the dozen you will! This place and its reputation will not keep you from your son!

  The transport slowed noticeably and began banking sharply to the right. Ronald leaned over Caitlyn’s shoulder and together they caught their first glimpse of Dis. It was an awe-inspiring sight, although it caused those unfamiliar with it a sense of great unease. It was a black dome over two hundred stories high at its apex and fifteen miles in diameter. Though it was bathed in light absolutely none of it penetrated into the structure, and as the transport drew closer to the dome’s top they were surprised to learn there was a depression roughly one thousand feet across and five stories deep set into it. When the transport was above the depression it came to a halt and began sinking downwards at a smooth and fairly rapid clip.

  “I suppose we’ll be goin’ inside shortly,” Ronald remarked with a calm he did not feel.

  Minutes later, the transport settled on its landing struts, the passenger bay doors opened, and the guard ranger ordered the prisoners to disembark. Ronald and Caitlyn joined the prisoners in this activity, even going as far as mimicking the grim silence they had assumed. Once they were off the transport, the prisoners were turned over to a contingent of LM, or Legio Mundi, troopers, fearsome-looking individuals who served as Mundi Incepta’s security force. They were outfitted in sanguine uniforms, black combat armor, and wicked-looking scythes. Once the transport was empty, it rose into the air and shot westward with a scream of its engines. The prisoners and the contingent of troopers stood unmoving at the center of the depression.

  “What in the Abyss is goin’ on?!” Ronald hissed.

  “Hush!” Caitlyn hissed back.

  Just then there came a thunderous clap, and they could feel the floor begin moving downwards. The motion was rough and jarring, and Caitlyn quickly realized they were on a massive elevator. Eventually they were within the dome proper, and the Saviors were left dumbfounded as the true face of Dis was revealed.

  The dome’s underside was lined with a staggering array of electric lights. These lights cast a feeble orange glow down upon an ancient city comprised of a vast collection of crumbling, filth-encrusted buildings and skyscrapers. Far to the south of the elevator, a one hundred ten story tall pyramid of pristine white, the sight of which inspired wonder in the Saviors, stood in gleaming defiance to the rot surrounding it. Their noses were immediately ravaged by the noxious stink of the city, a stench so foul it sent their stomachs churning and a reflexive gag erupting from Ronald’s mouth.

  The space the elevator was descending towards was a large swath of darkness in the center of the decaying metropolis. As the elevator drew closer to the ground, the troopers began herding the still silent prisoners towards its edge. There came a loud metallic shriek, and the elevator settled to a stop fifteen feet from the ground. A savage-looking male convict to Ronald’s left suddenly began weeping, his quiet blubbering intensifying Ronald’s apprehension.

  A loud klaxon blared, and the prisoners’ manacles fell from their bodies. The rough herding by the troopers resumed, and though many of the prisoners tried desperately to resist their captors, all were eventually forced from the elevator. They landed hard on the gritty soil which surrounded the conveyance. The elevator began to rise back towards the underside of the dome, and the prisoners quickly gained their feet, nearly all of them glancing about with expressions of almost frenzied panic on their faces.

  What’re they so scared of? Caitlyn wondered, What weren’t we told?!

  Before she could verbalize her worry, a nasally male voice boomed tauntingly from the surrounding gloom, “Well how ‘bout that! Looks like there’s come more fresh meat from the heavens! Hunters, you’re here to bag this wild game, which is to be used for the Three F’S! Hunters, what are the Three F’S?! Lemme hear ya answer loud, darlings!”

  From the surrounding darkness came the thunder of countless voices shouting in unison, “FOOD, FIGHTING, FUCKING!!!”

  “There ya go, correct, as alwyas! All of ya paid the Troll of the Park well for yer huntin’ permits, so go ahead and hunt! Oh, and remember; WHATVER YA CATCH, YA KEEP!”

  The area was suddenly flooded with glaring white light, revealing a large portion of the apparently vast vacant lot of packed earth the elevator had deposited them in. Surrounding the prisoners was a motley horde of some of the most horrendous individuals Caitlyn had ever seen outside the realms of fiction. Men and women of a staggering array of ages and races stared the newly arrived prisoners down with predatory desire. Some of them seemed to be dressed in uniforms of street gangs or perhaps militias, but the majority appeared to be unaffiliated with any group. A staggering array of crudely constructed melee weaponry and armor bedecked this baleful horde.

  These people, these inmates, suddenly charged forward, and the following assault was bloodcurdling in its ferocity. It was a battle to rival any other the Saviors had ever participated in. The newcomers fought off their attackers to the best of their ability, but most were easily overcome and drug off to some unknown fate, one that, should the “Three F’s” be involved, would be a miserable one at best. Those who proved too troublesome were simply murdered and their corpses also carried off. The Saviors were quickly confronted by a number of the attacking inmates, and they went to work without the slightest pause.

  Caitlyn was definitely in her element as she used an impressive combination of punches, kicks, and throws to thwart her enemies.
Ronald, also very much at home, lashed out with similar techniques, but his raw power also permitted him the luxury of being able to fling his opponents about like ragdolls. On several occasions he actually used some of his hapless victims as living weapons for brief periods, literally swinging them about like a large club and knocking aside anyone in his path. Both of them took up weapons as they became available, and an impressively diverse array of armaments passed through their hands. As they fought, they slowly, and as subtly as possible, worked their way towards the battleground’s periphery.

  At one point Caitlyn witnessed a tug-of-war match commence between four convicts, the prize being a young man in his early twenties. The contestants were gripping the prize by his wrists and ankles and were pulling with all their might, wrenching anguished screams from their poor victim. The contest ended when a hideously-featured, massively corpulent woman wearing little more than a filthy leather apron trudged up and proceeded to hack the prize in half with an equally massive cleaver fashioned from a shank of rusty steel. The young man let out only one more agonized cry which was followed by a loud gurgling as he quickly, and thankfully, perished. Blood and innards spilled from the fresh corpse and splattered on the ground as the competing inmates finished dividing their kill and made off with their respective prizes.

  The Saviors finally broke away from the battle and sprinted across the breadth of the lot, a handful of convicts hot on their heels. They traversed the wreckage of a stone wall, crossed the decrepit asphalt of a wide avenue, and plunged into the labyrinthine city. They tore ahead into an alley choked with mountains of garbage. Ronald quickly caught sight of a large steel refuse bin lying partially submerged in filth and, motioning for Caitlyn to follow, dove inside. The pair held their breath and waited in tense silence as their pursuers waded past, the filth they moved through coming up to their waists. They remained still for several minutes, taking the opportunity to get a second wind. Once they were rested and fairly certain they were no longer in imminent danger, they left the bin and waded from the alley.

  “Let’s go,” Caitlyn told Ronald.

  “Go where?” Ronald asked.

  “Doesn’t matter. The surveillance scanners will supposedly catch our Cell signals and report us as intruders. We’ll get picked up soon enough.”

  Ronald nodded in agreement, and they started off down the sidewalk they had emerged onto. The entirety of the place was the epitome of rampant squalor. Every millimeter of sidewalk and road was mangled by cracks and potholes, the buildings were moldering ruins, and putrefying refuse of nearly all varieties was omnipresent. The vile odor was even more powerful on ground level and was wreaking havoc on both their constitutions. An ancient and poorly maintained fossil fuel burning vehicle zoomed past occasionally, adding its terrible exhaust to this miasma. The men and women they ran across belonged to two categories; miserable looking wretches who eyed them warily from various vantage points and savage looking gang members, their outfits and equipment indicating a staggering variety of said gangs, who pegged them with hateful stares, vulgarity-laden insults, challenges to combat, and, of course, propositions for sexual acts.

  They wandered aimlessly and relatively undisturbed for some time and were just about to stop for a brief rest when a large flatbed truck came screeching to a halt in front of them. The Saviors watched warily as a squad of five LM troopers piled off the truck’s rear. Their already frightful presence was intensified by their complete hairlessness, ashen complexions, and cloudy-eyed stares.

  They quickly moved to surround the duo, and the smallest of the troopers, a man lacking the unnerving features of his companions, stepped forward and barked, “Lay down your weapons and get on your knees!”

  The Saviors dropped to their knees. “We’re unarmed,” Ronald informed their captors.

  Two of the larger troopers darted forward, took their prisoners by their wrists, and bound their hands behind their backs with yet more heavy manacles. The little man came forward and began to paw at their bodies.

  “The two of you came in here unarmed?! I don’t believe it!” he exclaimed.

  “We wanna speak with the warden!” Ronald snapped.

  The small man remained silent, but the ranger behind Ronald hefted his scythe into the air and brought the weapon’s butt down hard on Ronald’s shoulder. The small man was waiting for the customary wail of pain to issue from his prisoner’s mouth as he collapsed to the ground, but instead his smug expression faltered slightly as Ronald barely flinched and let out just the smallest of grunts despite the ferocity of the blow that had been dealt to him.

  The small man’s face contorted with rage as he clenched his weapon tightly in his fists. “Put them on the truck!” he spat.

  Caitlyn winced when she was grabbed by the biceps and snatched to her feet, her arms being wrenched painfully in the process. She and Ronald were forced onto the truck’s bed, and once the troopers were onboard, the vehicle began to jostle and bump its way down the badly degraded street. Both Saviors, due to travelling in hovering vehicles their entire lives, were unfamiliar with this mode of transport and found it quite uncomfortable, but they were still thankful for the expeditiousness and relatively safety it provided. Dis had effortlessly and amply proven itself far more horrific than they ever could have imagined. They now realized there was a reason the convicts sentenced to Dis never reentered society. Caitlyn now felt a poignant grief upon learning how utterly abysmal her son’s prison truly was, and the nearly irrevocable resoluteness driving her thus far had now become indestructible.

  Eventually, the truck pulled up to the base of the white pyramid and sat idling for several minutes in front of a large, ornately adorned silver door set into the structure’s side. A mob of enraged convicts rushed the truck, Caitlyn growing increasingly impatient as their squad struggled against them and the delay lengthened. She was about to offer assistance when a small platoon of LM troopers appeared and began to force the mob back. Once the way was clear, the door ground open to admit the truck.

  The vehicle puttered forward and, for all intents and purposes, entered an entirely new world.

  TWENTY FIVE

  The truck cruised along a cobblestone driveway comprised of polished bronze bricks. The driveway wound between trees of platinum with copper leaves hanging from their branches. Robotic animals such as squirrels, raccoons, and deer foraged amongst bushes with brass branches and crystal leaves, their noses sniffing around in the brilliantly green artificial grass that carpeted the ground. Occasionally, a mechanical bird would jet over the car or sing an unearthly, but beautiful, theremin song from a branch. Above them, a massive screen-cloud displayed a dynamic image of a beautiful blue sky which was dotted with fluffy white clouds and crowned by a brilliantly shining sun.

  The driveway came to a halt before a massive European castle keep made of coarse gray stone which sat in the middle of the clearing. It was as if someone had transplanted the structure directly from the Middle Ages and placed it in the heart of Dis. The truck’s engine cut off, and a second later the troopers and their prisoners piled off the vehicle. Caitlyn took this opportunity to stretch as well as she could, but before she could adequately do so, the Saviors were roughly forced into a march.

  “Time to go meet the warden, just like you asked,” the small man announced with a smug tone.

  The entourage headed into the synthetic forest, and after only a few minutes they stepped into a small clearing. Within this clearing was a small, ornate wrought-iron table that was surrounded by four equally ornate chairs and was appointed with a lovely porcelain tea set. One of these chairs was occupied by a small-statured person with long brunette hair who now stood and approached the group. The person, a woman, was buxomly appointed and wore a black latex dress that more than adequately displayed this feature. Her face was lovely, cheerful, and held an air of deep intelligence.

  “My guests have arrived!” she gushed happily as she came forward, her dress giving off the small squeaks of stressed
rubber.

  “We found them in Turtle Bay,” the small man reported.

  “Undo their bonds, so I may greet them properly.”

  The Saviors were immediately freed from their cuffs, and before Caitlyn could massage her sore wrists, her hands were taken into the woman’s own. She was mildly surprised at their pleasant warmth as she met the woman’s dark brown eyes.

  “Caitlyn Floyd-Von Raben?” the woman inquired.

  “I am,” Caitlyn confirmed.

  “It’s truly an honor to meet you!” the woman exclaimed, “I’m a huge fan of kendo, and you’re easily one of my favorite kendoka! I’m Sabine Alsford, member of the Mundi Incepta Board of Directors, and Warden of Dis.”

  “The honor’s mine,” Caitlyn returned.

  Sabine released Caitlyn’s hands and turned to Ronald, “And your friend?”

  Ronald introduced himself, after which Sabine complemented him on his size. After the introductions had been made, Sabine stepped back and motioned to the table, “Join me, please. It’s my teatime, and I could use the company.”

  The troopers moved to the edge of the clearing but eyed their prisoners warily. The Saviors complied with their host’s request without protest, and as soon as the three of them were seated, Sabine lifted the teapot from its place at the center of the table and poured a drink into the cups sitting before her guests. Caitlyn took up the cup and studied its contents, which turned out to be a steaming sapphire liquid. She cautiously sniffed at it and found it possessed a strong fruity odor.