by Stanzin
Part of my mind is saying I should have seen it coming. That part of my mind is an idiot. Yes, the signs were all there, but I had no way of reading them – I’m not an expert on the cause-and-effect chains behind riots.
Or, like A Labyrinth Of Thought says: I had no priors.
Three days ago, whatever it was that had been making everyone so irritable – its influence seemed to just vanish. The sounds of constant bickering were gone, and so were the millions of little accidents driving everyone crazy.
But things did not go back to normal.
It was as if the hot air had been let out of everyone’s balloons, and they’d drifted down to the sea, and then begun to sink. It was depressing. Everyone looked miserable, ready to burst into tears. There still was a shadow of their former agitation… but instead of being angry, the whole camp was just nervous, the kind of nervous you get when you’re stuck in a small space.
Everyone was pale.
And then everyone was sick.
The whole camp came down with fever and/or bad digestion… everyone but me. I’ve haven’t seen this much puking and retching and running for the toilets in all of my life so far.
First they were hot.
And then they were cold.
And then they were drooling.
And everybody stank of I don’t know what but it was disgusting.
The Spooks called everyone out to the square in the morning. I’m not sure how they managed to do that – considering most of the camp could barely walk. They said a strange new illness was sweeping the country, and that at great expense, an antidote had been developed.
The full antidote cycle would take eight vials to complete. Anything less than that would only prolong the illness, which was, according to them, killing everyone who didn’t take the antidote on time. The price of each vial was three Caesars.
In other words, our lives finally had a price – twenty-four Caesars.
Do you know how much a Reflective in Helika may earn in a year, if living frugally?
Four Caesars.
But of course the Empire isn’t heartless – we were told we could mortgage our lands to the Emperor’s Treasury for whatever amount we couldn’t pay for in coin. They’d hold our titles until we could pay off their debts.
We save about a Caesar a year if we try. If we had to pay the Empire back, it would take us a full third of the rest of our lives.
And that’s without interest.
There was no explanation of what this illness might be. They didn’t bother to have an explanation. They knew it was faux. We knew it was faux. They knew we knew they knew. We both knew they’d poisoned us somehow. And they didn’t have bloody courtesy to come up with a name or explanation for their scam.
They wanted us to know that they’d finally done it – taken our lands away.
We understood.
I think that might have been what set the nearly psychotic crowd off.
Someone, I’m not sure who – charged for the antidotes they told us were stocked in the warehouse beyond the stockade. He died of spellfire before he’d run twenty feet. More of us moved forward, and more of us died. But when sixteen thousand of us moved forward, it was their turn to die.
Even now, I’m not sure how long the riot lasted. I remember the front line of Spooks being overwhelmed. I remember the fence to the Observant section of the camps being torn down. I remember the gates to the Spook Family Barracks being broken.
I’m not sure how many died yesterday, but it was in the thousands.
The Spooks finally broke the riot using chain lightning spells. Somehow they managed to prep it. I think the first one killed a hundred or so of the rioters, and the second one killed three times that. After that, the rest of the rioters scattered, but the Spooks went right on casting until there was no one left in sight.
Not even I was in sight, though I was there. I remember the lightning ripping through me, cooking me from inside…
And then, before even I could feel the pain, the demon came forward. It healed me, and it let me absorb the spell.
Then it turned me invisible.
And that’s how I saved Charlie, by absorbing the bolt that would have cooked him.
As of this moment, they haven’t come for us, and none of us have come out from our hiding places.
But they won’t stay away from ever, and we have no way to break out of the ward that surrounds the camp.
I wonder… when they do come for us… can a demon Queen protect sixteen thousand?
