“What are they doing?” I asked.
“They’re smashing coal,” another trainee responded without looking at me. “‘Dem fields are full of metals and coal and such. We dig it up, smash it up, and send it back to the outside world.”
“Don’t people know about this?” I wondered angrily. The other kid laughed weakly but didn’t smile.
“Nah, they don’t know,” he told me sadly. “Even if they did know, what would they do ‘bout it? It’s cheap stuff. It’s good for them.”
“What are king’s exams?” A kid beside me asked real suddenly. The older trainee nervously licked his lips and seemed to unfocus his eyes a bit.
“Y’all see that wall over there?” he asked, pointing out towards the fields of coal. At first I thought he was talking about the smooth crater wall that went way up, but as I looked closer I could see that there was a different wall. This wall was brick and went up nearly four stories.
“What’s behind it?” a kid behind me asked, tilting his head to one side.
“The Forest.”
“A forest?” the other trainee asked in disbelief.
“Not a forest!” he responded irritably. “The Forest! It was grown by the Grimlars to test the abilities of their trainees. If you live five years here, you get thrown in there and you gotta get back out in a week. You can’t do it if you don’t have anti-magic.”
“What happens if you fail?” I demanded, locking eyes with the other ickle-bit.
“Nobody knows,” The kid said under his breath. “Some say you get taken out of the camp and put back into the real world. Some say different.” He shook his head abruptly and stared at us as if he forgot we were there. “If you wanna be a Grimlar, you have to get to tier four and survive one of those exams,” he added darkly.
“Tier?” I asked suddenly.
“Yeah, tier,” the other kid said quickly. “The Grimlar trainees all get a tier to tell them how they’re doing but ‘cause we’re ickle-bits, we’re tier zero. Getting to tier one just means showing a couple of elders you can use anti-magic, but after that, I think you’ve gotta take some kind of test in the school.”
“What’s the highest tier?” I said loudly.
“Gods, don’t you ever shut up?” the other trainee asked while covering his ears. “What’s your name anyways?”
“Jacob,” I said flatly. “Jacob Ofpacis.”
The other trainee sighed. “Well if you have to know Jacob, it goes all the way up to tier six. At that level, people call you Caterwaul. There can only one Caterwaul at a time.
“Who's the Caterwaul now?” I asked, forgetting to keep my mouth shut. The trainee shushed me so suddenly that I nearly leapt back a half meter. He looked to either side before cupping his hand to his mouth and leaning in real close.
“Caterwaul Lorenzo,” he whispered. “But you gotta be careful, because he can hear you wherever you are.”
“What? That’s impossible!” I declared, looking into his eyes for confirmation.
“He’s the Caterwaul. He can do anything,” the trainee replied as if I didn’t understand. “It’s said that he can lift up an entire river just by lifting his hands. There’s no stronger aqua warlock anywhere in the world.”
The trainee jabbed a finger in another direction and pointed out a grand palace with pointed towers, blinding white arches and hundreds of cool blue windows. It was a building so fantastic, I wondered how I could have missed it. “He lives in Castle Lambalitrate with the tier five professors and elders. He rules over us and he watches every little thing that happens inside of his camp.”
“But how can he?” I asked earnestly.
The trainee didn’t respond. He only shook his head slightly. “I dunno,” he admitted, turning around. “That’s really all you need to know about the camp anyways. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have some well deserved rest we need to attend to.”
***
It’s now five years since that day and five years since I made that promise to find Preston only to leave it painfully unfulfilled. As I mentioned before my name is Jacob Ofpacis, although for the longest time I wasn’t really sure what to call myself besides miserable. Miserable because I had been taken in by the Grimlars, and miserable because I had lost my only friend. Despite my despair, I continued to survive, although that was more because of a small sliver of luck which made its way into my life.
It was a day not long after I had entered the camp and I was mining minerals. My inexperienced young hands were blistered from the grip of the pickaxe. I desperately wanted to stop. However the looming glare of the elders overrode any pain my body was experiencing. After a while, I began to notice that one of the elders was watching me with unusual focus. Trying to look inconspicuous, I snuck a peek at the observer.
He was a man made up of sharp sides and angles. A man with expertly trimmed facial hair and a balding scalp, with only a trace of black present in the follicles. He had a gaze that seemed to lack any colour, but still managed to deliver deep sincerity.
From that day on, he continued to watch me work, as silent as the moon but as penetrating as the sun. For weeks he watched and some days it seemed to me that his gaze was almost challenging me. It was encouraging me to press on while at the same time offering me the option to lie down and fade into the rock. While that man was watching, I found determination and strength I never realized I had.
After the man had been watching for nearly a month, he approached. As I watched him glide over the empty desert canvas, I gaped in apprehension. Had I done something wrong? Was I in trouble? His feet slipped silently over the debris, keeping time with the slow rhythm of the pelting picks hitting the ground around me.
A string of recurring taps accompanied the man’s movement. I noticed that he walked with a metal tipped cane. The elder approached without any sideways glances, looking completely indifferent to my obvious nerves. His gaze met mine only briefly, before he cocked his head to one side and walked unusually close to me. His leisurely tempo was broken by the clatter of a thick wooden strip which fell to the ground. Before I could even consider returning it, the sharp-angled elder had already stridden off several paces. I recoiled with disbelief when I saw what had been dropped before me.
It was 10 credits worth of day passes.
In the concentration camp, day passes were created to make Ickle-Bits work faster. Every time an Ickle-bit did some work, they could get a few day passes should they be the one that worked the best. Some died, recklessly trying to be the lucky one to get a single pass. Others played dirty by stealing resources or bullying others into working for them. Never had an elder ever given me one, much less ten. There was no doubt in my mind that if the Grimlars saw me with this, they would assume I had stolen it. If anybody else saw me with it, they would try to take it from me. I had to return the credits somehow.
The siren signaling the end of the day rang suddenly, causing hordes of hungry ickle-bits to rush for the canteen. Just as I was about to enter, however, I saw the sharp-faced elder slowly observe his surroundings, then calmly stride off. Abandoning my position in line, I sprinted into the streets of The Clog to look for him. While my arms pumped and my chest inflated, I continued into the deep depths of the corridors and crooks. His feet flew alongside his fluttering cape, as his slow stride turned into a brisk walk. Building after building he effortlessly evaded me as my spindly little legs tried to fling me ahead. Rounding another corner with inconceivable ease, the sharp faced man almost seemed to be enjoying the chase.
Yet suddenly there was nothing more to pursue. The filthy plaza that greeted me contained nothing of any importance. Not a sound, nor a single speck of anything out of the ordinary. It was so stunning, I didn’t even notice I had walked straight into an elder going in the opposite direction. The impact was no more than a light graze on his shoulder, however this particular elder stared at me as though I had just assaulted him. Without even saying a single word, he grabbed me by the scruff of my collar, and threw me again
st the wall, preparing to strike.
“The boy is with me,” a strained voice said calmly. The angular elder suddenly materialized by my side and made a motion that suggested we had somewhere to go. The other elder scoffed at his words but threw me to the ground before storming off at double his original pace. The angular elder took me by the wrist and lead me off in a random direction. I soon noticed that we were heading in the direction of the school, which like most things in the camp, was surrounded by a wall.
“What are we doing here?” I wondered to myself. “Ickle-bits can’t enter the school.” Instead of going through the large gates and into the main school building, the elder lead me along the wall for another couple of minutes before stopping and looking at one brick in particular. I looked at it as well and saw that there was a small keyhole. The elder quickly unlocked it and stood back as a small wooden door melted into place. I gasped and stared up at him but he only smiled and led me through with a polite nod of his head.
The musty fragrance of leather bound books encased the office into a relaxing coma. Everywhere I looked, it seemed one book or another was stuck out in odd places, protruding from anywhere they could fit. With great effort, a stone fireplace squeezed its way through the barrier of books, announcing its presence with its loud cackling and warmth. The only area that didn’t seem to be swallowed by the mounds of text was a handsome desk which lounged beneath a fine set of windows.
“Sit,” the man commanded while producing two chairs by his desk. Deep eyes bored into me as I carried out his instruction, watching me with the intensity that I assumed a reader read with. My fingers curled around the strip of wood in my pocket.
“You dropped this sir,” I told him, gently laying the strip down on his desk. The elder stared at me in amazement as his jaw hung slack in wonder. For a while, it seemed all that he would do was stare.
“You ran all this way, despite not knowing where I was going,” he remarked while examining the thin strip of wood with intense care. “You ran all this way despite not knowing who I am.” I bit my lip and looked away sheepishly. “You ran all this way just because you wanted to do the right thing,” he concluded, looking at me for my response. I nodded slightly and after that the most amazing thing happened: The elder began to laugh. It wasn’t a bad laugh though. It didn’t make me feel ashamed or hurt. I didn’t know what it made me feel, cause I never heard anything like it before.
“My name is Professor Wenchenberg,” he said in jovial greeting. “I think that we are going to be very good friends.” I flinched suddenly and instinctively moved back in my seat.
“What makes you say that?” I asked nervously. Professor Wenchenberg shrugged and laced his fingers together on his lap.
“I like to be friends with honest people,” he stated simply.
“But... You’re an elder.” I said while pointing stupidly. “Elders can’t be friends with Ickle-bits.”
“Why not?” Wenchenberg asked, thoughtfully stroking his chin. I opened my mouth to respond but suddenly stopped as I realized he had a point. I reconsidered for another moment before finally coming up with an answer.
“It’s just not... I mean... Ickle-bits and elders are very different,” I stammered weakly. “People wouldn’t let us be friends.”
“No one has to know that we’re friends,” Wenchenberg countered quickly. I scrunched up my face and scratched my head uncertainty.
“Why do you even want to be friends with me?” I asked defensively.
“I like to be friends with honest people,” Professor Wenchenberg repeated. He looked at me quizzically and then sighed a little. “I can tell that you still don’t believe me,” He clicked his fingers and suddenly brightened. “I know!” he declared before rummaging through one of his desk drawers. He removed a small metal key before setting it in front of me. “This is the spare key that unlocks the secret entrance to my office; the one that we entered through,” he explained slowly. “Normally you’d have to go through the school to get here but with this, you can come in anytime you want.”
“You’re giving it to me?” I asked breathlessly.
“I am!” He said. “In fact, why don’t you come back at seven o’clock tomorrow evening to share a bit of tea with me?” So I did.
Professor Wenchenberg offered me a certain security that couldn’t be provided by anyone or anything else in The Clog. Every day from that day forth, I would enter his office in the evening and help him organize, arrange and dust his expansive library. For the first few days nothing in particular happened, save for the cups of boiling hot tea which I would always accept. On the fourteenth day though, something extraordinary happened.
Professor Wenchenberg began speaking out loud, without addressing me, or even acknowledging my existence. Being too timid to do anything, I politely pretended I wasn’t there and instead focused on the chores. After a few seconds though, I couldn’t help but listen to the story that Professor Wenchenberg told me.
“In the world we live in today, we often question what the biggest and the best are. It is in our human nature that we seek such things, because we strive to be the best. This story tells us not only about the the most powerful artifacts known to man, but of the origin of all sorcery. (that is to say, both magic and anti-magic)
In a time, very... Very... Very long ago, there were six gods. Iramare, Vigordia, Luxx, Jin, Nulbak, and Their leader; Dormtok.
Dormtok didn’t have many godly abilities, and was not skilled in magic. However, he had a mind that none of the other gods could hope to match, and a fantastic skill for making things. It was because of this that the gods admired him and even agreed to let him lead despite being the weakest. Dormtok admired the gods too and even planned on presenting them with his craft. For each of them, he made an artifact which he intended the gods to carry alongside them as they ruled over their newly created human race. Five objects of immense power for five gods: A pendant, a poker a pocket a pebble and a pan.
For a while it seemed as though everything was going to be just fine, however something went wrong. The gods, now more powerful than ever, gradually grew further apart from their leader, who tried in vain to win back their hearts. Dormtok couldn’t understand why it was the other gods were more interested in their creations then they were in him. He began to detest the mortals and their unique intelligence that was not so far off from his own.
Grieved with delusional thoughts, Dormtok took the cleverest of the mortals and killed them, desperate to be the wisest creature in existence. The other considerably kinder gods were devastated by this loss, and exiled Dormtok for his wickedness. Dormtok; embarrassed, confused, and outraged, reluctantly set off for the mortal world, and from that day forward, vowed to rule as lord of malice, chaos and distruction.
Stealing the artifacts he created, he annihilated the gods one by one, detaching them into a fine white dust, intending to rule all of mankind as a twisted and corrupted leader. However there was one crucial flaw in Dormtok’s plan, and that was he forgot to dispose of the gods ashes.
Slowly, their remains found their way into the mortal world, and were spread all across the land where man and women alike breathed their essence. The ash, unbeknownst to the humans was said to grant abilities similar to the gods, and it was through this that the gods unintentionally gave the humans both the five variations of magic and anti-magic.
Kinetic, Distortion, Aquia, Flame, and Blood.
Each variation with their own terrifying potential, and with their own strengths and weaknesses. Those with magic became known as mages, and those with anti-magic became known as warlocks. In a small period of time, an entire army of mages and warlocks formed to vanquish Dormmtok. After many years of difficult battles, and many people lost, they succeeded in turning him to dust much like the other gods. The leaders of each respective field of magic claimed one of the artifacts Dormmtok had made, and hid them in the hopes that no one should ever misuse them again.”
“To be able to read is a treasure
onto itself, no?” I flinched when I realized Professor Wenchenberg was no longer reading out loud, and I politely bobbed my head in response. “I’m glad you think so. That’s why I’ve decided I’m going to teach you how to read,” the professor imposed grandly. The book I was dusting tumbled dramatically to the ground as my grip went slack.
“What makes you think I should read sir?” I asked while scooping down to pick up the heavy text. Professor Wenchenberg looked aghast.
“Jacob when you read, you can learn about all the things you need to know about the world without violence, or fear of being decapitated. Books are the windows to worlds known and unknown, and its because of this that I try to keep as many as possible,” the professor concluded proudly.
Because of that man, I learned to read and read I did. When I became good enough, I even wrote a story. This story, which is about friends, love, as well as that one time I found a way out.
Gift of Gold (The Year of Churning Bloods) Page 2
