Amena noticed the people around her waking up one at a time, shedding their blankets like pupae hatching. She wondered if she should try to speak to any of them - for a dream, she was feeling quite lucid and aware. But to approach any of them would take effort, too much effort, and her limbs were like lead. It did not feel right to move; indeed, which dream wore you out as it progressed?
So she sat, transfixed by the scene around her, waiting for the dream to take its course. And as she drifted off, unthinkingly lost in her own mind, she was jolted to attention by a sudden low rumble resonating in the room. She foggily refocused, mind askew, and with great effort resolved to parse the noise as distinctive words:
“Welcome, children of Lia.” the stone-cold voice was wrought with bitterness and unwelcoming. “You may be wondering how you find yourself in the current situation.” A low, maniac chuckle sent shivers through Amena’s spine. “Unlikely, given your current state of mind. Rest assured, you find yourself in the best of care. Heed the warnings, children.” The sound cut off with a crackle, followed by seconds of heavy, complete silence. Amena could feel her mind getting clearer, heart rate increasing - a feeling of subdued anxiety and panic was rising with her recovered alertness. Then, all at once, a wailing siren set off, red flashing lights appearing on cold steel walls:
WARNING - EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY
TOXIC GAS LEAK
LEAVE OR DIE
Everything was pandemonium. Throngs of people were swarming the pit, tumbling over each other, Amena could only gawk in incomprehension, heart pounding in her ears. Dear Lia, what kind of dream is this? A moment of stunning paralysis, and she suddenly felt the blood coursing through her veins again, the fog lifted from her mind. She could think again, and she felt clarity restore itself in her being. Ah, perten, it’s not a dream is it?
She looked around. There was no door, no windows, no exit - what kind of game with this? In fact, the room was bare save for the shedded blankets left behind by the swarms of people now desperate to get out. She closed her eyes, and reached for the natum inside her - but with a pang, she felt a hollow space instead, and realized with sudden dread that her surroundings were complete steel - the most effective material to block off a Mage’s powers. Whoever had brought her and the others here had done so deliberately. What is going on? What do they want with us? She shook her head in impatience, focus, Amena, focus. She backed up against the nearest wall, quietly distancing herself from the havoc, feeling for any ridge, anything that might give way - her gaze wandered up, up, scanning the dome-shaped walls, and finally rested on the top of the ceiling, the apex of the structure. The material seems different up there, but what use is it? We can’t reach it anyways. It seemed to be moving, writhing, giving birth, and as she stared, transfixed, walking towards it, she realized - a cage was descending into the center of the structure. It appeared from the ceiling as if it were once a part of it, as if it were being molded and shaped by sheer gravitational force alone. It hung from the ceiling by a string of black ooze, and the slimy black substance dripped down from the cage as it descended, leaving a metallic, bloody smell in the air. A hush fell over the crowd as the newborn cage made its gentle landing right in the center of the pit.
The booming voice spoke over the siren.
“Choose three from among you to sacrifice in the cage. The rest of you shall go free. You have five hours before the gas starts to addle your brains. Ten before it kills you. Time starts… now!” The red on the wall turned into a timer, the seven-seg display despairingly ancient to Amena’s eyes.
A brown-haired young man with sharp green eyes hopped onto the cage as though it were a stand for a podium speech; the black gunk did not seem to deter him. “I say the youngest shall go! They are the least valuable to us. Who knows what we will face next, they will be useless to us! Bah, only a liability!” His eyes glinted malevolently as he quickly pointed out the nearest five young children in the massive crowd of nearly five hundred. “Get in.” His voice was a demanding growl; authoritative. The children cowered in fear - Amena felt a rising anger at the back of her throat, the oldest was no more than ten years old.
“I SAID GET IN - NOW!” The man reached out and grabbed the closest child, the youngest of them - perhaps three, or four years of age, and with a hard yank he went tumbling into the cage.
Amena, at the very edges of the crowd, began to push through indignantly. “How could you, you nasty, heartless-” She pushed through the throng, and was in a state to yell and scream at the man, but someone else had gotten there first.
A blur of color flew by her nose, a swift and lean build of agility, petite body and loose brown curls - she landed on him with a thud, he fell to the floor, wind knocked out of him. It was a girl, Amena saw, gasping - a girl around her age of nineteen, and this girl had kicked him clean in the ribs and was bent on strangling him by the collar.
“You LOWLIFE!” she screamed. Her amber eyes were fierce with determination; her coloring and pointed face betrayed her Arronian heritage if her training and fierce nature alone did not speak loudly enough to it. “How about you do us a favor and get your filthy self into that cage, so we don’t have to live knowing scum like you inhabit the Isles.”
The man looked oddly petulant, his set jaw clenching with the lack of oxygen. Goodness, is he turning purple? Amena climbed up into the landing of the cage, gently lifting the girl up to prevent her from murdering the man on the spot. Surprisingly, she offered little resistance, only continuing to glare at him without pause as she rose from her murder crouch.
Whispers were going around the crowd. Barbaric Arronians, they said. The other Arronian faces in the crowd were masks, they did not belie any emotion. Carefully guarded, secretive, and sly - those were the trade qualities of Arronian Assassins that made them superior at their trade. What the whispers did not acknowledge, Amena realized, was the fact that the girl had rushed out to defend the little Mage boy. As she stood next to her, she could feel that the power from the other girl stemmed from her swift motions and guided blows. The girl was rather small and unassuming when still, almost birdlike, although her stance was full and confident, emanating power and assuming command.
“I, Andrasthea Swift and this hardheaded knucklehead - “ at this, she gestured at the man, still supine on the marble floor of the cage “and this hapless maiden shall graciously sacrifice ourselves to save us all.” Her last name, Swift, was starkly Arronian. A hush fell over the crowd.
Amena belatedly realized, in horror, that she herself was the hapless maiden being sacrificed. The man propped himself up on his elbows, trying to rise, mouth forming the words to object; Amena was reaching for words agape - but all in vain, for Andrestea reached over, and in one fluid motion, careened the cage door shut, the ‘lock’ snapping definitively - which was, in fact, the door mechanism melting to fuse with the cage body in a smooth sizzle. Amena crumpled to the floor, aghast, and Andrasthea turned to face them with a triumphant look on her face.
“Well, seems like we’ll be here for a while, so might as well introduce ourselves. You are…?” She gestured at the man, who was now in an upright sitting position.
“Elias. Elias Swift.” She glared at him, harsh and steady - a glare that made ‘Elias’ feel shaky. He felt as though she could see past the fake name. Jozantor rarely felt afraid of any woman, or any human regardless, but this girl was terrifying.
“Amena Luxor.” She was a little shaky, still uncertain about what doom lay ahead as a ‘sacrifice’. She hesitated on her next words, not sure if they would even sound believable. She took her time with the words, articulating slowly and meticulously. “I don’t think there is a gas leak. I think that was an attempt to get us riled up.”
Andrasthea looked shocked. “What do you mean no gas leak? What would our captives benefit from -” then it dawned on her. There’s no way it wasn’t planned if they’re demanding sacrifices to save others from an ‘unplanned’ gas leak.
Amena, partially restored and encouraged by this acceptance, continued: “There’s no knowing to what lengths they would go to if we didn’t comply. But I’d reckon the ones keeping us here were going for anarchy.” She turned on Elias. “And you - what in the name of Lia were you thinking? Sacrificing young children?! How degenerate can you be? Have you no morals? No empathy? No heart?!” She could feel her face reddening with emotion. Elias just glared up at her, stone cold and silent.
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