Poisoned Souls

ℙ𝕣𝕠𝕝𝕠𝕘𝕦𝕖

If you are reading this, you are most likely someone who has lived for a while. Maybe a decade or two, maybe half a century. Yet whoever you are, you probably know that feeling. That unsettling, haunting feeling you get whenever you stop to think for too long, when you take too many steps back, see too much of the bigger picture. The dread, the knowledge that there may not be a bigger picture at all. That not every soul has some glorious destiny. Some simply exist without an objective, without a purpose. I will not attempt to sweeten the truth, for you and I know it already, whether we want to admit it or not. I will not sit here and write about how every soul has a happy ending. What they do have, however, is a story. Sometimes a soul's dreaming, their longing, their suffering, is all in vain. But because sometimes all a soul has, all it needs, is but a bloody, gruesome origin.

This is that origin.

The Great War had devastated the three Kingdoms, their Kings' hunger for power laying waste for years to each other's lands. Driven by their greed like mosquitoes to a lamp, they rendered families homeless, some dead. The unlucky were forced to work as slaves.

Only one thing was sure of this war, were it ever to repeat itself. The sands of 'Ard Qadima, the Helenyan islands' shores and the Troian rivers alike, would be drenched in blood.

The actual catalyst of the war was unknown by many. The three Kings' cravings had been excused as faith, a mask provided by their religions. What they truly desired was not territory, but something else they were looking for, that they held as sacred, even holy.

The flames of war had started to sputter once the Troian legions had asserted dominance in its borders, and secretly managed to control settlements in the 'Ardan desert. The flame never fully died, though, as the tension between dynasties remained ever persistent. It was almost as if they couldn't learn to trust each other. In a way, this was true. Whether it was intuition or paranoia, the royals never let their guard down, because they felt it. Something was stirring.

Until something actually began to stir. The slightest shift in the winds, the subtlest tremble beneath soil and sand. The cut to snap the tension took place in the lush caverns, all the way in the Osiris Oasis, situated just east of the border between the 'Ard Qadima's unstable sands and its closest threat: the Troian Empire.

The Lush Caverns were a series of tunnels and wells in an oasis, in the middle of the White Dunes, the northernmost section of the kingdom, a green spot in the map. It was considered a holy place by native 'Ardans, because of the mysterious life inside it. Every tunnel, cave, and crack was bursting with plant and insect life.

Bioluminescent flowers made the water in well springs reflect light in colorful, almost unnatural ways. Fire beetles, small insects whose underbellies shone like flames, made rainbows bounce through the mist-heavy air from each crack and crevice they lived in. No one knew how such a place could have come to exist, even less so in the White Dunes. Nevertheless, it seemed not even the most barren of landscapes could resist the will of life. The will of a miracle, some would call it.

Orpheus hadn't come to admire the scenery, though. He never would've come, in the first place. Had it not been for the spear pointed against him at eye level, he would probably be home with his family or singing in the hamlet's tavern. He was so, so far from home. The homesickness weighed on him, making his legs ache. Or maybe it was the exhaustion, he couldn't be sure. Having been a slave for weeks now, it was hard to pay much mind to himself, to anything he hadn't been told to do beforehand. He was there to work, just like the men around him. For some reason, however, he was engrossed in the colors shining through the humid air, the hurried clicking of insects in the dark. He heard a soft trickling sound like water falling nearby. Water. He didn't know there was any, so deep in the White Dunes. Then again, the whole place swarmed with life. Most didn't think there could be any of that in the desert, either. Not only that, but the whole cavern felt alive. As if it tried to remind Orpheus of what life felt like, actual life.