Bone and Blood Volume I

1 - The Nest, 1926

The captives had no view of the sky, but the rustling and shrieking below announced sunset. Ten individuals collected one-by-one. Men, women, teens, and one child, mostly from the social ladder's lowest rungs. It had been days since anyone was added. Days since the screams for help had subsided.

Nightly, the captives were provided with a clean water bucket, but no food. One could pace the length the wooden slat cage, but that made the rest of the flock nervous. The last flurry of activity had been the day before.

The child had pried up a stone. It gave everyone hope that they could dig under the cage. They fell into a frantic frenzy of scratching. Breaking nails and leaving bloody streaks on the rock.

The ground was too hard to dig through.

Amid the timeless, monotonous uncertainty, many succumbed to bored dread. However, a hook-nosed man in now-wrinkled work clothes sat with the child. They had no relationship prior to the cage, but he maintained a false cheeriness for her. It seemed the right thing to do.

When the escape attempt failed and the child gave into hopeless sobbing, he promised her, "We'd all stand in the way before we let them hurt you. Somehow, we'll get out of this." The child had smiled weakly. She may have been too old to unquestioningly believe an adult's lies.

It stopped her crying though. Now, she rolled her stone to him. And he rolled it back. The rock's skittering bounce drowned out the other captives' nervous breathing. It did not mask the sounds emanating from the massive, dark pit beside them.

Demeko, the second oldest knight, crawled put of the pit. He strode past the cage to a table-sized sconce craved from rock. Reaching in, he checked the leftover kindling. There was enough. The line of three orange-red spots along his arm glowed faintly.

Tiny sparks bounced off his palm, like flint striking steel. Several landed as molten specks. Gently, he blew them into flames. After adding a log to feed the growing fire, he returned to the pit edge. Staring down its walls, he searched for his sister-in-arms, Serana.

Unfortunately, the next den to open belonged to the failed prince Torani. He slithered out of his round door onto a platform. And then carelessly rolled off it. A rope bridge stretching across the upper layer caught his fall, bouncing wildly on impact.

When it stilled, Torani hopped to his feet and lazily stretched out his malformed wings. Both were half-sized. One was missing three digits. At the bridge's end, he reached for the wall and climbed up like a lower family member.

Once over the edge, Torani greeted Demeko in a whisper, "Evening."

Demeko nodded.

Torani pointed at the workers walking along the wooden path spiraling around the pit's middle. "They're up early."

Demeko nodded again.

"I would have thought the hunters would beat them."

"The price of autonomy is chronic lateness." Serana heaved herself out of the pit. "Or a benefit depending on who you are. But it's always like this. You don't remember last year's?"

"No." Torani closed his eyes, thinking. "I wasn't at the last one... I was a hunter then. Didn't get back to nest on time. I missed everything. And the year before that... Do you remember being a worker?"

"No one does," Demeko said with pointed finality.

Serana considered the question longer. "At least you'll get to see an initiation now. Do you know how—?"

"Serana," Demeko interrupted. "Don't interrogate higher royals."

She sighed. "Right. Still getting used to his new rank. Old habits—"