Harken

Chapter 2

The room was beige. He thought it was beige anyway, since that's what the guard had described this new... colour as. Harken had only discovered colour a few hours earlier, when he woke up covered in something sticky on a slab of squishy material. The sticky thing, he learnt, was blood and he was lying on a hospital bed. The people outside had cleaned up the blood and scanned his head, then decided it would be easier to implant a small chip-like device into his cortex to teach him everything he needed to know. He had learnt how to read and write in a matter of seconds and knew what everything around him was now. But he was yet to understand this world. He looked around the grey box, at the neatly made white bed with the small table next to it, displaying delicate white roses in a clear jar. The lights were spotlights in the ceiling than shone brightly down on the wooden floor and the singular faux fur rug. Harken pulled his hospital gown around him, for the room lacked heating of any kind and the chill was slowly creeping into his bones. A knock at the door and a guards voice echoed outside: "He wants to see you, sir".
******
Nekrah stood there in his long, flowing robes and observed as Harken limped along the cobblestones towards him. The former had only just begun to walk, and appeared to be not as good as it as Nekrah had hoped. The tan skin of his face cracked into wrinkles as he smirked at Harken: "Enjoying the garden, my boy?". The flower garden stretched around them and swallowed them in orchids, tulips, daisies, roses, hyacinths and blossom trees organised in neat arches. It smelled of summer, and yet it felt so cold. Harken nodded in reply, lifting his head to meet the eyes of the man before him. Nekrah's smile faded and his lips parted, "You must want to know more about my paradise. It's rather beautiful in my eyes, and I'm rather well looked after by it. But I am their God, so righteous that I've let them stay here, let them live their lives while worshipping me at my churches. Those people love me so much they wear metal goggles for me, blight their vision with darkness just so they can absorb my words. Obviously some choose to wear ones better adapted for their work, or the blasphemous don't wear them at all, but they are simply a minority. The majority rules the world even if they are only a small number themselves." The smug smile returned and Harken knew it was sarcastic, and meant to be a threat. The leader continued. "So if you want to be safe in this world, loved in this world Harken, then maybe you should stay with me". Nekrah placed his hand firmly on the man's back, then walked calmly off towards his palace. Harken stared at the wilting pansy before him, plucking it from the rocky ground and holding it firmly in his left hand. "He tells me lies, oh so many lies", he mused, "but I have words that would place him on his knees and pluck the fire from his heart. They sent me here to do so, and so I shall. They must have sent me here, surely". The pansy didn't respond and so Harken chucked it to the ground and stared behind him, towards the palace of plaster and gold.
******
He had a nightmare that night. The storm he was in had rejected him, and he lay on a mountain of sand, clutching the wound in his side. It was a large gash spilling blood like a broken glass, small rocks lodged in it and stinging with salt and seawater. His ship was sinking in the horizon, as he was no longer its captain. He would have just watched, just smiled softly as it all fell apart, if it wasn't for a hand. It was a strange hand, crimson red in colour and decorated with brownish-red scars that looked like lightning bolts, and it smelt of sandalwood. He followed the hand up from its grip in his arm to a face, also red in colour, of a man similar in age to him yet boyish in features. "Come with me", the strange hero urged, pulling Harken to his feet with little trouble, in terror. "And why should I, I've barely met anyone and you seem like someone a person could never quite forget", Harken replied. Then the figure was running and so was he, long gaping strides to keep up with his captors strong and nimble legs. "Doesn't matter. You'll meet me when your ready, when the storm is raging still and your dignity and grace seem to be amiss. When the devil himself gives you yet another offer you feel inclined to deny, and so you must run to stay alive. When you find yourself with me, safe and sound, but not complete. That is why you'll follow me" the hero spoke urgently, with will. Harken stayed silent, chasing the man and trusting him, in a blind sort of way. They climbed a sand dune and entered a limestone cave, where the floor was strewn with the goggles. The goggles were everywhere and weighed down their escape. The storm and the sand and the sea rushed in and thwarted their efforts, and so they succumbed instead as a sense of duty cleared their heads and the red-skinned pirate looked Harken in the eyes. "If you die before we speak, you will never be forgiven", and then he gazed into the cave ceiling and roared in a voice almost as gritty as it was determined, "This is where they met. This is where the boy stained with nobody's blood led the angel born from a faulty machine, with a clockwork core, to tell him everything. But no words were ever said". And his voice was sand.