After the Lord gives his verdict, Kallen and the Captain are forcefully escorted by a group of armed Guards who keep a close eye on Kallen for reasons made fairly obvious earlier that day. As the two companions are escorted through the streets, people stay well away from them and some even hide in their houses out of fear the Guards might turn on them.
As they make their way through the winding streets of the city, the escort passes through the center where the towering engine hums lowly and radiates heat. Taking a moment, the Captain and Kallen briefly admire the towering engine and for the first time, they notice the scaffoldings erected around it and a great number of workers busying themselves with modifications and minor repairs to it.
The area is filled with the sound of hammers, showers of sparks from welding torches originating from the upper levels of the scaffoldings, and the occasional jargon when the workers bark at each other in their familiar fashion various words only they could understand, leaving a token few people that give instructions to the workers at a loss as they fail to understand certain words; but as long as work is carried out efficiently they don't seem to pay any sort of interest to what the workers are saying.
It is an incredible testament to human ingenuity and a marvel of this world's technological advancement. Sadly, the two companions don't have time to admire the towering engine as the escort swiftly moves through the center of the city and continues onward.
Several moments later, the two companions are brought in front of a foreboding building that boasts tall walls reinforced with metal and topped with rows of barbed wire. Behind the tall walls, a building rises twice as tall as the walls that boast windows reinforced with iron bars and walkways with railings topped with barbed wire. This is undoubtedly the prison the Lord spoke of, and where troublemakers are sent to work off their punishment.
The escort stops momentarily at the entrance, one of the Guards bangs with his baton on the entrance and the noise is quickly rewarded with the door swinging open. The metal door slams shut behind them as soon as the two companions and their escort cross over the threshold and enter the prison yard where well over twenty people wearing nothing but grey-colored clothes, that are more akin to worn-out canvas bags than actual clothing, are left in a confined pen with tall fences in the merciless cold to get a day's worth of fresh air and exercise. The inmates sluggishly move around in the pen while holding themselves and trembling, they pay little to no attention to the new arrivals. Glancing at the inmates, the Captain notices that small plaques are hanging around their necks with words such as: "liar", "thief", and "instigator", written in bold letters with red-colored paint.
The escort crosses the yard and passes through a set of large metal double doors as they enter the main hall of the prison. The main hall is a long chilly corridor filled with a few armed guards that cast fierce glares at the new arrivals; at the end of the corridor lies a wooden desk where a man leans into a tall highback chair. The clink of a teaspoon can be heard echoing through the halls as the person sitting in the chair pours several ounces of clear liquid into a small porcelain cup that's not even halfway full of tea.
As the escort comes to a stop in front of the desk, a man smiles and nods quietly as he regards his guests and soon-to-be inmates as he takes a sip from his altered tea. As the man rises from his chair, he stands almost five feet tall with a well-groomed brown beard while his head is widowed of any traces of hair. He wears a black fur coat with a few distinct differences from the coats the Guards use, possibly to make his rank stand out, with a blue-colored silken sash decorated with three star-like medals and a revolver pistol in its leather holster at his left side for all to see. The man studies Kallen and the Captain, a few moments later his face splits into a wide grin as he raises both of his hands as if he intended to embrace them.
???: Ahh. What have we here? New arrivals, is it?
Guard: Warden, the Lord wants these two outsiders sentenced to hard labor.
The Warden strokes his well-groomed beard with his left hand and says after a moment of contemplation as he quickly studies the faces of his future inmates:
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Permafrost Slumber
FanfictionFollowing a series of unclear dreams that plagued his sleep, the Captain arrives in a foreign world gripped by an ice age and on the brink of death with a single name to guide him and his companion through the frozen wastes. Yet the people of this...
