Court of Snakes: This Desert Cage

Roadkill - The Slums | January of the First Year

A puddle flowed out across the river rock cobblestone, catching on the lips of the uneven masonry, the red, coagulate ooze staining the gray as it passed. Someone's nasally, violent laughter chortled among the discordant murmur of the crowd passing by, feet on stone, wheels in puddles. Terran's eyes trailed from the sky, which he had hoped would swallow him up, down to the dead man that lay in the street. The pickpocket, who had made off with some poor sap's coin purse, had run straight into a mammoth, the beast that was commonly ridden by the rich in the city of Segeno. Because they were enormous creatures, with dark, gray, leathery hides and large lower tusks, the mammoth crushed the pickpocket flat. It plowed over him right in the middle of the road, blood smeared onto uneven cobblestone, and trumpeted out in indignation, not even stopping to acknowledge what it had crushed. The driver didn't even take a second glance.

Mammoths terrified Terran. Ancient humans caged away the beasts in places called "zoos" to keep them away from common folk. After the Great War, humans released the beasts and trained them as transportation animals for the exorbitantly wealthy. The pictures in ancient texts portrayed them as playful and intelligent, but all Terran saw were sharp tusks and monstrous feet.

The packed streets flooded with people walking on their day-to-day commute and many of the citizens that passed by did not stop to assess the condition of the pickpocket, whose life had ended instantaneously. Terran could not comprehend their apathy and, if circumstances were different, he would have shouted out and chastised them all for their lack of empathy.

A man behind him donned in white robes and shining, silver armor, doubled over with laughter and leaned on a nearby stall for support. "D-Did you," he snorted, "did you see that?"

He strolled out into the road, glancing both ways cautiously before he did so as to not suffer the fate of the pickpocket and searched the dead man's body. Still, no one noticed or cared and some even dodged around the dead man like he carried the plague. Terran scanned the crowd for guards. They should have been there, preventing this crime, finding out who the thief was, and who the victim's family was in order to deliver the news of his death. Terran spotted not a single shining, metal helmet among the cloth hats and bare heads, and a stone dropped in his stomach.

He kept his distance from the dead body, standing in the alleyway where they had just been chasing the thief. The stranger took the coin purse from the thief's mangled hand and tossed it in the air, catching it again. "See?" he quipped. "Told you we'd get back all our money."

"Erik?" a man behind Terran asked.

"Yes, Your Majesty?" the man in white replied.

"What did you see?"

"A moron get what's coming to him splattered face first into the pave—"

"I saw the unfortunate loss of human life," his partner spat, his armor glinting in the sunlight as he shifted, his lips cold and pressed into a thin line. "What did you see?"

The first man, rat-like in the face and pale in complexion, straightened up and coughed, putting his arms behind his back in stiff respect. "Nothing, sir."

"Head back to base. I'll have words with you later."

Like a child receiving a scolding, the man in white ducked away and out of sight. Terran shuddered as someone put a hand on his shoulder. The person behind him pulled a playing card out of his pocket, and bumped Terran on the arm to get his attention. Terran glanced over at him, a sour taste in his mouth. Death made him sick. The card the man held in his hand, edges worn from common handling, had a beautiful diamond design on the back of its grungy, mud and blood-stained surface, and the diamond shifted and moved in the light.