Before us spears flesh-red multitudes of the Hares in a bid for freedom. This tunnel loses light gradually, and bleeds over their assailants' shadows erecting at the heels of their prosthetic runner blades clinking, clinking faster and faster away.
Today, we observe the Hares determined to leave behind the Aslijn detention center for good; they've even brought their young.
The Aslijn and its gunmetal grey maze is all most of this generation has ever known. Moreso, in no uncertain terms, these Hares know prison in perpetuity by will of machines which bind their souls together, Mortums. They relive this harrowing place again, and again, and again.
From each life they live, each slight given, the Mortum reacts; mutagens are sent intravenously to 'better' the spirit as it crosses the coil to be reborn. Thus, these animals have since 'bettered' to a point where their cunning is enhanced through several additions: bi-optic whiskers adapt to new dangers, and enhanced earlobes can dot a pin yards out. Then it is seemingly by design that the Hares are kept only at a sporting chance. Few forms still retain humanlike organs as they do; they are a good, fruitful hunt indeed that in which the Oaths of Dubai find most profitable, delicious. Say they leave today. Tomorrow, they will bury their dead to become reified, and will proceed just as they have several times before. The next day, this Oath harvests what they can as they have several times before.
Death is play for the Djinn.
Speech is a gift only Djinn can provide, which is gifted only to the most clandestine and deserving of its game. Djinn key-winds his Mortums insomuch as what the Djinn needs on his board, where we are to play. You see, not one soul has been allowed to cross over heaven above, nor hell below since he arrived long ago, to covet Dubai for himself. From oasis to Cairo, cislunar Earth and moon the shining city remains ever-present. Even that was considered a privilege; such horizons are all the Hares wish to see.
Bridges resembling stone serpents gap two ends of pyramids running parallel, congruent to each other. Two scouts split the group between them, and they proceed down different junctures. Shadows deepen. Adjacent, terracotta divides trail their escape in the concrete three meters apart; to the naked eye, several stories of Harekin hieroglyphs span out of sight where the torches dare not luminate. They keep their eyes away from such history as they pass.
A crevice makes itself known: what appears to be vacancy for another slab, for another generation of Hares.
Females and their kits are kept hidden under cowls, single file as the canyon bottlenecks, and their crevice can only allow once to pass at a time. While protected, they must keep pace with the trough. A tight squeeze out; they come to a drop-off with no end, where they knowingly hop left and begin to surmount leeward this centermost conduit of the wards trilling a violent orange filament up and casting a wide web around the entire complex. The power source.
One scout surmounts the face of one of its gyrating rivet fixtures, silhouette rising, flashlight over a hand to form finger puppets.
Her ears fly up. She emits a noise after some time: a glottal hsphsp to give the all-clear. Their ascent has never before jumped so bold, leapt so sure these cells to promised, shining seas. One Hare at the back of the herd, his tattered brown jacket flaring off floodlamps, slows his clinking and blinks hard his cloudy, clotted bead eyes, and keeps his head on a swivel acast towering pillars and their presence. It's much bigger inside than out. The conduit in his dust had an end. This did not, and the Hare couldn't help but pale at his own fleetingness in the grand design.
Suddenly, a reverberation fathoms underfoot can be heard. Not clear for long. Why, wondered the Hare, did they simply not fly as they have before? How can this be so effortless? His haste to pass the trough, hopping the banister length is enough inclination for the multitudes to gain ground fast.
The Hares continue their pace until they find it: a trapezoid of stone as foretold by the eldest Hares dividing the barrel of an archway into two places. Two realms. This fixture was their fulcrum; it completed the archway's shape from where their vantage. Then, as two realms clash, a whir as meek as hummingbird wings kills their pace. They hide.
Silent, tear-clouded blinks. Stillness.
The plinth, bathed in a white glow, seems so small, whereas the hall is so astronomically large. It gave the impression of wholeness a young kit needed to brave a look ahead. What he saw made him shrink back. A net of Knights barred their foreseeable distance. Death disciples they are called. Ghuls, to the Hares and those who also lacked dialect. Knights have wagered their Samsara in favor of Their endarkened mound of flesh blotted the hall; only a single rising sword cut the formless amalgamation of the Ghuls into something coherent, distinct from darkness. And like the turning of the moon, one of their ranks plunges down from an arch and gores through the kit who so dared to act.
Hysteria, glottal bleats!
In their scramble, the multitudes dash towards the loudest of their kin. This is where alphas will be decided; for the escape. Hares know cunning. However, cunning only goes so far in the Asijn–Shifting cells rearrange their board.
Bleats, shrills. Several blades retract their stabbing thrusts, pooling blood. Hares know the feeling more than any: needles worming the caverns of their wounds. Most will die from it.
We find the luckiest few; they have circumnavigated, predicted the shift of cells as second nature. Death throes are ubiquitous. The Hares cannot afford to look back. Slab pillars crash down and quake the Hares, and kill their momentum; some trip, enough survive. If just one can best the multitude and dig their way out, then this will be remembered as a fruitful effort.
One Hare, a male at the foot of adulthood, manifests this ideal world, striding, weaving Knights and their many scimitars until he be first to trial what generations have since called Nihayat Lah.
Freedom. Would he, the Djinn allow freedom today?
The Hare, confident, folds his ears back and tunnels headfirst towards the exit. Many persevere and follow his lead. The Ghuls regress into the structures no different from drapes-cast of many stark, unbroken shapes. Behind draws new danger for he and his clan. A deep vermilion cloak, many arms in a halo wind, wind invisible keys. The Oaths lack names for such things. Many have never seen so close the creature: an adept of Djinn potential and his hexes. Its many arms complete, fold into one another. Then all but two hands gently caress the cold steel underfoot, and he conjoins each of their wills, their chemistry as a surgelike tide swathed over Nihayat Lah–and the sole Hare felt his momentum snap him in place.
He never saw the first erasure swallow him, the forks of his blades. It was only when he felt the steel weld to his knees did true agony set in, and set true what the mysterious creature be capable of. Young Hares blanch whiter when afraid. Reaching proves futile. This fate would befall many more on the run, too high to see the sun burning the edges of their escape route, while engulfing others. Inscriptions stencil at their backs in squeals of agony the great slab being refined, twisted as many left held on.
Close now was the threshold. Horrors transpired quickly, routinely to the Ghuls, but it was lifetimes falling away in those very last blinks, quivers when their sight, sound, and muted bleating turned to stone. One more push.
A herd of five manage to cross over, and dare not look back as a great oasis swallows their likenesses.
After many generations, the Knights see away their first batch of Hares since time traveled linearly. They would pay terribly at the hand of their Oath; failed hunts demand penance, as will be paid moons from now in sacrifices. Such sacrifices will be dharmanic in nature, and will dictate their Mortum trajectory, their 'say' beset the game of Djinn.
