The Great Pandemonium: The Direction of the Dawning Sun

Act V: Towards the Dawning Sun

 “A song of Hate borne in the blood

and a cry from the Roots unheard—

sinners turned saints spread Fire and tears

and so did the ash-in-born Memories burn.”

—The Ash-in-born, traditional Enkiri verse, as collected by Teren Isyleid

Act V. Towards the Dawning Sun

Alariel bowed her head slightly and left, making sure that all of her men were out of the cabin and that the door was shut behind her. As soon as Akkali heard it close all the pain she had managed to ignore caught up with her. The adrenaline of escaping had allowed her to block it out; her brief rage at Fyrinheld had numbed it for even longer. Now that they were underway, now that there was nothing to fight, there was no way to keep ignoring it.

The fire seeped into her bones and scorched the marrow, driving hot nails through her arms and legs. The cabin colors became horridly sharp and ugly even in the dim lamplight. Every creak of the rigging was like Galenfyr's pig-necked sister screeching right into her ears. The only real comfort to be had was the fact that the ship was made of wood. It was warmer than the stone manors she had been carted to all her years as a slave. Warmer and softer.

Now she knew why the humans had lost the ability to channel raw magic out of the world that surrounded them. They had all gotten fed up with the pain of it, the difficulty of it, and turned to the much simpler but limited source of mana. They were lazy, and yet feeling as much agony as she did now, she could hardly fault them for it.

She wished she knew how to draw upon some sort of mana. Perhaps she could learn a body-numbing spell or two and slip herself into a coma for a few days like when Galenfyr had shredded her chest with the lightning.

True to her word Alariel returned several minutes later with Serres in tow, having just finished bickering with him over something if the rather cross look on his face was any indication. She could already tell that Serres' non-confrontational nature was going to take a lot of getting used to for the militaristic Enkiri. Alariel seemed to be the kind that observed only what was around her and then acted upon it by force.

Serres, on the other hand, never did anything just to do it and be done with it. He always had to find and then weigh the options before deciding. It was rather tedious at times to even talk to him, but without his ceaseless nitpicking Akkali would never have had the backup plans in place that allowed them to succeed even though they had been betrayed.

Indeed, it was Serres that had pointed out that very possibility in the first place. Akkali could not begin to even comprehend how anyone in slavery would not want to be free. But unlike him, neither she nor Teren had been born into slavery. They knew exactly what awaited them beyond their cages and craved it more than anything else.

People like Alariel and Serres knew nothing of that kind of life. Born as slaves to a people that had been shackled for a hundred generations, they wanted nothing but what their masters desired because they had no attachment to freedom, no knowledge of what it was or what it felt like. If one had never been free they would hardly care about it—that was what Serres had pointed out to her the minute she said she was escaping.

It was a foreign idea, but as it turned out it was very much true. She had to look no farther than Avilia's betrayal of her plan for proof, and the truth was a bitter root.

Enora's brother followed them in after Serres cast an uncharacteristically sharp glare through the doorway. His face was cold and his eyes narrow, clearly displeased with being made to follow. She vaguely remembered he had brown hair, but somewhere between dropping him off at the ship and now he had gotten himself soaked to the core and his hair was as black as a raven's tail feather.