3MA

3MA | Chapter 15

15
ONE PART BLADE

I wake up to the sound of giggles and reluctantly pry an eye open. The door to Merlin's chambers is slightly ajar, stuffed with the smiling, wide-eyed faces of children, one head stacked upon the other like a living totem pole.

"Looks like you have a fan club," Mag says, already awake and stepping into a pair of paint splattered jeans.

One of the children points at me. "Is he going to burn up like all the others?"

"Of course he is, stupid," a boy with grape jam smeared across his cheeks shouts. "They all do."

"But he's so big," says another head. "Will he even fit in the pot?"

"They shrink after they're all burned up," another explains.

"Ohhhh," replies every head at once.

"I'm not going to burn up," I croak across the room.

"They all say that," a boy chuckles. "But they all end up in the pot." He points at the copper cauldron of ashes in the middle of the room.

"Leave him alone you rugrats," a voice calls out from the hallway behind them. The entire gaggle of children scatter in a chorus of high-pitched squeals.

Amaris enters the room the only way she knows how; like a hell-bent tornado. I wipe my bleary eyes to see what she's wearing: some kind of charcoal gray cloak, held at the neck with a brass talon.

She tugs the sheets off of me in one clean swoop. I'm naked underneath the covers, except for a pair of tighty-whities. "Hup to it dude. Breakfast at oh-six hundred. Then the Lighting Ceremony."

"Do you mind," I say, grabbing a fistful of sheets and covering myself.

"I don't mind at all," Amaris says, as usual, failing entirely to grasp my meaning. "Wear this," she says, tossing a heap of fabric onto the bed. "It's kind of cultish, I know, but it's tradition."

"I could use a shower," I grumble.

Amaris laughs. "You're a thousand feet underground, buddy. You can use that," she says pointing at a steaming bucket of suds in the corner, a gray washrag hanging over the lip. "Trust me, this is an upgrade from the ice-shower at your place."

She turns to Mag, whose head is shoved into a wardrobe, rummaging through one of the old cabinets with exactly none of the hesitation I had the night before. "Mag, you come with me. I'm in need of your artistic expertise."

Amaris saunters out of the room with her chin proudly raised, Mag trailing along the hem of her cloak. "We'll be waiting in the dining hall," Amaris announces. "You remember how to get there?"

"Sure. Just past the Crushed Human Skull room, right?"

The joke doesn't pierce Amaris's armor. Not a morning person I guess. More likely not a joke person. She points at the steaming bucket. "Don't be late, meathead."

After an awkward sponge bath, I towel off and throw on the outfit Amaris left for me. I check out my reflection in a patinaed mirror. It's a matching gray cloak -- the dude-version of Amaris's -- but mine is clasped around the neck with a brass crescent moon.

I look like an effeminate elf.

I lumber down the tower's staircase and turn left at the dining hall entryway. Before I even reach it I can hear the deafening murmur of voices coming from inside. How many people live down here?

Apparently far too many to count. I stand at the dining hall entryway staring open-mouthed at table after table jammed with people sitting shoulder-to-shoulder; some scooping an oatmeal-looking slop from a large communal pot into their chipped bowls, others sipping on mugs of hot black tea, and others still with no place to sit, forced to press against the surrounding walls and eat standing up.