Darkly Devoted (Book 1)

Chapter 11 - Getting Cozy in Cosel

Chapter 11

AS THE car pulled away from the streets of Manna City, Vivienne breathed a sigh of relief. Soon, they were surrounded by a brief interlude of valleys and streams before they came to the town of Cosel where they were to find their new home. Whereas Vivienne had viewed the trip with guarded optimism earlier that morning, she was suddenly overcome by forebode. The entrance of the town was marked by two monstrous coils of iron. They looked like roller coaster tracks that had been ripped out of the depths of hell. The skyscraper-high loops of iron were covered in rust, and the grassy field beneath them still showed scars of the tracks where they had once run.

"What in the world are those?" Sallen asked their driver. Their vermin-like chauffeur responded by noisily scratching his head in contemplation. Then with one greasy finger, he punched the start button on his dashboard music player. An overly saccharine voice blared from the speakers. Apparently, this wasn't the first time he drove clueless visitors in from the outside.

"Greetings visitors of the township of Cosel!" the speaker exclaimed on the prerecorded track. "Now you are crossing the border between Manna City and Cosel! The town of Cosel is known as the Caged City because it is surrounded on all sides by what was once a continental railroad. During the last Great War, Ignians made their last stand along the coast of the Anthias Sea and in Cosel. After the tunnels were flooded, the Ignians tried to melt down the railroads to make bullets."

"And apparently to make a playground for giants," Vivianne muttered sarcastically.

"When the Orlins of the glorious city realized what the putrid masses were doing, they wisely sent their knightly Ansuras to rip the tracks out from the ground as a demonstration of power. When the Ignians woke in the morning and found their town surrounded by these fearsome works they realized no human weapons could match the powers of the Orlins. And so they surrendered."

"The Orlins did this?" Sallen asked, her voice barely above a whisper. Before they could steal another glance at the monuments, the limo sped past and into the township they went. What Vivienne saw, compounded her dread. There was row after row of shabby, broken houses with boarded-up windows. Barefooted children ran across the street chasing after alleycats. There were a group of skeletal men huddled about a pit in the ground where they were burning newspapers and cooking a stew. They lounged about on mattresses were strewn across the ruins of a house where only the foundation remained.

The cheerful voice in the recording continued. "Today, Cosel serves as a safe-haven for refugees from Ignias. They are here searching for a better life across the Anthias sea, for themselves and their descendants. Cosel is a great beacon of the open nature of Manna City."

"How generous of them," Vivienne muttered. In the distance, she saw a multitude of smokestacks releasing thick greenish smoke into the sky. Even from where she sat inside the air-conditioned limo, the air smelled filthy to her. She could only imagine what it was like to work there. Across the run down archway that marked the center of the town square someone had spray-painted "This is Manna City. This is the good life."

Vivienne glanced across the backseat of the limo to find Sallen covering her nose with one hand, her large eyes wide in terror. "Sort of wish you had listened to me and stayed home, huh?" Vivienne joked.

"Maybe the Henton's area is better," Sallen replied. "They're nobleman after all."

The limo made a circle around the archway and proceeded uptown. They turned around the corner from an ice cream parlor selling pig fat flavored icicles promising in a blinking sign that it tasted authentic. The Henton House came into sight. Vivienne was amazed there wasn't a fence around the complex, just a chair at the street entrance saying "Security On Duty." There was no security guard as far as Vivienne could see, just an empty soda cup with a box of cigarettes smashed inside.