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The Elekto Effect - Chapter 3

They were woken early to remove the dead. They weren't allowed to bury them. Slaves were worthless anyway and the ground was so frozen it would've taken to much time. The guards weren't patient people and apparently Brij was on some sort of time table.

The prisoner were all given their bowl back after everyone was unhobbled and let back onto the cages, they were given the same mystery chunk soup as everyday and Rand ate it hungrily. He thought his body would get used to the scampy supply of food it was given but apparently is was being more stubborn than that and he still felt horrible hunger pains during the day. They continued on their path Westward and Rand was sentenced to his own thoughts. These cages, these same men everyday, an endless pattern and marching toward an unknown destination. Rand didn't know how much longer he could stand this. His fingers itched to hold onto a bow, feel the brush of the feathers from the arrow as it pulled back and the rush of air as he let it fly, dangerously close to his face. Archery had been his outlet for everything. His father first started teaching him when he had turned eight and Rand hadn't put down the bow for years until he had become better at it then his father. It had been taken from him once and now here he was again.

"I heard we're goin' to the Tartaran war front." A man whispered, he was crouched in the opposite corner of the wagon, talking with a group of four men but of course making sure everyone else heard him to.

"That doesn't make any sense, we were on the North-Eastern border of Falem, why bring us so far when we could work in the Eastern Holes?"

"They wouldn't waste this many slaves on mine work. The war front is constantly in need of new slaves."

"I can't go to the war front!" A man exclaimed, Rand looked up, seeing the horrified expression on the mans dirty face, "I don't deserve this! I did nothing to deserve this!" The man broke down in tears and he was met with scoffs and laughs, "Half of us don't deserve this Jeoff." The first man who spoke said.

"All I did was steal bread and now I'm gonna die!" Jeoff was wailing and Rand cringed. He couldn't watch people cry. It made him regress to thinking about the state they were in.

"We'll all die one day, the few lucky ones from age, the rest of us from labor. Does it really matter anymore?" Everyone looked to the man who had spoken and who was sitting next to Rand. He was an older man with graying hair and wrinkles that exacerbated the tired look he always wore. Rand believed his name was Yamma.

"You seem to be one of those lucky ones, Islander."

Yamma scoffed and sighed, not looking like he was going to say anything in response.

"How long you been a slave Yamma?" The man who had first started all this spoke.

"It does not matter how old I am Tev, you know that."

"You're right," said Tev, "But, how have you become so old?"

Jeoff stopped his crying to look up with tear stained cheeks, "What do you mean?"

Tev smiled, it was a smile that made a shiver go down the back of those who saw it, "Yamma, you must've done some unforgivable things to live to your age as a slave...am I right?"

Yamma said nothing, not taking the bait that Tev offered. That's how, Rand thought, He didn't take the bait offered to him by stupid men who tried to take your secrets then backstab you.

The cart pulled forward passed the thick tree line and into a clearing. The gray clouds above did nothing to stop the light that came full force in rands eyes, he hadn't realized how bright the day had gotten already.

"What is that?" Jeoff spoke in a whisper and everybody turned to him then their eyes followed his arm which was sticking between the bars, finger pointing at something.

"By the Light." whispered Tev.

"I never knew they were that big."

Rand moved forward, everyone seemed to forget their fear of Rand and didn't notice him as he pushed in between them trying to get a view.

"The Shattered Mountains." Yamma said.

They were still a ways off in the distance but Rand was impressed with how huge the mountains were. So tall they scrapped the underside of the sky's belly and so wide you had to turn you head a little to see the end of one and the start of another, and that was from miles away.

"Look for the barrier!" Someone called.

"There!"

Rand stepped back and someone else crowded in where he had been.

A bad place  The Voice whispered in the back of his mind.

Rand sat down again and Yamma straightened, he looked more sad and beaten down then usual.

"I've taken it that you've been here before?" Rand asked, eyeing the other men cautiously, if they were listening in Yamma might not talk but they were all focused on trying to find the Barrier.

"Yes...Many years ago."

Rand waited, his father had once told him that if you waited in a conversation the person usually said more than they originally planned to. Apparently his father was right.

"I do not wish to go back. With this luck I seem to have at living, I hope to die."

A bad place. She whispered, sounding as if she were hiding.

About fifty miles away from the base of the Shattered Mountains the trees stopped.

The growth didn't slowly taper off and the trees were not cut back. The growth simply ended, as if it wouldn't put a leaf over an invisible barrier that stood right in front of it.

The other slaves were still pressed up against the bars and once out of the tree line they could finally see the barrier. Rand, never having seen the magical barrier between the world of Altheria and the world of Tartara, was interested.

It looked like a big black sheet had been placed over this section of the world, right between the mountain line. The barrier went through the mountains, cutting them in half from the top down. The barrier itself looked like waving fabric, slowly pulsing with a black light and blocking out the sky until you couldn't tell if it was the real sky or the barrier anymore.

The mountains sat in a sort of crater, an elongated circle that cradled the mountains in the middle of it, at the base of the mountains, still about five miles from the barrier itself, sat the war city of Jachin. It was a city that spanned the width of a whole mountain. There sat in front of the city a wall, a wall made completely of steel.

"They call her Goliath." Tev said when Jeoff asked about the wall, "Every true Falemite grew up on stories about her."

"Stronger than a thousand Dark Souls of Tartara." Tev and Yamma said this in unison, though Yamma spoke so quietly almost no one heard him.

"Well if Tartarans can't get through the wall then we'll all be safe!" Jeoff said, looking at everyone's faces expectantly.

Tev, and a few others, laughed, "The Tartarans do not come to our walls, we go to theirs."

"Then what's the point of the wall?" He said slowly.

"Are you stupid Jeoff?" Tev hit the boy in the head and he whimpered, drawing back, "The barrier is slowly growing. Coming closer. The wall is there to protect us for when they do come to our doors."

Ah! So exciting!!! Also I apologize for grammar mistakes, my main focus is on getting the story out, so I only edit a little:)

-MyFernweh