He could smell the odors. The fetid stench of death and human waste. He could still taste it polluting the air. His stomach turned in revulsion.
The images were burned into Ryl’s mind. His memories painted every traumatic detail even as he attempted to blink the visions away. Battered, lifeless bodies were secured upright along tables leaned against the walls. Blood fell, drip by drip from the arms of each as they were painstakingly drained. They were all tributes as he had once been. Children, stolen from their families for the alexen in their blood. They’d been raised under the heel of the Kingdom, forced into servitude within the confines of The Stocks. That prison had been their home, now the filthy wooden slabs in an unmarked facility were to have been their deathbeds.
Ryl felt the rage as it raced through his veins. It demanded the lives of the guards who’d unknowingly concealed these horrors. In the end, it was only the facility and its machinations that had been razed.
Raiding the facility, tucked away in the shadows of the Martrion Ruins had never been a part of their intended task. The goal was and remained the freedom of The Stocks. A chance encounter had cost them the life of their companion and friend, Deyalou, Master Swordsman and defender of Vim. Yet from the chilling heartbreak of loss came the information that resulted in the freedom of an additional ten tributes. Their emaciated, addled bodies were mere shells of their former selves. They’d endured untold horrors. Yet, even as uncertain as their paths to recovery were, they still lived.
They were free.
Now, with every turn of the wagon’s wheels, they moved closer to their destination. The crude pathway they now followed would allow them to close a portion of the distance to The Stocks in secrecy, yet it would make their progress decidedly more sluggish. Ryl had planned to retrace their steps to the east, crossing the river and leaving Serrate and the smoldering remains of the facility behind. From there, they were to meet with the main thoroughfare whose southern end terminated to the east of Cadsae Proper and The Stocks.
Crossing the river at Serrate was no longer an option. The stone bridge that spanned the watery gap had fallen amidst their battle with the Lei Guard; an unintended casualty of war. They’d expected a single group of seven, black-cloaked warriors. They’d been caught off guard by the appearance of the second detail.
With the collapse of the bridge, their plans had again been altered. The ill-used path represented their only hope of moving the laden wagons onward toward The Stocks. They’d be forced to follow its lazy bends to the closest river crossing, nearly fifty miles to the south. From there, they’d be able to rejoin the main thoroughfare
The ambush upon the bridge had been a shock. Ryl’s previous encounters with the Horde had been perilous. The misshapen beasts attacked with lethal speed and a terrifying ferocity. The battle with the Lei Guard had been equally fierce. It had been frantic. Ryl fought with a desperation founded in hopelessness.
It nearly cost him his life.
Ryl and his companions had prevailed, yet it was a hollow victory as light had pierced the veil that shrouded the truth. In total, thirteen Lei Guard, only one shy of two full parties, had been destroyed.
Though they were cloaked in black, it could no longer disguise their true form. They fought for the Kingdom, for the Ascertaining Decree, for the very system that robbed children of their lives, families and freedoms.
Underneath the guise they were all tributes. Or at least they once had been.
All that remained now were withered, black-stained shells of their previous identities. Some he had known. The majority of those whose faces were still recognizable he didn't. Ryl had wept openly as they hastily buried the remains.
Had he known the true nature of the Lei Guard before that morning, would the outcome have been different? Had he known the power that dwelled within him, could he have saved more of them?
Only one remained breathing.
It was Elias.
By a strange twist of fate, he was reunited with his close friend who had been taken during the Harvest two cycles prior. Ryl shuddered at the horrors, the agony, that Elias must have endured. Had he even truly saved his friend? Was it compassion, or was he only prolonging his friend’s suffering?
Only time would tell. Elias had yet to wake.
Ryl glanced down at his tattooed left arm at the thought. It almost appeared to be glowing in the dim light of the wagon’s interior. The unexpected power that had flowed from his arm had been incredible. The ball of glowing light that swelled in his hand seemingly banished the darkness that had corrupted Elias. The power inside him had tipped the scale, evening the balance between the light and darkness.
What had been done to corrupt the tributes past the point of recollection? They fought ferociously in defense of a system that had tortured them and had stolen every last shred of their existence. Their skin bore the black streaks of the nexela. The taint of the Outland Horde.
The connection had become shockingly clear as Ryl had connected the pieces in his mind. Nexela was the antithesis to the alexen that lived within his veins. It was the vile compound that inhabited the blackened blood of the heartless killers of the Outland Horde.
How had this come to pass? Somehow the compound was refined and infused into the withered shells of the tributes who had been milked of their blood in the processing facilities. The parchment retrieved from the facility before it fell to the torch called to him. Would he
