ZARA THE JAILKEEPER

Sometimes, when Zara slept, she Dreamt.

For anyone else, this would be perfectly unexceptional, barely even worthy of mention, but Zara was not anyone else. She was Jailkeeper. And for the eight hundred years that that position has existed in the island-kingdom of Bliss, it has been considered of more importance than any other, including that of the Prime Minister herself.

Now, being Jailkeeper meant many things; it meant that Zara would never live to see old age for one, likely not even midlife, and it also meant that, sometimes, when Zara slept, she Dreamt.

In her Dreams she saw Him, caged and bound, both by metal and by his true form when stripped away from all his dark power.

He was a lepid, like Zara herself; a humanoid being evolved from a lepidopteron like—but not quite—a butterfly.

Lepids are not much different looking from humans, though it can be safely said that no one in their right mind would ever confuse them for one another.

Compared to humans, lepids are short, with the tallest among them barely brushing past four feet in height.

On a human, their faces would be too elongated, their eyes too far apart, too big and oddly coloured, but, besides that and the huge, brightly coloured wings and short, bristly hair they tend to have, yeah, lepids aren’t much different from the homo sapiens species.

Now, if you happen to be a scientist or some such, and you’re thinking to yourself; ‘What the hell kind of bullshit is this? A species that evolved from a lepidopteron could not possibly share any, but the vaguest similarities, with one that evolved from an ape.’

Well, I’ve got something to say to you: “Ever heard of magic before?”

Anywho, let’s get back to Zara.

Zara never watched him for long when she Dreamed of him. She didn’t like to.

She didn’t like to see his face, with its handsome, gentle features that were naught but a mask for the ugliness within; didn’t like to see him caged and in chains, like a slave. A victim.

So, whenever Zara Dreamed of the prison inside the Jewel of Tereema to which she was now inextricably bound, she wandered.

It was not a big place, the prison. But it didn’t need to be, not when it was created to hold one man.

Unfortunately, its small size posed a bit of a problem for her wandering, so much so, in fact, that even though she’d only held the position of Jailkeeper for five months, and had only had a quarter dozen Dreams that she was sure of, she’d still managed to explore every inch of the place.

Familiar though, did not mean boring, seeing as the walls of the tunnels had some of the most beautiful paintings she’d ever seen in her young life.

Murals detailing the histories and legends and myths of the four races.

On random, Zara picked a tunnel, that of the lepids (or the lepid tunnel as she’d tagged it in her mind), and off she went.

She could float, in her Dreams, like an apparition. So she did.

It was a pleasant feeling, very different from flying with the wide, bright red and blue wings on her back. Smoother and easier.

She carried on through the tunnel. It was dark, and in the waking world she would have needed a light to guide her. But this wasn’t the waking world, it was a Dream, a little darkness could not inconvenience her here.

Even though she’d seen them before, Zara appreciated the paintings as she floated past.

She recognized some of the figures they portrayed; like Jero, the intrepid adventurer who’d discovered potatoes on some strange island during her travels, and, deciding to bring the plant back home, became the first potato farmer in Bliss after she retired from adventuring.

Skip a few millennia later, and potatoes were now a staple in the Blissian diet.

The island-kingdom even celebrated its harvest every year.

In many ways, it was rather heady to consider, that the culture of an entire people was altered, simply because a woman decided to bring home and try to cultivate a strange plant she found.

Eventually, Zara reached the end of the tunnel, and with it the only part of the murals she didn’t like to look at.

It was of Kopika, this prison’s sole occupant, and it detailed everything about him; his rise to power, his madness, his deeds, all of his evils portrayed in vivid colour for her viewing displeasure.

Zara looked away, focusing instead on the only things worth appreciating here at the end of the lepid tunnel; the statues.

There were four tunnels in The Jewel, each running off from the cavern where The Tainted One was bound.

Each tunnel was like the others; full of paintings of people and events from times long past, and at the very end of them all rested a pair of statues, each pair a male and female of one of the four species that ‘worked together’ to bring down the man The Jewel had been created for.

There was the dragon pair, the ogre pair, the treant pair, and, last but not least, the ones that she was currently standing before, the lepid pair.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

It was interesting, really; three thousand years after the fact, and with dozens of variations to the tale, if most Blissians today were to see this place, they would likely nod their heads, and say that it was only appropriate that the races that unified under the threat of The Tainted One be immortalized in this way.

Because that’s how the story goes now; of four races, coming together, setting aside their differences to stand hand in hand, all in the quest to stop an ancient evil.

But Zara knew the truth.

Had there been four races? Certainly. Were they accurately portrayed here? Sure. But there had been no unity. No friendship. Kopika had simply wronged too many people and they all just wanted to see him die.

No, the friendship came after. After the war and the death.

Honestly, Zara suspected that the only reason that Tereema had put these statues here, was because of her own sense for the dramatic.

After all, everyone knew that the dragon had been a poet, among other things.

Zara took another look at the lepids, kneeling facing each other, their foreheads touching, then she turned to go look at something else.

That was when the dragon appeared.

It was small, not much bigger than a newborn, with golden scales accented with lime green.

It took a single look around itself, then it covered the world in golden fire.

Jailkeepers could not wake themselves from their Dreams, but they could be jarred from them. Turns out a face full of fire was jarring enough.

Zara shot up in bed, heart pounding, eyes wide, blood cold.

“No,” she said in horror.

In a minute she was out her door, and in two more she was rushing into the vault where the Jewel was safeguarded.

Zara had never been gladder that she resided at The Temple of Goot, where the Jewel was stored, than she was now.

The temple was high up in the mountains, far away from civilization, in the—admittedly extremely unlikely—event that Kopika escaped his prison.

That event was seeming more than likely now though, and for the first time since this became her duty, she fully understood, and appreciated, just why it was required for the Jailkeeper to live here.

Somehow, even though Zara had only raised an alarm after beginning to head here herself, there were already twenty of the Golden Guard at the ready in the huge chamber-like vault. All of them armed and ready for anything.

Even after three thousand years of growth and change since The Tainted One was sealed away, the people of Bliss had still not forgotten just how terrible he’d been.

It was hard to, when there were still entire portions of land in the kingdom where nothing grew till this day. The fault of a man with more dark power than sense or empathy.

Consequently, the Golden Guard, the order whose duty it was to protect the Jewel from threats both within and without, took their job very seriously.

While the Temple of Goot may have been called a temple, it was in function more of a garrison, meant to house the 150 sworn warriors of the Golden Guard.

Them, the Jewel of Tereema, and, of course, its Jailkeeper.

Zara rushed into the room and headed straight for where the Jewel sat on its pedestal, and the Golden Guard parted for her without even needing to be told.

The Jewel looked as it always did, bigger than her head, oval in shape, and glowing like the sun with a steady, inner light.

“Jailkeeper, report!” Commander Azix... well, commanded from behind Zara, and the girl had to restrain the urge to jump.

Zara cleared her throat as the older lepid woman flew to stand beside her.

Technically speaking, as Jailkeeper she outranked the woman, and Zara knew that the Commander would obey her if Zara pushed for it, but, as Zara’s predecessor had taught her, it was stupidity to annoy people who could beat you while half-dead, drugged, and with two of their limbs missing.

And Zara was fully aware that even thinking about pulling rank with the Commander would very much annoy the woman.

“I had a Dream,” Zara said.

“Obviously,” Commander Azix replied. “What happened?”

Zara didn’t let the Commander’s attitude faze her.

Honestly, if she didn’t know any better, she would have assumed that the Commander was this way with her because she was young and relatively new to her post.

But nope, this was simply who the woman was. And, in a way, that actually made it better.

“There’s a dragon inside the Jewel,” Zara said.

The Commander blinked. “That’s impossible,” she countered.

“I saw it,” Zara argued.

“Not to tell you how to do your job, Jailkeeper, but unless you’re saying that there’s something very wrong with the Jewel, then that’s impossible.

“So,” Commander Azix said, staring at Zara steadily, “is there something wrong with the Jewel?”

And that was the problem; there wasn’t.

The Jewel was fine, Zara knew that as surely as she knew her own name.

“I think you just had a dream,” Commander Azix said, sounding surprisingly understanding.

It hadn’t felt that way. It had felt like a Dream.

... But what if it hadn’t been a dream?

After all, not all of a Jailkeeper’s dreams were Dreams. Most were simply dreams; products of an imaginative mind mixing the things we expect, with the things we dread or crave.

Zara was fifteen. She’d had the job of Jailkeeper for five months now, and if nothing went wrong, at all, she might see fifty.

Zara dreaded something going wrong.

She looked at the Jewel. It was fine. And as long as it was fine, nothing could come out or in.

The girl sighed. She’d raised an alarm over a stupid dream.

Even now more of the Guard was assembling, preparing for a battle that would never come.

Argh! How could she have been so stupid? She should have just kept her mouth shut and tried to verify by herself first.

As soon as she thought that though, one of her predecessor’s lessons came back to her.

“Zara,” he’d said, “at some point while you have this job, most likely sometime in your first year, you will have a bad dream.

“You will think that it’s a Dream, only to realize after you’ve raised an alarm that it was only a dream. This will probably make you not want to act on the next bad Dream that you have out of fear that it’s only a dream.”

He’d looked right at her.

“Don’t.”

Zara took a breath and steadied herself.

Reef, her predecessor, was right; she shouldn’t think like that.

After all, the Jewel wasn’t infallible. The very fact that Zara was here was proof of that.

Jailkeepers are needed because the Jewel had been failing, Tereema’s life force only capable of doing so much after so long.

So Jailkeepers are used as a supplement; they are bound to the Jewel and provide whatever extra life force is needed.

There had been twenty-nine Jailkeepers before Zara, and she refused to be the one on who’s watch Kopika escaped.

Zara stood tall and looked Commander Azix in the eye.

Damn not pulling rank.

“Even if it was just a dream,” Zara said, “I think we should remain alert. It wouldn’t do to take chances.”

To the girl’s great surprise, the Commander looked pleased.

“Understood, Jailkee—”

The Jewel brightened, and all eyes pinpointed on it.

Now, this was nothing strange. Rare, yes, but not strange.

Every now and again, Kopika liked to rage around a little bit, and the Jewel always brightened as a result, so again, this was nothing strange.

Somehow though, it made a feeling of foreboding settle on everyone present.

The Jewel dimmed.

It took many seconds, but slowly, everyone relaxed again.

Then the Jewel glowed.

Zara sank to her knees as she felt her life force rush out of her and into the Jewel.

She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. And just when she was starting to think that, maybe, just maybe, what was being taken would be enough, it intensified.

The last words that Reef, her predecessor, had said to her before he died were: “It’s worth it.”

Zara repeated those words to herself like a mantra, even as, with an almighty explosion, the Jewel burst open and her world faded to black.