The whistle let out a shrill screech, signifying that another long day at the munitions factory had come to an end.
Lysandros wiped his face, his palm coming away covered in grease. He wiped it off on a shirt that had once been white - who could afford cleaning supplies in this economy? Ever since Arcadia booted out Zhanghai and lost access to its products - not to mention the literal destruction of the Bank of Arcadia - inflation blew through the roof and then some. The pay packets he would soon receive were more or less worthless; only the ration booklet was worth a damn.
As he and the rest of the floor workers departed - all under the watchful eye of Army guards on the catwalk above - Lysandros grabbed his dingy jacket. It was ragged and full of sewn patches, but the Arcadian winter was far colder than the gentle weather of his homeland in Atalanta. Between military rationing and the outbreak of a large blaze in a nearby refugee camp, access to firewood and charcoal had been severely curtailed among the populace. Lysandros recently traded a decent chunk of rations for a heavy blanket; he didn’t regret it, no matter how much his stomach rumbled.
The factory complex was massive - a former Zhanghai refinement plant now expanded into a facility geared towards war. Millions of shells and ammunition flowed out of the conveyor belts, put together with deft, tired hands. The floor workers were a hodgepodge of the poor and those down on their luck - Lysandros was one of the many urban migrants who needed to be resettled after the destruction of Four Eagles, his best friend Pavlos was a similar story, Harold was a farmer whose fields were burned during the brief conflict against Zhanghai samurai in the country a month ago, Grigoris up and left, joining the military a few days ago.
“You could lose that factory job any minute,” he warned them as he boarded the truck for the recruiting depot. “But the military’s not letting anybody go.”
An Atalantan like him would be sent to the Navy - the authorities would rather have him there than mixed among the proud Arcadians of the Army and Armed State Police. The newspapers published by the junta celebrated the gallant heroics of State Police and Army to crush Zhanghai and the Restorationist uprising, but the men in the factory knew better. The State Police assault had destroyed Four Eagles; the Restorationist armada used that dreaded Rddhi beam to blow apart entire neighborhoods, while the falling carcasses of downed airships caused similar damage. And as for the Army…
Lysandros, Pavlos, and Harold walked under a gray winter sky down a street largely cleared of rubble. As the former Zhanghai factory loomed behind them and watchtowers loomed ahead of them, they entered an office facility in a brick building to collect the worthless dollars and the all-important ration booklet. Army guards, either armed with rifles or the red sparks of Rddhi, watched their every move. Dogs barked somewhere, and as the early night settled in, spotlights and floodlights flickered on. On top of an adjacent building, there was a large billboard showing the proud face of retired Major Sloan, a former Army cultivator who now ran the munitions factory. All of the seized Zhanghai factories were given to friends and allies of the military junta.
As the little trio passed through the gates, spotlights briefly illuminated a truck full of soldiers driving down the main avenue perpendicular to them. In their large cloaks, rifles slung around their shoulders, the Army men sang a popular song of the day as the truck disappeared into darkness.
“Alone I stand in this murky and turbulent world, my blood simmers in righteous anger.
The elite bears only arrogance, thinking nothing of this land and its fate.
Ah, this prosperous country is dying, ignorant fools dancing blindly.
Governance and rule to them are only dreams,
The world reduced to a round of chess.”
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DESTINY MARINE
BOOK 2
“PAINTED BLACK”
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Lysandros had a small bed to call his own. It was one of hundreds in a hastily-constructed refugee camp constructed by the Reed conglomerate, who had been contracted by the military junta to build some sort of temporary housing for the migrants. Their excavators and machinery ripped out huge chunks of neighborhoods damaged by the recent fighting and laid down dozens of concrete barracks that could fit over a hundred people in each one. Each morning, Lysandros and his fellow migrants would be awoken by the distant scream of the factory bell, and in a daze, they would wander over to build munitions for the day. They would all return at night and, as husbands and wives fought, children cried and screamed, and the more enthusiastic of the bunch tried to sing away the pain, struggle to get some sleep.
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Dreams had finally pulled Lysandros into its soft embrace when somebody shook him awake. He recognized the touch instantly - Keti stood beside him, her blonde hair a sharp contrast to his slick black.
“It’s Pavlos,” she whispered, her voice full of fear. “The sharks have come to collect, and he has nothing to offer.”
Lysandros immediately slipped out of bed, pulled on his old boots, and placed his prized possession into a chest pocket. With that, he followed Keti out of the barracks, into the winter night, the cold stinging at his exposed face. But Keti wore even less than him - most likely, when the sharks hauled away her brother in the middle of the night, away from the barracks, Keti followed with whatever she had on at the time - just a night dress. Rather than turn her back and get more layers, she set out to find Lysandros, for he solved problems in the barracks; mid-stride, he draped his own jacket around her. She didn’t say anything, but her arms hugged the extra layer appreciatively.
“I followed as far as I could,” Keti explained. “The thugs took him to an alleyway.”
“To make an example out of him,” Lysandros muttered. A man in debt, once dead, couldn’t pay it back; a beaten man could still pay it back, plus additional interest, and serve as a warning to anybody else under the thrall of the loan sharks. As a former leader of the community in Four Eagles - aka, a triad - Lysandros had some money he could fall back on after his home was destroyed. It was all gone now, but he was still ahead of men like Pavlos, who quickly fell into debt, extorted by the triads that “protected” the refugee camp and ran its black market.
A little outside the camp, in between rows of brick buildings with their shutters closed, the fleshly sound of fist-against-stomach and muffled cries spurred Lysandros on. Keti brought him to the alleyway in question; Lysandros stepped in front of her and called out to the two enforcers beating the stuffing out of Pavlos.
One man used the lights of Rddhi sparking out of his arm to illuminate Pavlos as his comrade landed blows against his stomach. The arrival of Lysandros interrupted their fun; they tossed Pavlos against the wall and turned to face the interloper.
“Lysandros of Four Eagles,” one of them called out, easily towering over six feet. “You used to be such a tough triad. What happened?”
“I met a man in the Navy who inspired something in me,” Lysandros admitted. “I won’t become wealthy by exploiting the innocent.”
“A shame,” the other enforcer said. “Tommy Typewriter could’ve used a man like you.”
Tommy Typewriter, the most powerful triad among the refugees, the block bully who ran the sharks, the man ultimately responsible for the blood running down Pavlos’s face.
Lysandros smacked a fist into an open palm. “Let him go.”
“Don’t think so,” the enforcer with cultivation powers answered. The two goons looked at each other, nodded, and technically did let Pavlos go, allowing him to slide down the brick wall in a daze. Rddhi crackled up the cultivator’s arm, striking the brick walls of the alleyway, while the other men spun a switchblade in his hand.
“Step back,” Lysandros warned Keti, who reluctantly slipped away from the alleyway. With that, he cracked his neck, reached into his chest pocket, and pulled out his most prized possession - a pair of aviator shades. Once they were comfortably in front of his eyes, Lysandros raised a hand. “Last chance,” he called out.
The enforcers laughed, and then charged. Right as they closed the distance, Lysandros snapped his fingers, activating his Rhododactylos.
A bright light white, the equivalent of a pocket-sized dawn, erupted from his fingers, utterly basking the alleyway in its glow. The enforcers stopped in their tracks, unable to see a thing, so Lysandros made his move. He dropped his shoulder into the chest of the cultivator, sending him sprawling across the concrete path of the alleyway, then roundhouse kicked the switchblade man into a pile of garbage, the knife arcing up into the air. A fireball then whizzed by him, nearly taking off his head; the cultivator was blasting fireballs blindly.
Lysandros plucked the knife from the air then flung it at the cultivator. His aim was straight and true - the knife caught the cultivator in the shoulder, and his flames extinguished as he let out a low wail. With the fireballs gone, Lysandros charged, grabbed the man’s collars, and kneed him square in the gut before tossing him further down the alleyway. The enforcer groaned into the darkness that settled into the alleyway as Lysandros’s cultivator power subsided, the artificial dawn disappearing from view.
Pavlos, who recognized what was coming, had his eyes closed; well, one eye had been closed by an earlier punch from an enforcer. With a strong grip, Lysandros helped him to his feet, and the two men left the sharks groaning in that alleyway.
“You should be more careful,” Pavlos chided out in a hoarse voice. “Tommy Typewriter informs on refugees who have unlocked the Rddhi. The State Police might haul you away at his whim.”
Keti nodded in agreement, putting her brother’s arm around her shoulder so she and Lysandros could walk him home. “We don’t want to lose you, Lysandros. We thought you died when Four Eagles got destroyed.”
“I got better,” Lysandros answered. He unlocked the Rddhi a month ago, as his home collapsed all around him, as the ghetto was wiped clean by State Police cultivators and tanks. He kept his new power mostly hidden, only revealing it to his two closest friends who now walked beside him, because any urban refugee who unlocks the Rddhi and doesn’t know the right people ends up in the possession on the junta.
“I have a plan for Tommy,” Lysandros said confidently into the winter chill. “A plan for everything. Tomorrow night, at the beer hall, I’ll reveal it.”
Despite his injuries, Pavlos managed to pat Lysandros on the back. “Thank you, my friend. I really mean it.”
Under the silent watch of a night sky in early winter, the trio of childhood friends returned back to the concrete barracks they now called home, breath condensing in front of their faces, just three of the millions of Arcadian citizens wondering what would come next for a country on the brink.