First Lieutenant Keagan took another sip of cheap whisky as he stared out into the night sky. The stars didn’t care how much suffering was going on in the world, and would shine just the same as always. He couldn’t remain stargazing forever. He had a job to do, and with the gods as his witness he was going to do it well. Of course, Keagan was not a religious man, but it felt right to have them in his internal monologue.
His band of 12 men had been going off roads on their journey to the mining camp. It was a quiet night, with the beasts of the forests lying in wait or hiding away from them. Somehow, it appeared they had come to understand the power that the Arlin forces held with magore tech. That wasn’t what was eerie to him. The eerie thing was that they had been getting closer and closer to the camp and yet there wasn’t a single sign of life in the entire area.
It had been 5 days since the last message from the camp, which was automatically a bad sign and suggested a few options.
First, the captain of the camp simply forgot to send messages and was slacking off. That was the best option, but 5 days was a lot. It was also notable that the captain of the camp, Roy Galen, was a well esteemed man who had been keeping up with his reports the entire time he was stationed there.
Second, the soundline’s cable had been cut. That was worrying and could be part of other problems, but it was an option that it could have been gnawed through by some forest animal who thought it was a type of snake. Still, the captain would have noticed the lack of return messages and likely done something other than send messages through the soundline to get word out.
Then there were the third and fourth options, which were becoming increasingly likely as they got closer and closer to the camp.
Third, a rebel group attacked the camp and destroyed it, killing everyone there and liberating it. This wasn’t unfounded since Boralis was a new territory, and newer territories tended to be where most rebel groups would form. That didn’t work entirely since the locations of camps were generally hard to find. This camp in Boralis was in the middle of nowhere surrounded by thick woods and was extremely hard to ambush or attack. The guards that surrounded it were well armed, and a rebel group would have to be extremely well armed in return or have a fantastic strategist behind them, but they were still unlikely to get the entire camp down before the captain or one of the guards could send out an emergency message telling them that they were attacked. Rebel groups were pretty small in the area, and taking down a camp would be a massive operation. They’d have to be well established and well organized to pull it off, and none of those types of groups had appeared in that area. Still, it wasn’t impossible.
The fourth… was a thought that Keagan didn’t relish. In fact, it worried him greatly. Keagan was kept up at night several times thinking about the potential collateral that an event such as that could cause, monologuing the dangers that could occur and the damage it would do to the empire. A group of mages, some of whom had military training, wandering the Empire with a vendetta was something that only meant disaster. It was a dark thought, and something that haunted his nights as he traveled deeper and deeper into the woods of Boralis and towards the home of one of the empire’s greatest sins.
***
First Lieutenant Keagan was a well known figure in the Arlin forces for a unique reason- his investigative work. His research into underground organizations and the webs of corruption that plagued the underside of the empire had given him wide acclaim throughout the forces and a reverence in small sections of the populace. He was an unconventional figure, and one that his superiors both hated and loved. He was a rather loose individual, often acting beyond orders or taking measures into his own hands. His character was questionable at best, as it was more common to find him drunk than sober. He could be abrasive and often lacked the discipline that many expected out of those within the military, but his results spoke for themself. His actions as a tool against corruption had also led to several assassination attempts, the scars of which he wore with pride. He had refused increases in rank in the past out of the sheer principle that it would only put a larger target on his back and force him to manage more men, which would distract him from his work. He was a man who only cared about ridding the empire of the tumors of corruption that its wide spread had allowed to fester.
Well, that and one other thing.
***
“Key, come back inside the tent.” Theodore said, his tired voice slurring some of the words. “You can have your ruminations when it's light out, okay?”
Second Lieutenant Theodore, or Theo, was perhaps the only man in the entire empire who had some level of control over Keagan. That alone was an impressive feat and made him an essential part of Keagan’s life. While this level of control did infuriate him sometimes, it was true that he worked better when given the mental support of his partner. They were an inseparable duo which had together taken on some of the worst scum the empire had to offer and came out the other side in one piece.
Keagan sighed before going back inside the tent, accepting a kiss from Theo as he laid down next to him. Their relationship was an open air secret and one that, while not entirely supported by the military, was respected and allowed to continue freely. As long as it didn’t interrupt his work or cause problems with his fellow soldiers, of which it did neither, it was allowed. Pluma, the land from which Theo hailed from as seen with his dark blue hair, was known for its apathy towards the subject. Arlin proper also had been generally supportive of it for the simple purpose that it increased social cohesion and allowed for foreign cultures to more easily integrate, although it did cause controversy in some territories which saw the practice as sin. Either way, their bond had kept Keagan from tearing down entire parts of the empire in search of truth and justice, which Arlin greatly appreciated.
“I know you’re worried, but you need to take care of yourself. We can deal with it together once we get there, okay?” Theo patted Keagan’s head softly, his speech still slightly slurred. Keagan nodded in response and reciprocated the kiss. Keagan stared into his partner's eyes.
I’m not worried how it's going to affect me as much as it might affect you.
***
The stench was the first thing to hit Keagan’s nose as they finally started to see the outline of the camp, and he immediately knew that something was very wrong. Rotting flesh was a scent he had gotten used to throughout his investigations whenever he came across some large underground ring that decided it was better to off themselves than deal with the consequences of their actions. In that second, he regretted that he was without a drink.
It didn’t get better when he saw the actual bodies. They were all piled up together, being eaten away by nature. Their rotting flesh and skin which had been torn apart by the bugs and small creatures of the forest just made it worse. He could hear a few of the soldiers he was with retching behind him, and he could completely understand why. His work had given him a tolerance to this sight, but it didn’t make it feel any better. Theo hugged close to him, clearly unhappy with the sight but was attempting to maintain face in front of the men and Keagan.
“This wasn’t done to send a message…” Keagan muttered, pulling out his old notebook and jotting down information. While it might have seemed to be a tad bit tasteless to begin taking notes upon seeing this sight, it was necessary for his work. “Whoever did this was really angry at the world and really wanted to show it. A rage that needed to be sated, lest it boil over and destroy them.”
The only people who could be this angry and go through with such an act as violent as this was the slaves, which meant it was option 4. He couldn’t rule out that they hadn’t been supported by some outside force, but the slaves had to be the main perpetrators. An outside force might have allowed them to do this in order to blow off steam from their years of torment by the guards, but nothing as brutal as this. No, a rebel group would have used a situation like this to send a more direct message. They would have left more information to tell the empire what they had done wrong and how they were going to exact their revenge. This was just pure, unbridled hate focused at the dead who were unable to retaliate.
One corpse stood out among all the rest. A body, splayed out with each of its arms and legs separately attached to poles. As Keagan took a moment to wander around and inspect the body, he realized that the top of the head was completely missing. It had melted off entirely. The hole was too big to be from a burner, so it was likely an igniter.
Was this Galen?
Keagan inspected the man’s outfit, which confirmed his suspicions. The ratio of red to brown on the outfit suggested it was a captain of which there was only one of at the camp. It was all just an act of pure, unfiltered malice against a group of individuals.
It was also notable that the mine was entirely caved in. When he went to check it out, it was clear that whoever had done the job had made sure to thoroughly destroy it. They never wanted any more magore to be mined from this location, a very heavy blow to Arlin.
He turned to take a moment to survey the camp. It was a large rectangular shape which extended outwards from the mine. It was a very efficient structure. It appeared that none of the main buildings had been fully destroyed, with only a few guard towers being an exception. There was an odd structure near the center of the camp which he could see from this position which looked to have partially fallen down, but was clearly made out of the same wood as the guard towers. On closer inspection, its black color suggested that it was lit on fire.
This couldn’t have been the spur of the moment. This had to have all been planned.
Keagan took a deep breath before immediately regretting it, as he had forgotten that he was still standing next to a pile of corpses. The men in his squad were looking at him, wondering the thoughts that must be turning through his head. It was all just incredibly off in a way that none of them had really prepared for. Theo had a constant look of worry on his face as he watched Keagan think about the situation.
“Key, you need help?” Theo was asking both for himself and for Keagan. Breaking the silence was one of the few ways he could feel better about the clear atrocity that had been committed here.
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Keagan looked up at him and nodded, closing his notebook. “Yeah, I could use some help. You mind checking around to see what supplies have been taken? Also, get two men to check out that structure in the middle. It’s clearly newer than the others and was set on fire, but I don’t know why yet.”
He leapt down from the platform next to the mine and walked back over to his partner, who patted him on the shoulder. It was a gesture of comfort that both of them needed. The silence of the camp was deafening in a way which made all of it much worse. The two of them stuck close to each other as they wandered through the dead land.
“They were retaliating for their treatment…” Theo said in hushed tones. Something about this tugged at him a lot deeper than Keagan expected, which made his worry all the more worse. “I mean, they probably just wanted freedom.”
Keagan and Theo worked well together because of one of Theo’s greatest strengths and flaws- his empathy. Even through his time in the military where they often tried to rid people of the sympathy for their enemy, Second Lieutenant Theodore always tried to see things from the enemy's point of view. While it made him struggle on the battlefield sometimes, it made him an excellent counter to Keagan’s cold and logical mindset. He could connect to ideals and people in ways that Keagan’s logical investigative mind often could not. Multiple cases would have been completely unsolvable without the input of his partner, something which only increased the two’s endearment of each other. Together they both fought for justice in Arlin but saw the world in different ways.
However, this was a lot for both of them. Even if he somewhat understood their stance, his empathy for the slaves could only go so far. As they continued further, they noticed an odd looking pile which sat next to the burnt wooden structure. It was a pile of broken slave cuffs, all of them unlocked and shattered by what were most likely the pickaxes they used to mine. That meant they had access to their attunements, which was a mortifying thought. That also meant they had a key, a rare tool which could unlock any cuff they came across. This, unlike the mass pile of corpses, was intended to send a message. Those two actions conflicted with each other, which meant that there wasn’t completely unified leadership and that there were ulterior motives within some of the members. Some of them wanted to send a message while others simply wanted to make a statement.
“They didn’t destroy that many structures… they had to have had some reason to do that.” Keagan pondered, running his hand through his yellow hair. Theo took a moment to move away from Keagan to peek inside one of the buildings, which looked to be the bunks for the slaves.
“It’s empty. Maybe they stayed here for a period of time after the revolt?” Theo asked, popping his head back outside of the bunk. “They might have needed to plan with each other about what to do next and get supplies.”
Keagan nodded in response. That was a good reason. If that was the case, that meant they had prepared for their journey in a complex way. The camp had also received some supplies, which meant that they might have been waiting for the supplies to arrive to leave. That suggested two options.
One, they were traveling as a large group and needed a large number of supplies for a longer journey. That one seemed likely, judging from how organized the revolt was. Leaders tend to stay leaders, and followers tend to stay followers.
Two, they were splitting up and needed a lot of supplies overall, but some for each smaller group or individual who was leaving the camp. If they did that, that meant this revolt was just to get their own freedom. However, that conflicted with the gruesome display in front of the mine which suggested that they were angry and had other motivations beyond just freedom.
“You’re probably right. This was a premeditated action, to free themselves and fight against an injustice committed against them by committing a great one in their own right.” Keagan continued to take down notes until he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see one of the men from his squad pointing him towards the large burnt structure.
“From what I could tell, it’s a death ritual thing. We dug through the ashes and found some bones. So they cremated a few bodies. Couldn’t tell how many exactly, but they clearly did it for a reason. It’s a good amount though. Aaron said it looked a bit like something he saw in Corith when he was doing rounds there. He thinks it’s a funeral pyre.” Private Isaac looked extremely disturbed as he spoke. Keagan nodded before walking over to check out the structure.
Why would they do a Corithian funeral? This camp should have had slaves from all over the empire, yet they specifically did a Corithian ritual? Wouldn’t it make more sense to do a Boralis ritual?
It was a small detail, but it had to mean something. At the very least, it meant that there was at least one or more Corithian at the camp. Keagan took some time to note the structure and do a small sketch of it in his notebook before turning back to the rest of the camp.
He had a lot more investigative work to do.
***
Keagan stared at his notebook, scribbling down more details and mulling over all the facts he had recorded while sitting in the Captain’s office. This was a revolt, plain and simple, done by the slaves to get their revenge against the camp and escape to freedom. There were no survivors of the guard, and there were at least a few casualties among the slaves who were given a Corithian funeral. He knew the how, he knew the basic reason why, and he had a general idea of when they had done it. He just didn’t know who was leading it and what they would do next. A bunch of mages running around the empire free would most likely want to escape the Empire and go towards a land which was beyond their borders. Mylia was the closest border, so they would probably go there. But the brutality of how they treated the guard suggested there was a lot more behind this than just a simple desire for freedom. After some inspection, he also noted that all the bodies were male. That meant that the Arlinian penal laborers were most likely supportive of the revolt and were now with the slaves.
A detail which had come up was the lack of paper and documents. Almost every piece of paper or document in the camp had been burnt, torn up or destroyed. The only pieces which he found intact were pornographic drawings which had been left in one of the guard’s bunks. Clearly they didn’t want to leave behind much documentation to find them. There was some documentation which they couldn’t get rid of, and that was the transcripts of the previous sound line messages that Galen had sent. They covered a wide variety of topics, but one name popped up over and over again: Elm Grayson. The person was extremely important to him to the point where a majority of them discussed his relationship with the man and how they were progressing. However, there was a change which Theo had noticed a bit back from the date when they stopped sending messages, which was a message which talked about him taking an apprentice for his magore technician work. He mentioned the person a few other times, which he seemed to be fascinated by and had plans for them which he didn’t elaborate on.
For some reason, the name Elm Grayson felt familiar to him, and had rolled around in his mind during the entire time he was there. He tried to click it with something, but it stayed stuck in his mind unable to connect with any greater concept. That was genuinely infuriating for him.
Keagan took a moment to open up one of the drawers on the desk and look inside, rummaging around with his hand. Just as he felt a cold metallic object, he felt a sharp pain in his middle finger. A small “ouch” of surprise came out of him as he checked his finger to find a surprisingly long cut on it. He opened it further with his other hand to find a rather ornamental knife and an unbroken slave cuff. As he studied it, he heard the door open and Theo walk inside, immediately spotting his cut finger and sighing in response.
“Come here, Key.” Theo walked over and extended out his palms, asking for his hand.
“Theo, it’s just a small cut. You don’t need to.”
“Just let me do it for you. I don’t want anything else weighing on your mind.”
Keagan relented and placed out his cut hand to his partner. Theo placed his palm over Keagan’s cut finger, focusing on it intently. Both of them went silent, and Keagan watched as the wound on his finger began to shift and close up, until it looked as though there was never an injury in the first place. The only thing left to suggest a wound was there was the blood that was already there, which he quickly wiped away with his shirt. Once it was done, Keagan felt a slight shift in his personal energy. Even if it was a small cut, changing one’s internal flow was a draining process.
“You don’t need to heal every cut and bruise I get. Save your energy and time for the bigger injuries.”
Theo looked up at him and smiled.
“That might be true, but I don’t want you to get too beaten up. Wouldn’t want any more scars ruining that body of yours.”
Keagan felt a bit lighter after hearing those words. It was a depressing day, but this gave it some levity.
“Well? Any ideas?” Theo leaned up against the wall and crossed his arms.
“Some of them, but I feel like I’m missing something here. I know that something has to be big here, but I can’t tell. On the plus side, the soundline should still work.” Keagan motioned to the device. It was something that he couldn’t personally use due to lacking any form of attunement. Being able to use soundlines was another way that Theo helped tie Keagan to the empire.
Theo walked around the desk to stand behind Keagan and began to survey all the items that he had laid out.
“Find anything of interest in Galen’s office? Well, anything that’s less sharp.” Theo teased.
In response, Keagan reopened the drawer and grabbed the slave cuff, throwing it into the air for Theo to catch. It bounced around in his hands for a few seconds until coming to a rest.
“No key, which means the slaves probably took it with them. They probably didn’t take the cuff with them out of principle.” He remarked.
“They are a scary piece of tech. The slaves must hate these more than anything.”
Theo was right. They were a revolutionary invention, but the slaves must have despised them with all of their being. A tool which deprived them of their unique…
No. It can’t be. He’s supposed to be dead.
Elm Grayson’s name finally clicked in Keagan’s mind and his first response was panic, an emotion he rarely experienced.
This is bad. This is really, really fucking bad.
“Theo, can you check the message transcripts again? I need to make sure the name on it is the one I think it is. Does Galen talk about an Elm Grayson?”
Second Lieutenant Theodore, seeing his superior’s panic, immediately began shuffling through the bag he had on his hip to pull out the documents. He looked through and spotted the name, then turned to his partner and nodded.
Everything just got a whole lot worse.
All of the details from the messages added together into one big sign that screamed oncoming disaster.
“Key, what’s wrong?”
He turned and grabbed the cuff out of Theo’s hand, holding it up in front of him, his gaze stone cold.
“If that information is correct, that means the slaves are probably being led by Major Elm Grayson. The inventor of the slave cuffs and a man who would have an unrivaled hatred for Arlin.”
There was an unspoken terror at the realization, as the same thought passed through both of their minds. The tale of the broken Major Grayson, the man who murdered over 40 trained soldiers by himself after deserting, was well known throughout the military. They would tell stories about him to reinforce that deserting the Arlin forces would lead to death, no matter how skilled you were. If one of the greatest mages of their time couldn’t survive the might of Arlin, no one could. At least, that was what they thought before this moment. Now, Keagan and Theo were dealing with the horrifying fact that one of the most accomplished soldiers in Arlinian history was not only alive, but was most likely wandering the empire with a platoon of mages.
The slaves weren’t just running from the empire.
They were going to war.