“It’s all gone…”

The village was silent. The only sounds I could hear were those of nature and the wind. No voices. No movement. Nothing.

Bir was dead.

There were some buildings still standing, but many of them had been trampled and broken apart, leaving only piles of rubble. The more I stared at it, the more and more I was reminded of Marlisle. It was the silence that hurt the most. Before I could say anything, Ruby began to dash down from the hill and towards the village.

Shit.

People began to stop behind me to also take a look at the town, and the caravan and its strigs slowed down to a halt. Word began to pass down about the state of the place and Ruby’s reaction, finally hitting the back of the caravan. I was surrounded by murmurs about the dead town in front of us. After a minute of simply standing there, I could hear Elm run up to my side to get his own look at the town.

“Fucking hell…” I was used to hearing him curse, but this time felt different. “Kid, where’d the cartographer go?”

I had to speak up, as the voices behind us were only getting louder. “She ran down ahead of us. I don’t think she cares if there are traps. She just wanted to get a look at it close up as fast as she could. Is it safe to follow after her?”

Elm simply shook his head, his eyes not seeing the town, but something beyond it. It was another memory from his past. “They don't put traps in places like these. No point, especially because they might want to stay here on longer journeys. All of this is just to send a message.”

“Don’t fight back.” It was the same message they wanted to send when they killed Marlisle. A warning that fighting back would lead to complete and utter annihilation.

Elm gave a solemn nod before beginning to walk down the hill. I followed after him, and soon the entire caravan began to move down the trail and into the lifeless village of Bir.

***

It’s so quiet.

The caravan had remained silent as we entered the village. The only sounds people made were quiet whispers commenting on the horrid sight that Bir was. There was the faint smell of burning flesh that came through the air every so often and immediately stung at the nose. As I walked further and further into the village, the stench only grew stronger.

But where is Ruby?

“This is a sad sight. A village which held its own identity, erased. I do pray they experienced a fight in their final moments as a people.” Although I had expected somebody to eventually break the silence, I had not expected Wanderer to be that person.

“Did they do this to villages in Irebor?” I knew that Irebor was a place of warriors and Elina had talked about them always fighting with Arlin.

“Indeed. During my time in the rebel forces, I saw many villages and towns just like this, brought to ruin. Those who refused to submit couldn’t be tolerated in Arlin’s vision.” Wanderer called upon a distant past as he spoke. Even with his status as a deserter, he held a deep reverence for his people and their culture. If he didn’t have that mark on his cheek, I could see him and Elina getting along extremely well.

Why would a man like him desert?

“But where are the people?” I pondered aloud. Wanderer turned to look at me, his eyes snapping away from the village.

“I think you know where they are.” Wanderer solemnly admitted. Although I might have been imagining it, it looked as though he placed his hand on his hip where one would imagine a sword would be.

I know. They’re all dead. Probably in a mass grave.

“Do we know where your cartographer is?”

“Mell’s looking for her.” I asked Mell since she seemed to get along with him well. If there was a person who could help console her and reign her in, it was probably him. I needed to talk with her eventually, but he was best for the moment.

“Sir! Over here!” Mell’s voice boomed off in the distance.

“Speaking of. I should get moving.” I began to sprint in the direction of the voice. For a man who rarely raised his voice, Mell could get really loud.

When I finally arrived at the location of Mell and Ruby, I skidded on the dirt. Ruby was on her knees looking completely dejected while Mell crouched down next to her, his hand placed on her shoulder. They both stood in front of a pit, where the entire town of Bir was now located. The soldiers who massacred this place didn’t even give the people the courtesy of covering it. Just a mass of corpses, left out in the sun for nature to have its way with.

It was sickening, and the stench of rotting flesh was now overwhelming. I wanted to gag. Steeling myself, I decided to walk over to the other side of Ruby. She didn’t even look sad or angry, she just looked hollow. The spark of energy that she had on the way here was now completely snuffed out. Getting closer to the pit, I could see how mangled the bodies were. Many of them had been shot through by burners multiple times, with limbs severed or massive holes carved in their flesh. While some faces were still able to be made out, some were simply gone or unrecognizable.

All of this, just to send a message.

After standing next to her for a while, I decided to finally speak.

“Ruby, I-”

“No, North.” Ruby interjected. “Not right now. I can’t. I need some time.”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Mell turned his head away from the pit and silently nudged me back in the direction of the caravan. There were others now standing behind me and reacting to the pit. Ruby needed time to mourn, and I wasn’t going to intrude on that. As I walked back through the crowd that had formed behind me, I called them to action.

“Let’s get set up! We might be resting here for a couple days. We’ll have time to deal with this later.” The words felt rancid coming out of my mouth.

***

Ruby remembered faces as well as she could remember locations on maps. They existed parallel in her mind. Faces were made up of features, contours and grooves that flowed into each other and all fit together into one grander landmark. The nose and cheeks were like mountains and hills, while the eyes and lips were rivers and lakes. Whether it be a face or a map, when the features were unified together into one singular piece, they told a story.

In the villages she visited as a child, she was good at identifying people even after long trips. When they had an interesting face, she would draw them down to better remember them for the future and to more easily connect them with a name. Her tribe often relied on her to make the connections with individuals in the many towns and villages they visited on their journeys. Ruby made sure to draw each and every important landmark in her life on paper, because as long as it was some type of map, she could remember it.

Bir was a familiar town to her. Its structure rarely changed. Whenever she spent time exploring it or using her attunement to understand her surroundings, it all felt the same. If she had to put a word to it, she would say that its structure and landmarks were all comfortable. The people weren’t the most inviting to outsiders, and especially Arlin, but saw her tribe like a distant family member. Whenever they visited, they were greeted with open arms and a warm welcome. She would meet with the faces she remembered and learn about all of the small changes that had occurred when she was gone. She would update her mapping of the people of Bir, and then she would leave.

Change and Bir were two distant concepts in her mind. Bir would always be Bir, and its people would always have the same general contours and landmarks. In her years at the mining camp, whenever she thought back to the town of Bir, it felt like a painting. A place stuck in time, forever captured in delicate brushstrokes. It shifted ever so slightly as the years went by, but the same broad strokes always remained the exact same.

That time was long gone. Arlin couldn’t deal with something that refused to change. Bir was incompatible with Arlin, and therefore it had to be destroyed.

When she had first suggested the path here, the tiniest voice in the back of her mind warned her of this fact. There were many other things that had taken up her focus, but the voice grew louder and louder as the caravan drew near. When she finally came across the pit, the voice went from a small whisper to a loud screaming about how naive she was.

The faces, the maps of identity she had held so fondly in her mind were now twisted. That was only considering the ones she could see and make out as she stood over their shared grave. Their memory was forever tarnished by the looks of horror they were now trapped in.

She didn’t know if she should be angry, sad or both at the same time. Ruby just felt as though an important piece of her being had been shattered and torn away.

Mell stood by her, comforting her. He wanted to help, even if he couldn’t understand the exact emotions that she was experiencing. He just knew that the best action he could take at that moment was to be right there. She wanted to tell him, but the words weren’t there. How could she explain something that she herself only viewed through the same lens as the maps that she coveted?

The silence was gone now. The caravan was starting to move and set up for the time they would remain at the location. They would eventually start scavenging through the now barren homes of Bir. Ruby didn’t blame them for that, knowing what was at stake. It didn’t help her either. Others would occasionally stop their work to take peeks at her before moving away. Only Mell was willing to stay by her side.

“Hey.”

“Yes mam?” Mell’s head perked up.

Wonder if all Asarnians are this polite, or if it’s just him.

“You don’t have to stay here, you know that. They could probably use your help.” She forced out a weak smile. In response, he simply shook his head.

“North ordered me to find you and help you out. Until he says otherwise, I’m staying with you.” Mell sat down, letting his legs out in front of him. He was careful not to let his legs dip into the pit. “Plus, I’d feel bad.”

“Thank you.” Ruby weakly responded. Ever since they had started talking with each other, Mell felt like a younger brother that she had never had. Despite his overwhelming size and strength, Mell was a kinder soul who was willing to help others simply based on the fact that it was nice. Battle and the mines had hardened him, but that friendliness and respect of others remained. He lifted her up when she asked and enjoyed listening to others. If they had chosen to go with Nicole to Mylia, she probably would have tried to keep Mell with her. He was just that type of person.

“How well did you know them?”

“They were like distant friends. Our tribe had a schedule. We visited them around spring most of the time. They weren’t family, but they were important.” Ruby finally looked up from the pit. “What was your family like, back in Asarn?”

Mell’s gaze turned up to the sky as he began to reminisce.

“We were herders. Lived in a nowhere area. Closest walk to any other people was half an hour. Big family though. Had 4 brothers and 3 sisters, and all of us worked with the animals. I ended up caring the most for the strigs, since I was the only one able to carry them.”

Ruby almost snorted. She had almost forgotten about Mell’s weird attunement, and the fact that he apparently was able to lug strigs around on his shoulders.

“What happened to make you end up in Boralis?” Ruby asked the question that every slave was inevitably asked. ‘How did you end up here?’ was a story that each of them shared in some capacity, and it varied wildly.

“Empire had to raid to keep the mines working. Apparently, somebody finally told the Arlinian’s about us. One check with a piece of magore later, and I was being carted off. Ain’t more complex than that.”

“Sounds pretty typical, all things considered.” Ruby took a small scoot backwards on the dirt.

“Yup. Don’t know what happened to my folks after that. Or Asarn in general. Guards never talked about it.” Mell let out a belated sigh. Talking about the past was extremely tiring. Memory upon memory, caked in the dirt and grime of years long past. The mines took a lot away from the slaves, including memory. The monotony of the work broke down character and identity with each swing of a pick.

Ruby remembered Alex talking about the night North recruited him. It was 2 days into their journey on the road, and another slave had asked the rusted Nacilian how he ended up being a major player in the revolt. North’s message about history being the thing that insulted Arlin the most, the thing that held them back. The pit in front of her was proof of that. In what may have been a single night, Arlin had eradicated the history and memory of Bir and shoved it all into one open pit.

“Do you maybe want to do something for the dead?” Mell asked the question which was also gnawing at a bit of Ruby’s mind. She had thought about doing something for them. North had been giving all of the dead a Corithian funeral, but these people weren’t from Corith. Her tribe followed their own practices. Where they died, they were buried. Whenever the tribe would visit that location, they would spend some time to mourn at the grave.

This wasn’t the practice at Bir. She didn’t know what they did, and couldn’t know. Doing her practice would be like further tarnishing the already broken painting. But North’s method felt wrong.

“I don’t know.” She admitted.

Ruby finally understood North’s predicament with the memory of Marlisle. Just as she would never know that village, the caravan would not know Bir.

Surrounded by people both dead and alive, Ruby was entirely alone.