Mason pulled himself off of his thin mat. His mat was less than an inch thick and stuffed with one feather. Mason’s back ached with the pain of sleeping with no padding. Sometimes he would try to find leaves that he could stuff into his mat. But he always awoke with the leaves gone.
Having no idea where they went, he had tried staying up to see who was taking them, but he always fell asleep, and the leaves were gone in the morning. This just showed how much people wanted the giftless to know they were worthless. This was just one of the little things that happened from being giftless. Being giftless was much worse than being a slave.
Mason had seen slaves. They had great lives. Even those who were 10, eight years his junior, had thick arms compared to him. You could see his ribs through his shirt and had only grown to about 5 feet tall. So Mason and the other giftless were often compared to monkeys in the jungle, but Mason had no idea what those were.
As Mason pulled on his thin, gray, cotton shirt he thought about the dream he had experienced last night. He had witnessed a baby given too many gifts from an earthquake. Since he had been given more than one gift his parents were forced to slay him in fear that he would be too powerful.
But that wasn't the end of the dream. He had seen the baby's spirit fly up into the sky. It was small compared to most people, even him. But it had huge arms, and a thick, meaty, visible brain. It summoned lighting bolts, tongues of flame, and so much more.
But the worst part of the baby's spirit was the anger. It was hungry. It wanted Revenge. It wanted to tear apart the limbs of its parents with just its mind. The wind howled and the very world warped from the spirit’s anger.
The spirit had flown to the edge of the world to the Kingdom of Kandor. It implanted itself in the mind of King Gathoric. With a host that had a whole kingdom under its command, it could get revenge. Then it would show the whole world how powerful it was. At the end of the dream, the now-possessed king turned to where Mason’s point of view was.
“Hello Mason,” it had said. Before he had woken up in a cold sweat.
Mason shuddered. The last part was creepy, but he felt for the child. At least he hadn't been killed when a merchant found him giftless, surrounded by the corpses of his parents. When he was old enough to understand that almost everyone had gifts but him he had always wondered why he couldn't get one now. The cruel “Mother of The Giftless” who was giftless herself had sharply explained that gifts were only given at birth because children could only be gifted within 24 hours after birth.
Mason sighed as he shoveled his daily meal into his mouth. A tasteless gruel that had unidentifiable chunks. With this proteinless meal, it did not take a mentally gifted person to figure out why he was malnourished.
As Mason ate his last bite, the “Mother of the Giftless” entered. She was a stout and pudgy woman, whose only job was stopping kids from escaping. The only reason she was able to get pudgy is because watching over worthless people gives you privileges. When she walked in she clapped her hands together, and in her usual squeaky voice said, “All right kids, time to go get your chores done.”
By chores, she meant going to the market, and having someone buy them for a day, so they could do labor for them. The giftless called it doing their chores so they didn’t get depressed about getting rented for a day, every day just a normal person could get more stuff done. Mason gave a deep sigh and stood on his thin legs, time to get to work.
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“I want that old fella right there,” a scraggly old man said, pointing at Mason. It was the same old man that had “employed” Mason for the past two weeks. The reason Mason was “that old fella” is that even though he was as skinny as a 5-year-old boy he was 18 years old, one year away from being sent out on his own where he would probably die in a gutter.
Mason hauled himself off of his rickety chair and waddled over to the old man. The renting of the giftless lasted for so long that the sun was now directly in the middle of the sky, almost three hours later than when the giftless had arrived.
The old man got into a carriage pulled by four fine white and brown stallions. He then dropped out of the carriage with a braided rope. No Mason couldn't ride in the carriage, no it was too good for him, Mason would have to walk behind the carriage. All 5 miles.
The old man tied up his hands with the same rope that had been used to rope him up for the past three weeks. Yeah, Mason didn't like this guy very much.
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The old man struck the horses with a whip, and they started up. Fast. To fast for Mason. This happened almost every time Mason got picked by the old guy. The horses went much faster than Mason could keep up. So for the last three weeks every time at midday he was dragged across the rocky earth, acquiring legs that got shredded almost down to the bone. Today was especially brutal. Skin hung off his leg in thin little strands. All giftless jobs started like this, and he was now able to turn off his sense of pain, a trick he had learned after many years. After many years of this abuse, his body always somehow healed overnight.
After many large rocks and lots of cursings, they finally arrived at the old man's house. A large, wooden barn surrounded by a half-completed fence with random wild animals milling around.
The fence is what Mason has been working on for the past three weeks. By this time he should’ve had large meaty muscles from hauling big logs of wood for so long, but his one daily meal only went to keeping him alive.
Immediately Mason got to work. The faster that he got the day's work done the faster that he could go home and sleep. He walked over two where he had last worked on the fence and grabbed the rough handle of a hammer, a post, and a shovel. He dug a hole with 5-inch diameter and nearly a foot deep. Holding up a pole that was barely light enough for Mason to lift, he threw it into the hole. Then he filled in the hole with the excess dirt. Last of all he used supplied wire to make a fence where animals could not cross.
Repeating this process several times Mason worked until sunset. Every post had given him at least one blister. So by the end, Mason's hands were just big blisters. Mason’s sense of pain was still turned off, and he just stared at the big bubbles of blood, pus, and skin in his hands. Mason picked up the hammer and dropped it on the old man's porch. But when the hammer landed, he could not hear the clatter it usually made. Instead, all he could hear was the sound of a horn. Turning behind him Mason saw a dark horse with rippling muscles underneath its fur. It had red, demonic eyes, and large fangs coming from its mouth. But the man riding it was even worse. Even from half a mile away, he could make out details of the man. He was a bald man with skin that was a deep purple. His eyes shone as bright as the noonday sun. His body was covered in thick defined muscles, his brain was bigger than half of his body, and a thick two-edged sword was strapped across his back.
The man's face seemed to be the most normal part about him, but it also seemed familiar. Mason searched his memory for a time when he would have seen this man. He had never seen the body of this man, but he had the face of a king. A king far from civilization, a king whose kingdom was on the edge of the world. The king of Kandor. Mason paled. This was King Gathoric. But he was not himself. He was infested by the baby killed in Mason's dream. The all-powerful baby was back, and now it would get revenge.
“Hello Mason,” the king/baby said, and Mason barely held in a laugh. The baby's voice, even though it was in the body of a full-grown man, was still all as squeaky as a child just learning to speak. But the laughter he was holding back faded as realized what the man had said.
“What did you say?” Mason said.
“Would you show me the way to the town?” The abomination of a man asked unfazed.
“How do you know my name?” Mason demanded.
“Where is the town?” The king said.
But Mason wouldn't let himself go unanswered. “How do you know my name?”
Before the words had finished exiting his mouth the King materialized right in front of him.
Anger burned in his shining eyes and sound led in his voice as he said once again, “Where is the town boy? Tell me!” Mason stumbled back in fright. He tripped on the hammer into the old man’s door. Not even trying to catch himself on the door he pointed down the road.
“The town is that way,” Mason squeaked. As the King turned away the old man came out from his house.
“Hey what is going on…” The King slashed at the old man with a two-edged sword faster than Mason could track.
The old man's head tumbled from his shoulders and onto the floor. Spraying droplets of blood. Mason gasped and fell back. He has never seen someone die so quickly and unexpectedly before. The king turned to Mason.
“I would kill you,” he said without seemingly any remorse for what he had just done. “But as a giftless you are worthless, and you could not harm me if I was asleep.”
With those words, the King turned into the road and raised a curved horn to his lips. A deep rumbling sound echoed across the field. Mason waited for something to happen.
“Is something go…” Thousands of men wearing deep purple armor came pounding out of the forest. Their purple armor had a head with a visible brain coming out the back, and the head was wearing a crown. This was the King’s army, his force of revenge. The army headed straight for its king, tearing through the weeks' worth of fence that Mason had put up. The King raised his arms when the army got to him, and they all slowed to a stop.
“Today starts our conquest,” the King yelled, “our growth, our reign, and,” he paused. “My Revenge.” Mason shivered at that last word. It was filled with so much anger and hatred. But deep below Mason could barely tell, there was some sadness in it as well.
“Today we will start with this small town. We will expand my host body’s pathetic kingdom. Before anyone can stop us we will have too much power to be stopped, and we will slay them all!” The crowd roared at the King's speech, not even seeming slightly disturbed that he had said ”host body.”
The King turned around on his demonic stallion and rode towards the town. The army followed, and the earth shook.
“Well,” Mason reasoned with himself. “I could stay here and not get slain, or I could go try to do something to save people who hate me.” Even though everyone in this small town of Smegenbieg had done something to spite him, Mason found himself trudging to try and help his town.