Chapter 3 - Dreams and Vows

Northern Facility, Vanstead Dukedom of Augustein, Year 989

“You’ve never heard of the Warped Forest?”

Amara looked over from where her gaze had drifted over to Lily and Tom in the corner. The two were playing some kind of hand game involving a series of intricate motions that she still couldn’t make sense of. It still felt odd to see the two of them older now. She’d gotten used to them being the “babies” of the cell, but they’d shot up in height and didn’t look all that different from the rest of them now.

Edith was watching her expectantly, and Amara shrugged.

“No.”

“How, though? Literally everyone in Vanstead knows about it!”

“Didn’t you say I was probably from Chaunton?”

The other girl sputtered, but quickly spoke again, never one to lose ground for long. “Well, we’re in Vanstead right now, you know? Once we get out of here, you’d better know about it!” She spoke the words confidently, like she spoke most things. Edith leaned forward. “My mo—I’ve heard tons of stories,” she corrected. Over the years, the girl had grown increasingly uncomfortable mentioning her family or anyone else she used to know.

Amara nodded, obligingly turning to face her and crossing her legs. “Tell me,” she said. Edith grinned triumphantly, and that alone was more than enough.

A few of the other kids paused and glanced over, including Lily and Tom, who stopped their game and scooted closer. Along with them came Susie and Ben, and eventually almost the entire cell was gathered around Edith, who sat up straighter. She began gesturing wildly with her arms as she always did when she told stories.

“Far up north in the Shifting Lands, where the air’s cold and there’s more trees than grasses, they say there’s a forest where the trees move.” She paused for dramatic effect.

“I thought they changed shapes,” Susie piped up.

“Shush, I was getting to that!” Edith huffed. “Up there, they say there’s no more form magic in the earth to keep them still, so they keep changing shapes. The branches’ll get longer and shorter, and the trunks twist around and bend as easily as water.” She mimicked the motion with her body. In her thin, malnourished state, her flailing arms brought back memories of James. Amara swallowed and kept listening.

“But the forest doesn’t just stay there,” Edith said dramatically. She leaned closer, and her audience obligingly leaned forward as well. “Every year it moves further and further south, and everywhere the trees go, that place also ends up, well, like that!” The girl fumbled for words, but pressed onward. “Not just that, but they say Aberrations live deep in the forest. They hide away in the trees, and whenever the forest gets close to a town, the Aberrations jump out!”

Edith swung her arms up like she was about to pounce, and a few of the kids gasped. Most of the ones who did so were the newer arrivals, people who hadn’t spent a year in the facility yet. After that point, their reactions usually dulled to some extent.

Edith looked around expectantly, and after a few seconds, they started clapping in awkward, erratic bursts, unused to the gesture. It seemed to be enough for the girl, who looked pleased with her story’s reception.

“Why’s it keep moving south?” one of the girls asked. She was one of the youngest in their cell. She didn’t speak much, but Amara often caught her singing to herself at night and after sessions. She always did it softly, mostly to herself, but Amara found herself wishing the girl would be louder. She had a pretty voice.

Edith frowned, and her eyes darted over to Amara for help. Amara just shrugged. She certainly didn’t know. Edith rolled her eyes and launched into an impressively convoluted string of explanations that grew increasingly more wild the longer she went on. Amara listened patiently, enjoying the tale despite its absurdity.

Later that night, while the rest of the kids slept, Edith sat down near Amara, who raised an eyebrow at her.

“So, the forest.”

Edith hit her good naturedly, making sure to focus the blow on Amara’s shoulder and not her increasingly scarred arms. “Shush. It’s cool, okay?”

Amara hummed. “It sounds scary.”

“Well, maybe a little, but I still want to see it.”

Amara nodded in understanding. “Yeah, I think I do too,” she said after a moment of thought. Through Edith’s tales, she’d learned about a string of different places, all of which sounded equal parts terrifying and beautiful. Just last week, Edith had spoken about the great storms of Aeramire, where excessive energy magic ore mining had resulted in extreme and unstable weather patterns. The way the other girl had described them had made them seem otherworldly and awe inspiring.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Sometimes, a small part of Amara resented Edith for telling these stories and filling her head with these images that she knew deep down she would never get to see. But then Edith would talk about the two of them traveling around the world together and going to see all those sights with such assuredness that she forgave her immediately.

Amara closed her eyes and allowed sleep to overtake her. She didn’t dream often, but that night, she dreamed of swirling branches and distorted trees, sharp figures against a vast, unending sky.

—

Susie died. Edith took it harder than Amara had expected, but the two of them had always been closer than Amara ever was with the girl. The next two nights, instead of sleeping near Amara like she usually did, she lay down on Susie’s old spot and stared up at the ceiling for hours. Amara didn’t know if she actually fell asleep those nights; she didn’t see her shut her eyes before her own weariness overtook her.

There hadn’t been a death in a long time, Amara realized. The last one was over a year ago. A part of her had assumed that those of them left in the cell were the “successes,” that they at least wouldn’t have to worry about losing another face among them, and she could tell that the others had thought the same, too. Amara absentmindedly squeezed her arm and stared at Susie’s old spot. She allowed numbness to overtake the simmering cold feeling in her gut.

She thought about the girl’s warm, bright hair. The cell was significantly more colorless without it.

—

“How long do you think they’ll keep us here?” Edith asked one day. Amara frowned at her, rolling over and bumping into the girl in the process. She tried to keep quiet, aware of the slumbering forms surrounding them.

“Go to sleep,” Amara whispered to her instead. She was about to shift and roll over again, but before she could, Edith’s hand shot out, stopping her.

“The Raymoths were overthrown.”

Edith’s eyes burned fiercely, their usual sparkle now so sharp they were almost painful to look at. Her hands shook slightly with rage. Amara swallowed. She’d never seen Edith look like that before. She sat up a little.

“…Are you sure?”

It was all she could think of to say. Her own mind reeled, trying to digest the information. For as long as she could remember, she’d always associated “Raymoths” with “the Sovereign” and “Sovereign” with those introductory words the magicians had said all those years ago: that the Sovereign had ordered for the experiments to occur. It was simply a fact of their existence that everyone in the cell knew of, but none had ever been able to do anything about it. Even Edith had, at most, speculated for a few days about the reason for the experiments before she, too, became tired of the subject and its lack of answers.

The Raymoths were overthrown? That meant there was a new Sovereign, which meant—

“I heard the guards talking about it.” Edith interrupted her thoughts, the other girl’s voice low. She clenched her fist. “The Sovereign’s been different for three years.”

Amara shook her head. “That can’t be. The experiments—”

“—are still going on.” Edith let out a frustrated breath. “The magicians must’ve kept doing them on their own.” She tugged at her hair, biting her lip so hard that Amara was worried it would start bleeding.

“Maybe the new Sovereign doesn’t know,” Amara said half-heartedly, both for Edith’s and her own sake. In her mind, all that rang out was, You’ll be here forever. The cold feeling boiled so intensely she was worried it would overflow. But she couldn’t let it, not here in the cell, surrounded by everyone else.

Even though she’d always told herself that she’d accepted her fate, a small part of her might have always hoped, she realized. But if the old Sovereign, the one who had ordered the experiments, was dead and they were still happening, then that was undeniable proof to her that nothing would ever stop them. They would die in the facility, and the rest of the world would probably never even know that they existed. The latter, Amara realized, was somehow an even more terrifying thought than the first.

Edith started to get up. “I’m gonna ask them,” she said, eyes hard. Amara jerked her head up in alarm.

“Are you crazy?” she hissed.

“I need answers,” Edith said. Amara reached up and grabbed her, preventing her from standing.

“Go back to sleep,” she said. She paused to take a second and glance around, worried that she’d woken the others, but if she had then they were good at pretending to be asleep. Amara turned back to Edith, pulling on her sleeve with more urgency. “What’s asking them gonna do? Even if they answer you, we’re still stuck here.” Edith flinched, but she quickly recovered, the flame in her eyes flaring.

“They can’t keep us here forever. We’re not just scared little kids anymore!”

“Yeah, which means they’ll get rid of us if they have to!”

The older they got, the more the magicians treated them with wariness. They were reaching an age where they were harder to control, and Amara was very aware that they weren’t the only “successes” in the facility. They weren’t valuable enough to risk keeping around if the magicians ever thought they were too much to handle.

Edith grit her teeth, swallowing, and Amara could see the girl shaking as she visibly tried to calm herself. She yanked her arm away and turned around, laying her head down with her back facing Amara and resolutely refusing to look at her.

Amara tried to tap her shoulder a few times over the night, calling out her name, but Edith continued to ignore her. Finally, Amara gave up and turned away as well, closing her eyes and waiting for sleep to take over. This was fine, she told herself, forcing her mind to that floaty place where everything was muted and there was no danger of that cold feeling rising. She’d rather Edith be mad at her than dead.