Prologue

Suffocating is a strange way for a moment to begin. But in Michael’s defence, it was a definitively worse way for things to end, so it seemed a sound compromise.

Mud coated his throat as a strangled breath pried against his clamped jaw. His body convulsed and squeezed as it tried to purge. His hands swung and ripped at the boy keeping him submerged. His fingers wildly tore at the skin of the arms pinning him under, but for every ripped nail, nothing more than bellowed anger seemed to follow.

His body retched and alarms fired in the corners of his mind. His arms shook. The thick black of his smothered eyes swelled with red patches and he swallowed against his urge to breathe.

Then the dark of his mind seemed to twist, like someone was reaching into the black of his scrambled consciousness with a cold hand before wringing his mind like a wet towel.

The cold mud lathered on his skin then flashed hot. The air swelled thick with the sweet smell of blood. The taste of fresh iron swelled in the air. Wails and desperate shouts echoed, as though he heard them through a boarded hallway.

His head slammed the ground again and the noise, the taste, the feeling all snapped off like a water-plunged torch. He choked again and his body twitched. Tears ran hot from his eyes.

Michael wrenched at the hands around his throat. He pulled his knee into his chest and kicked straight up into the groin of the strangler. He heard a muted scream as the weight atop him recoiled and the grip on his neck loosened.

Gripping his wrists still, Michael ripped the boy’s hands toward him and threw his forehead skyward, as though sitting up violently. A flash of pain burst across Michael’s brow but a gargled scream followed in the darkness and the weight atop him scrambled and thrashed. Michael let go of the boy’s flailing wrists and felt him collapse away.

Michael pulled himself out of the mud, crawling from the noise as a symphony of shouts and onlooking winces filled the courtyard. He heard little of it. He pushed himself up onto all fours, coughing, hacking and spitting mud. Something warm trickled from the back of his head, running down the side of his face and dripping off of his nose.

He retched like a cat and a thick knot of mud loosened from his throat. The air which came after was clean and his heart finally slowed, but still the world came in pieces.

A wincing crowd. The bleeding boy numbly clutching at his mangled nose. Their concerned friends. Michael’s gnarled, skinned hands pressed into the muck.

Slowly the images played longer and painted clearer as his breathing evened.

“Get off me!” a rough voice barked.

Michael turned to see the young man pushing his friends away, one hand cupping his bleeding face, the other clutching a dirty, bent knife as he stepped toward Michael.

Michael sighed but didn’t bother rising.

“You’ve got some scrap, I’ll give that to you, but if you think we’re done-”

Michael yawned ungracefully and the boy’s face flashed with feral anger.

“Alright, get up you little shit!”

Michael finished his yawn and raked a handful of mud out of his hair. His voice was tired and worn. “Some people are so odd. Bringing knives to fistfights. Makes them feel so safe… till they realise bringing a knife to a fight… one with rules… is the same as bringing someone a way to kill you and an excuse to do so that most courts of law will accept as self-defence.”

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He looked a shade paler for a moment. The crowd was so quiet that the wind in the alleyways was the accenting sound. He hesitantly replied. “That’s assuming you get it off me. You, a twig. Off me.”

Michael cocked his head, looking squarely into his eyes. “Being six foot tall is not going to stop me from snapping off your thumb and forefinger. And it sure isn’t going to stop me from opening you like a cheap Snapper from the market.” The venom dripped off of Michael’s tongue.

The man probably didn’t mean to but he regripped the knife all the same.

Michael wiped some of the blood off his teeth. “Or you know… you could go home.”

It took a minute. A long minute. But he did.

Michael relaxed into his slouch again, feeling the suppressed panic in his chest slowly melt away.

The crowd slowly moved on, the entertainment now at its end. And Michael was left alone in the courtyard of Old Bawdion East.

Ruined stone buildings surrounded him, with small narrow streets zig-zagging out into the rest of Dim-Side.

Michael’s hair was dark and thick with mud and sludge as he rose to his knees, but his stomach and back shook and he slumped like a warrior, beaten upon the field. His head hung as he combed stones and muck through his fingers, knowing it was all he had the strength for.

As his nimble fingers worked the dirt from his hair, he became numbly aware of the way the cold bled into his knees. He frowned, running a firm hand along his thigh, massaging the feeling back into it, when a perfect drop of blood splashed crimson above his patella.

Suddenly his mouth was thick with the taste of iron and his lungs were knotted in heat. The mud was sunbaked like a battlefield corpse. His palms and fingers were calloused in some places and torn in others.

Someone was screaming his name. Wailing it. Begging.

Michael looked upon the empty courtyard, but his heart of hearts knew the voice wasn’t there. Neither were the smells of burning hair, hot blood or chipped metal. Neither were the feelings of torn fingers, hoarse throats and dried tears. And the moment he knew the truth of it, the headache snapped off like a hanging icicle in a sudden wind.

The air was clean again between his teeth. He wiped away the splotch of blood and for every moment he spent chasing the plaguing thoughts the faster they ran. He didn’t catch them.

The sun was low in the sky and the light bled pink and orange through the thin wisps of cloud overhead. Somewhere, someone was singing, a soft mindless melody. He imagined them doing dishes.

Footsteps rose behind Michael and he turned faintly to see two familiar shapes thundering toward him. One slender and one broad. As they grew closer he smiled softly to himself and settled into his bruised bones, suddenly tired.

“I knew you’d be late,” Michael muttered, the smile in his words.

The shapes came skidding to his side and grabbed him as he slumped over.

“Michael!” Carter wiped clean his closed eyes and began frantically looking over Michael’s injuries. His skin dark next to Michael’s. “Sweet Rii, I told you not to-”

“I had to. You would’ve.”

James fretted over his various injuries and cast a frantic look to the surrounding roads. “We best clear out and get him somewhere safe. Someone will have tipped off the guards. Can you walk?”

Michael gave the barest shade of a chuckle in amidst all his pain. The darkness wrapped around him again. He could feel the warmth of his brothers through his stiff clothes.

“S’spect I’ll be alright. I always….”

Michael would’ve said more but was suddenly rather busy passing out.

James and Carter spent a moment deliberating before deciding to carry him home.

In the thick dark of Michael’s subconscious, he felt his body lifted, and a rush of his blood surged into the base of his skull, and for the space of a moment alone, he dreamt of stone hallways and bronze light. He dreamt of long-clawed beasts and arenas of pale sand. Young soldiers with old weapons. Crushed soil and glistening blood. Lofty music and the pitched, manic wailing of grief. The gentle touch of a stranger and the wandering sound of his own whispered name faded behind a dull ache deep in the pit of his chest.

Michael awoke like he was struck by a thunderbolt.

And upon waking, remembered not a name, not a single detail nor a phantom memory in the deep recesses of his mind.

Alas, Michael sat upright in his bed in the dark of his cramped room, and he did not sleep again that night.

The wind whistled in broken gusts behind his window; the world was laughing at its own joke, patiently waiting for the punchline.