It was only two days later he learnt of Sol's intentions, and he was surprised he didn't hate them.
“I hope you don't think you were saved because of some sort of lucky break, kid,” a familiar voice woke him from one of many fitful dosing sessions.
It was the crew man who had annoyed Sol. They were coconspirators, just as Garin had suspected. And the ship he was on wasn't Sol's, otherwise the old man would have come himself.
Garin didn't say anything, just looking at the man with a trembling body. He didn't have to fake it too, the coverings were so bare for sea faring.
The man just snorted. “You think behaving like a kid is going to save you? You either agree to the old man's demands or we change our minds and have the others drown you.”
“Nooo…” Garin croaked in fear.
“Yes,” the man said with an ever widening diabolical grin, “you are going to be sacrificed to the island, like the rest of these slaves.”
Even though his heart beat with excitement, Garin couldn't afford to let it show. He pretended to be wary.
“T-the Sidonai? You want me to go to hell?”
“You're well read, huh? Well, sure, we want you to enter the sphere. I am going to make sure you don't ever get a turn at rowing the ship, I'm even willing to sneak you extra rations. This is a good deal, kid. Take it.”
“But I'll be stuck there forever,” Garin said with wide eyes.
The man wagged a finger, shaking his head as if just remembering he was talking to a child.
“You are an advanced level dancer, or so at least the boss hopes. Why do you think dancers and sphere mages aren't taken there anymore? We have modern mages on some of the ships, but sphere mages we just kill.”
“I-I…you think I can escape?” Garin asked.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
In truth he knew it was likely a lie. The hell sphere was a prison for very powerful dancers and sphere mages. That was it's purpose millions of years ago, and it's purpose to date. The reason they were taking normal people now likely had to do with the falling populations of primordial sphere users. Of course Garin wasn't about to tell him he knew all this.
“Yes,” the man answered with a grin. “Besides, we may be able to provide you with a few weapons, tiny knives you can put between your fingers when you fight. They call them punching knives. There are likely very few weapons in there, and those that are there are very crude. There is no way you'll fail to survive.”
He sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than anything. Garin only stared at him, his small body still trembling.
“We want you to find someone,” the man said after sometime. “A scribe. His name is Fedrahn, and he hasn't been there long. Here is his description…”
They did not know where the island was. Garin had thought it weird how these people found these floating islands, but they apparently had their way. It took another three weeks for them to reach the Sidonai, and Garin used every chance he could get to fish for information from his unwitting helpers.
There was a man called Alaric. Some kind of hot shot spy master from one of the main continents, connected in some way to the temple of Azarth, the mortal enemies of the light masters. He'd sent Fedrahn to the island as a spy masquerading as a scribe. Garin was happy at first, but then he discovered this Alaric had instructed the dancers that if it was impossible, they at least ought to get the information Fedrahn had managed to glean.
The spy master believed whatever information Fedrahn had gotten his hands on must be juicy indeed for him to be sent to hell. In return, the sailors would ‘disappear’ from the light masters. They would get their independence from the island.
Garin thought it over as he was added to one of the chains of prisoners. One leg was bound, and so too his neck. The island was big and disolate, like what he'd expect from a desert, and there wasn't a person to be seen on its expanse spanning surface. Then again, the island wasn't the prison. It was the hell sphere.
They had a way of tracking it, Garin realized. Some sort of metal mineral they'd put in a bowl of water every few kilometers. It took them another week of traveling to find what they were searching for: an aperture.
Garin could sense the energies it gave off, and they were debilitating. No one else seemed to sense it, and it took until they were a hundred metres away for the slave drivers to notice.
“Alright, standard procedure is we give you a bit of water, and a few loaves of bread,” one of the more experienced looking captains announced. “We don't know what is in there, because no one who has ever entered managed to come out, but I'd bet the veterans won't just let you kids off easy with free food. Good luck though.”
As they stepped forward, Garin noticed Sol watching him intently. He nodded, seeming to say we'll be waiting for you here, no matter how long you stay in there. Because they couldn't go back without the scribe, or at least his information. This Alaric, Garin decided, must be a dangerous man.
And then he too was inside the aperture, his ropes unlinked just before he was sent to cross. He'd noticed the other prisoners eyeing him greedily, and he knew he was in for a not so good time once this ended.
Still, he had underestimated crossing into another sphere, especially the hell sphere.
It was like he was falling, his organs rattling out uncomfortably in his body, his blood rushing toward his brain, and his muscles so clenched they hurt. Then, with an impact that could have smashed him, he stopped accelerating downwards.
He wasn't sure how long he'd been falling, or even how long he floated, but finally he felt land again. Or at least something solid beneath his crouched over form as he hurled blood and bile.
And he wasn't the only one. More and more people arrived, but Garin couldn't spare them any attention. He started to feel that there was something wrong with the ground. Was it perhaps a little less rough than it ought to be?
He lifted his eyes to scan his new environment, and that was when the first of them arrived, aiming directly for the hapless child.