Once upon a time there were two brothers.
The elder of the two was a wild sort, with shaggy hair and a lithe frame. He was cunning, quick of wit and hand both, with strong ears and stronger eyes.
The younger of the two was a gentle sort. His shy face concealed by his locks or a large book or his brother’s form. He was swift too, and smart to boot, but quiet, cautious.
The only thing they shared was their grin- a thin, sharp smile.
Had anyone thought to ask them, ‘brothers, why do you look so unalike?’ they would have heard only this; “does blood determine brotherhood alone? He is my brother, and I am his; that is all we want from this world.”
But no one ever asked, and it was half-true besides.
The brothers wanted so much more than just the company of the other.
The elder wanted stories, excitement- tickets to the theatre, things to play around with in his restless hands, and films of western samurai he could not understand with his brain but knew with his heart and soul.
The younger wanted information, knowledge- dry histories, collected lectures on humanity and botany, instructions on sewing, cooking, chemistry, and travel guides to places he dreamed of going but knew were out of his reach.
Both, of course, needed food and clothes- on their minds as often as their wants.
Had anyone thought to ask them, “brothers, why do you hunger? Where are your parents?” they would have heard only this; “we’ve none but us- each stripped of name and home by war. Our names are secret, and those are ours and ours alone.”
But no one ever asked, and half-lies muddied truth besides.
The brothers’ truth was thus; their parents had gone, and they had been left. The elder had been five, the younger four. They did not live close, did not know each other, but had met in the steep shadows of mountainous Drachsfestung, the mighty fortress-capital of Exova. There they lived, within the scrap-iron roots of its lowest tier.
Needing, wanting.
Necessity, then familiarity, is how their brotherhood was formed.
No true choice is made under duress, but no amount of force can pull the trigger.
Within the lie; the elder knew his name, but tossed it aside, a willful choice. Victim only of his choices, though never counting himself such.
The younger forgot his, as fate and time slipped in and robbed him of it. Whether strife had stolen home and hearth, he did not know.
They knew no names but ‘brother’, and that was sufficient. Names did not fill the stomachs of orphan children, so little mind was paid their way.
Unless, perhaps, they could.
“The world has want of names for us”, the elder said, “so we shall give them names.”
“What names”, the younger asked, “what names do we give them?”
Delighted, the elder smiled, and told him.
King and Peasant. Black and White. Happy and Sad.
More act than name, but worn all the same.
The elder planned them, the younger refined them, and together they performed them.
Little plays, side-street shows, backways tricks, all to eke out a bit of Exovan coin.
Their favorite play- their most profitable play- was a scheme of a game that when it worked, it took entire wallets. Too risky to use often, but too useful to neglect.
They called it Knave and Noble.
###
It went like this.
“Oh, help, please help! Please help kind sir, or madam, or whomever has a pretty coat or shiny watch or fat purse! My foolish brother Knave has fallen into a gap in the tiers!”
It was a time of war, and war weighs heavy on the soul- it did not take long to find someone willing to save a soul today to ease tomorrow’s loss.
“This way, this way please! My poor brother, he might be hurt!”
He wasn’t, obviously, but the younger boy, the Knave, he could act it well enough, and the shyness in his soul and the lightness to his voice pulled at hearts enough to seal it.
They’d search around, and find a rope- placed beforehand, a not uncommon sight- and would lower it down. Knave would take his time to rise, and Noble- dear sweet Noble, loving brother, caring brother, deft of hand brother, would help himself to the would-be savior’s pockets.
Satisfied with their good deed, exhausted from the effort, shocked from the disruption to their day, or gleefully planning their own bragging to whoever would hear of this, they left the brothers with a smile on their faces.
It never failed.
Sometimes, in his later years, he wished it did.
###
The brothers grew, and time marched on, but life did not change.
Until, one day, it did, as things tended to.
It was the Knave and Noble scheme- harder in their teen-hood, and yet easier all the same. Knave was a handsome beauty, and Noble suave and charming, and even in their ratty clothes they drew eyes. They were recognized- known to some, and seen by more.
The mark had been a man in a pure white suit with golden cufflinks and a cane he didn’t even need to use.
Richer than rich, a plump juicy boar on a spit.
“Oh, help, please help! Please help kind sir! My foolish brother Knave has fallen into a gap in the tiers!”
The man rushed to help, the rope was found and lowered, and Knave retrieved.
Back in the abandoned scrap-shack that was their home, the brothers counted their gain, and nearly collapsed in the doing.
A thousand dollars all told- money enough to last who knows how long.
“Think of all we could do!” Noble said. “We’ll live as kings!”
“So many books!”
“So many films!”
“A telescope, some pots for a garden!”
“Tickets to Schwanensee! A woman on every arm!”
Food and clothes for every need, and more enough for every want.
Then it fell out.
A single, smooth card of plastic.
A name, a face- the man they robbed, a title, a business name.
ONY.
It meant nothing to them at the time.
The next morning, they learned what it was.
It came at the crack of dawn, the sun barely slipping through their window- that rusted shack was often ill-touched by daylight.
It was a loud, heavy, gloved sound.
Knave opened the door to the iron eye and deadly snout of a rifle.
The man they’d robbed, flanked front and back by two soldiers- Exovan in dress, but with a certain brutal air about them.
The man spoke like he commanded the world.
“You two are quite the pair. Heard quite a bit about you both- impressive work, all told, but beneath you. Would you like to work for me, doing something above it all?”
They were, as it turns out, recognized.
The elder Noble cursed through grit teeth. The younger Knave was silent.
The rifles sized them up with hunger.
“Is this the limit of what you want in life? To root about in iron filth? Come now… cheap as they are, let’s not waste the bullets, shall we?”
No true choice is made under duress, but no amount of force can pull the trigger.
Coils tightened round their hearts all the same.
They looked to each other, each nodded once, and Noble gave their answer.
The brothers went with him.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
###
Their new home, they were told, was in the eastern edge of Exova, along the Walking Mountains. The travel was first by train, smooth and gentle, like the eye of a hurricane, then a rough and rocky hike through the highlands.
Hidden between tree and stone was their destination; a military outpost. The air was crisp, the sky clear and sparkling, and for all their time there, it felt as though this was the entire world.
Thirty other youths, men and women all, arrived with them. The facility itself held a handful of on-site staff- doctors, mostly, but soldiers too, instructors, guardsmen and the like.
The process began as soon as their march stopped. Their hair was clipped to the ears, prim and proper, then they were shuffled into barracks-homes to claim a simple, hard-backed cot. Each held a dresser of clothes- enough to last a week and little else besides. What scraps of their former lives they’d been allowed to bring filled the rest.
Day in, day out, they woke at dawn, and set about the great tasks before them.
Study; grow smarter.
Train; grow stronger.
Learn; grow wiser.
They were to become soldiers in their time here, it was said. Some volunteered, others were found, others ‘acquired’ in much the way as Knave and Noble- all were expected to strive for greatness.
Their studies taxed the mind- arithmetic, the sciences, geography. Everything in the natural world, far beyond mere travel guides and rat-eaten botany textbooks.
Their training honed the body- speed and endurance, strength and how to wield it, how to fight hand to hand and how to ensure you didn’t have to. How to aim and fire between breaths.
And what they learned; truths about the world, that shook them to their core. Of monsters and magic and what they meant and how to contend. Some did not believe it, till they saw proof of it first hand, and some of them learned they themselves were proof.
It was not an easy place to live, but easier than the ramshackle hovel they left behind.
The elder Noble excelled- his guile and speed, his wit and charm, all tempered by the facility and its daily regime. It let him slip amongst the others like he was always there, a friendly face who always promised to fetch you what you needed, what you wanted, at a price- and awoke an umbral power they called ‘mancy’ that ensured he could.
The younger Knave matched and mirrored his dear brother- his timid soul and kind heart strengthened to a calm and gentle form. A kind, thoughtful word, a store of knowledge; any question you had, he knew the answer. He’d either read it, heard it, or could divine it with enough thought, a skill that translated from mind to hand, his precision with a gun receiving top marks.
They came to love that place, despite the sour introduction to it- the gun did not look so deadly when you held the other end. They’d risen from squalor to success, became whole in mind and body both and knew that when the time came, they would be the soldiers ONY wanted.
It was what they were made for.
###
Noble stopped a moment, to sip at some warm tea- mid way through the tale Saila had dashed off to fetch the kettle and some mix. It wet his lips, warmed his heart, and steeled his soul.
“What did you learn about, exactly? Not like, the studying stuff, the… the other things.”
Noble looked up at the stars, watched their lights sparkle in the night.
“Monsters, like that manticore. The powers you and my brother possess, and more besides. Men and women with the ears and tails of beasts, demons hiding beneath thin skin. All people, simply wishing to live, just hidden from our eyes.”
Saila seemed to think it over, sipping at her own tea- shuddering at the bitterness of a too-long steeped brew, and adding sugar to cover it. There was a wistful look to her eyes, as she processed it all.
“They taught us those things,” Noble continued “so that we’d know, when it came time to fight. So we would not be surprised when we fought folk like them. But there was more to it, as well.”
“They were brainwashing you, weren’t they,” Saila said suddenly. “Teaching you, taking care of you, to make you into weapons?”
“How’d you figure that?”
Saila’s cheeks flushed, and she hid it behind the steam of her tea.
“Read it in a dime-novel. The Baron Row-jay, I think it’s called? A book about musketeers.”
“La Baron Rouge? Actually read that one- the Red Baron Rogier keeping his servants in iron masks, trained like wild beasts… no, you’re not far off, little lady.”
Noble sipped at his tea, and felt the calming warmth.
“But, no. Nothing quite so lurid. It was simple exposure over time. It’s what the military does, be it the normal armed forces or a clandestine and experimental project. Slowly but surely, not through anything more intense than daily strain and conditioning, you stop being a human and start being a soldier.”
Saila nodded in an uneven understanding- and Noble begged to the stars it’d never become whole.
“This next part is… hard, for me. I don’t recall it as much, in places. But I’ll do what I can, to make it clear.”
Another nod.
Noble took a breath and continued.
###
A year into their time there, something began to shift.
It started so simply you’d almost not remark on it, where it not for where it led.
Someone was injured in training.
Not unlikely, not uncommon- they’d all pushed themselves to be stronger, faster. Wear and tear showed itself eventually. But this was a full-on injury. A mock battle, with plastic knives, that ended in a broken arm.
The two involved- “I know their names, I know I do, or did.”- were more afraid of being reprimanded for their impropriety than the injury itself. The victim tried to play it off and the way his arm flopped at the elbow was a sight as laughter inducing as it was horrifying.
But the doctors, calm and gentle as they always were, simply wheeled him off.
A week later he returned, and in his arm’s place was a tool of polished black-silver.
There was nothing inherently concerning about it, either. The brother’s had seen war veterans, the elderly, and the misfortunate alike who had lost a limb and replaced it with a nice wooden peg or a metal hook. Prosthetics were- “and are, without exception”- a positive.
But the instructors grew harsher.
With all of them, but especially the first of them.
It was three months before another of them was hurt- overstrained tendons snapping from a bad fall. She came back with a shiny new leg.
Two more months, and another was injured, shipped into the medical ward, and returned with a permanent solution. Then it was every two weeks. It kept happening, bit by bit.
Another.
And another.
And another.
And every time, the training ramped up, inch by bloody inch.
They all took it in stride, like the proverbial pot-boiled frog, joking about metal men in sci-fi novels, taking bets on who would keep the most flesh, and some even entertaining the idea of volunteering for it. After all, the machinery was as good as human, quite an impressive feet.
Some even assumed this was the entire purpose, that they were being studied to make the damn things, to field-test them. That they were the best of the best, who would go on to serve as the template for prosthetics to come.
Utter rot.
By the start of the next year, twenty-seven of the thirty had a bit of metal in them.
Knave had not yet been touched, by the grace of luck more than anything else.
Noble had a metal hand- the latest of them- and marveled at its intricacies.
“You know, dear brother…” Noble said, because in those days and now they were always first and foremost brother. “You know, dear brother, you should join us. You don’t want to fall behind, yeah?”
“Maybe when my aim starts to waver, brother,” Knave returned in kind. “Or if my fingers start to fumble, so I can still mend your clothes.”
“Hah! Who has need of mending, when they’ll just give us replacements? They did it for our flesh, why not our cloths, hehe, hahahaha!!”
The brothers laughed into that night, assured of their future.
But then their future came, like billowing fog.
###
War.
He did not know which one; that was lost in memory’s haze.
Perhaps it was the current one. He was old enough to have fought in it, at one stage or another, as far as he could tell. Perhaps this was a different one, a lead up to Felisia’s would be conquest of the world.
Maybe it was an opening salvo, or a final blow.
Whatever it was, it was war.
Thirty of them, ten to a carrier, the sleek black-silver vehicle trudging through the mountains on roller-tracks. It ground over rocks and trees, bumping and waving like a turbulent sea of dirt and stone, towards their destination- an encampment on the border between Felisia and Exova.
All were similarly armed and armoured; Exovan military dress under heavy white cloaks, a filtration mask peering out beneath the drawn-up hood. At their sides a revolver- a black-silver longnose with a single-action trigger.
Nonstandard, but not outside expectation; they were Exovan, and while more modern pistols were the norm the revolver held a certain weight to it. It was a gun for duelists, a sleek and shiny monster with a thunderous roar, and that was Exova’s heart and soul, and they were Exovan soldiers here to fight back the middle-landers who did not have the ingenuity to live along the Setran Shield and amidst its stony roots.
Never mind the carrier, years beyond a standard utility vehicle. Never mind the prosthetics, far beyond what any had seen before- they were all just examples of Exova rising to the challenge.
Never mind the canisters on their backs, that lay a heavy weight upon their spine, a subtle pull upon their shoulder from the spray-nozzle they’d strapped to their left arms.
They were Exovan, through and through.
As was the encampment itself.
The orders had been simple.
They lay in wait, but not for you. Never for you.
Lull them all to sleep, with a gentle mist.
Any who remain awake shall face lightning and thunder.
The execution of it all- and it was an execution- stuck fast and clear in his mind.
Grim irony that so much of it was concealed by fumes.
It was a heavy thing, silver-white, but the ovoid lenses on their masks held magic in them enough to outline those that fought. Those that lived. Thirty pairs of boots divided into ten squads stomped across that camp, marching with one singular purpose, one singular ideal.
There was some hesitation.
Some noticed the Exovan dress of their victims.
Some resisted.
Some saw the cruelty at hand and tried to stop it.
They had to have.
Knave thought this as a youth- scarcely older than himself- fell before him. Still alive, his lenses noted, but his own senses showed him dead- skin burnt and peeling, meat sloughing off the bone in sickly, glistening chunks.
But he was alive, so he aimed between the eyes.
The gun barked, like a thunder crack.
He told himself it was mercy.
This continued, till canister or camp was empty.
###
For their first mission, it was a roaring success; only two injuries among their number, and both easily repairable. The twenty-eighth of them had need of a new arm, and the first of them to take the iron-weight got his second limb.
Twenty-nine would not be long after- Knave himself.
It was such an innocent moment, that looking back he did not himself know what caused it. Bad luck, perhaps? Or perhaps the quiver that had seeped into his nerves in the aftermath of their first true taste of war had caused the slip. Maybe it was his brother, Noble, oh so sly and cunning, who caused it, pulling strings even back then. Or maybe something inside wanted it.
Whatever was the case; while climbing during training, he fell. Bad. Real bad. Bad enough he saw bone, bad enough that the pain blinded all thought but one; huh, the medical books always show them as white.
They took him in to the doctor’s office- the chop-shop, some had taken to calling it, and did what they did. Black-silver, shiny and smooth, with segmented finger joints, like an artist’s poseable model. It could sense as well as flesh, and yet, there was a numbness to it. It felt… less. It weighed more, both on his frame and on his mind.
It was there Noble finally clicked into it.
That was the purpose of it all- all the pain, all the death, all the training and the iron limbs and what else they would replace. He realized it with a certain kind of bloodied clarity, his head a battleground of painkillers and their victims.
We are not people. We are not soldiers.
We are dolls.
It wasn’t the limbs, of course. In any other situation they would be godsends.
But their training, their conditioning, their treatment? It all added up to the dehumanized ideal that every army sought, taken to the logical conclusion.
Well-oiled, well-trained dolls, who followed orders without hesitation- but with a human mind at the core. A melding of machine and man that amplified the first by reducing the latter to the barest minimum required to still function.
He would forget this when the painkillers had cleared, his mind lifted out of that medicinal bog.
But his heart remembered it, the stark, cold taste of realization.
From that moment on, it was like something had broken.
###
Life changed at the facility, after that first engagement.
The training slacked, just a touch- not in intensity, but frequency.
Less time to train, with so much work ahead of them.
Knave did not- could not, truthfully- keep it all straight in his mind. Day in and day out, repetition upon repetition, till the simple act of his sorry, patchwork mercy became rout and dull.
All he remembered was thus;
The dead, names and faces he should remember, swallowed up by time.
The injured, replaced by cold concealing machine.
The feeling that, every day, as he trudged through sodden ground or rocky terrain or sandy-shores or icy plains, he had become doom itself. Living poison that took life with every step, a flash of black-silver and gunfire to steal it away. A stalwart signifier of an inevitable end, cloak billowing, breathing steady, heart a fading beat in his iron-cage.
He walked through the mist, and death followed at his side.
Their numbers dwindled bit by bit, but never in a way that broke that endless march of theirs. By the time they had each become complete, only fifteen remained.
Fifteen was enough.
######