Ark woke with a scream. The pain in his arm was world-consuming, splitting apart every nerve in his body, as he desperately tried to rip off the skin that had come into contact with the shattered remains of the amber marble.
Something large and heavy suddenly put pressure on his body, until Ark could barely breathe. He tried fighting against it, as well as the pain, but no matter what he did, an overwhelming strength held him down. His vision fractured by lines of red, staring into the surrounding darkness, Ark was certain he had either died or was captured, when a soft voice spoke to him.
“Easy, Ark… Easy. You’re safe.”
Gasping, Ark managed twist his mask off to the side and cough up a single word, voicing it as question, “…Mino?”
“Yeah, it’s me, Buddy. I got you.”
Teeth clacking together in a staccato, Ark tried to speak, but the pain refused to settle. Instead, he used his good arm to take off the mask entirely, before he finally got out another question, “M…My arm…?”
“Which one?”
“L…Left.”
He felt the enormous hands of Mino grasp his left hand, and knew that his friend was studying it closely, even if it was dark. Mino was used to the dark, and had eyesight that could even register slight differences in temperature.
“It doesn’t seem broken… Only…”
“Only what?” The pain had begun dulling, and Ark managed to speak without biting off his tongue.
“There’s something lodged in it… What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Ark said, honestly, “In 15 years of being summoned to that forsaken place, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Can you describe it?”
“It was a marble… amber and gold… and it had a… face?”
“Like, in it?”
“No, no,” Ark shook his head, trying to recall the details himself, “No… it was on it, like a shadow on its surface.”
“What’d it do?”
“It just… followed me, and laughed at me. Then, when I fought back… it shattered, and then the pain…”
“Why did you use your fist, and not your gear?”
“I did use my gear,” Ark recalled, reaching for the black knife that he had sheathed at his waist, “But it did nothing to it. My fist, on the other hand, just went through like it was made of air, and…” He reached out with his left hand and softly touched the skin on his left forearm, letting it slide down toward his hand. Tinges of pain erupted whenever he touched the outcropping of several pieces of… whatever the orb had been made of.
“You alright? Other than being skewered by glass, I mean. No other injuries? No headaches or weird sounds?”
“Are you thinking I’ve been possessed?” Ark asked, curious himself.
“No, you sound like yourself, just… I’m not sure what to think.”
“Me neither,” Ark sighed, “Can we put on some lights? What time is it?”
With a snap of his fingers, Mino made the mental command that activated the lights in their small, dilapidated room. Ark had to shield his eyes from the sudden intrusion of light, using his right, before he tentatively looked down onto his left arm.
Like a sudden growth of fish-scales, golden and amber shards were lodged in his arm, from the knuckles of his hand, all the way up to his elbow, gleaming in the cheap, fluorescent light. Around the small scales, streams of blood flowed down his arm, making it a gruesome mess that dripped down on their shared mattress.
Mino stood before him, large and domineering at first glance, but the gentle look in his eyes, as well as the soft touch of his hand upon Ark’s shoulder, told the tale of a caring friend and a good human being. Ark had often thought that if everyone were like Mino, their realm would be a good and wholesome place to be.
“You should get that looked at,” he said, pointing down at the arm.
“You know we can’t afford it,” Ark said, dismissing his friend’s worry with gesture, “And, besides… It doesn’t hurt so bad any more. I’m sure I’ll be fine after a few more minutes.”
“You need that removed, Ark,” Mino’s voice got harder, sterner. While he had a gentle personality, he was also stubborn when it came to safety and health, especially when it concerned Ark.
“I’ll be fine,” Ark repeated, and whipped his legs out onto the side of their mattress, getting onto his feet with only slight difficulty, and repeated, “What time is it?”
“0453,” Mino said, the unfocused look in his eyes telling Ark that he had looked it up on his netlink. Ark put in a mental request himself for the same information, but instead, a sharp needle of pain stabbed through the side of his head. Grunting, he doubled over and grabbed his head in both hands, grinding his teeth as scraps of information appeared on his netlink.
Initiation error… Vanguard link collapse… Neural network unavailable…
“Shit,” Ark said, tasting the iron of the blood that leaked into his mouth. Holding his head down, he quickly swallowed the liquid life back down, before Mino saw anything.
“You don’t look alright,” Mino commented, his tone hard.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
“It doesn’t matter whether I’m fine or not,” Ark said, gritting his teeth, “We’ve got work to do.”
“Do you want me to watch you kill yourself again, while you’re even weaker than usual?”
That hurt. Ark pressed his lips into a thin line and looked up at his massive friend. He would give anything to possess the kind of strength that Mino’s broad shoulders contained; Ark had even been tempted to get artificial enhancement, if it weren’t for the slight problem that they had absolutely no money.
“I’m not doing this because it’s fun, Mino,” Ark said, his teeth clenched together, “We need money if we’re ever going to join a guild, proper.”
Mino looked at him for a long while, then sighed and shrugged his massive shoulders. “I know. And I know I can’t stop you, or even afford to stop you, but… let’s not take any big risks today, Ark, alright? Let’s just do the bare minimum, get our pay, enough for dinner at least, and go home, yeah?”
Ark looked into the eyes of his friend for a few long breaths, before he looked back down onto the concrete floor, a bitter taste in his mouth from the blood. “Has this realm ever allowed us to just do the bare minimum, Mino?”
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“No,” his friend answered, his tone heavy, “And I know you’ll go above and beyond what’s reasonable, even today, but please, for once, wait for me this time, hear?”
Ark nodded, not looking up, not wanting to face the wounded expression he knew was on Mino’s face. “I promise,” he said, his voice a harsh whisper, knowing it was a lie.
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The crude smell of grime hung heavy in the air, when they walked out into the early cycle hubbub of Lowtown. The narrow street was flanked by looming buildings of cheap steel and concrete, casting the ground in perpetual twilight. At every hour of the cycle there was movement in Lowtown, as there was always a maintenance worker coming to- or from work; haulers returning drunk from receiving their day-wages; or one of the night-girls walking home on sore feet. This hour was no different, as Ark and Mino crossed a faded walkway to get down to the docks, passing by the scum and dirt that Vanguard had elegantly brushed off its figurative boots.
Ark looked into every face on the way to their work, studying their shade of misery and matching it to his own, in a desperate search for someone with a more miserable morning than himself. He was entirely unsuccessful, at least he thought so. As they passed out of the temporary habitations that had been cramped together to form Lowtown, Ark looked up behind them; up the great spire that formed the central pillar of Vanguard’s structure.
The fortress had three great plateaus, forming the intelligently named, Lowtown, Midcity, and Upper Reach. Here, from the lowest plateau, Ark could only see the underside of the millstone above them that he knew held up Midcity’s elegantly landscaped streets and gardens. There was no way to look upon the majesty of the Upper Reach from here, nor did Ark ever expect he would.
The central spire was an 8-ridged structure that twisted around itself as it rose higher, until it reached the central area of the middle plateau. Here it passed through a gleaming ring of white to escape the dark fumes of Lowtown, out into the cleaner air above. From this central ring, glowing lines extended along the bottom of the structure, providing Lowtown with its only source of light that was not blinking street lamps or faded neon signs.
He looked back to the front, to the closest edge of Lowtown, where the docks lay. A multitude of wires connected the upper plateau with the lower, before the outer superstructure obscured any vision to the coagulated mass of colors that formed the outer shell of Vanguard’s artificially formed subspace.
From everything Ark knew, Vanguard was a marvel of human engineering, and a testament to the rapid adoption of rift technology, following the World Break—as well as a memorial to all his people had lost when they were cast into the abyss.
The pain in his arm throbbed and brought him back to reality. There was no time to ponder a past he had never been a part of. Terra and Homerealm was lost, and the riftwalker dream of ever returning to that mythical realm was, for all intents and purposes, a pipe dream in the harsh reality that Ark and Mino survived in.
They passed a corner that led directly to the docks, when Ark caught the subtle sound of a subdued sob out down a side alley. He had heard crying like that for most of his childhood—as had Mino, and they both stopped in their tracks and looked into the alley to find the source. A small figure sat crawled up into a ball beside a heap of rubbish, cradling something even smaller between their thin arms.
Ark and Mino shared a glance. Their past experience gave rise to a common thought, indeed a need that they knew was unwise, and yet they both understood its importance. “We’ll be late,” Mino said, looking to Ark for the excuse he wanted.
“It’s never too late to show kindness,” Ark said, smiling sadly to himself at the memory those words evoked, “Remember?”
“I remember,” Mino said, his face brightening in tune with Arks. Together they moved into the alley; Mino’s broad shoulders barely fitting into the narrow passage. Ark knelt down by the small form on the ground, far enough to avoid startling the crying child. Since it was a child, he saw, a girl surely no older than nine. Her arms were as thin as chopsticks and bare scraps of clothing clung to her meager frame. She had probably never had a proper meal in her life, he thought. Just like she had never had a proper haircut, evidenced by her thick and filthy hair, desperately cut to stay out of the her eyes, but otherwise left on its own.
“Hey there,” Ark said, his voice soft.
The sniffling kid reacted to his voice as if whipped, curling into a ball and not daring to look up his way.
“It’s alright, we won’t hurt you,” he said, his voice instilling what he hoped was confidence and kindness.
“I-Is’ never true when grown-ups says tha’,” the child finally squeaked, after a moment of silence between them.
“Then it’s a good thing we’re not grown-ups,” Ark said, keeping his voice gentle and soothing.
This finally made the kid look up. Hidden within a dirty face, full of grime, were a set of sparkling green eyes, set like emeralds in marble.
“See?” Ark said, spreading out his arms, “I’m a kid, just like yourself.”
“You a big kid,” the child said, almost accusatory.
“Then you should see the guy behind me,” Ark grinned and thumbed up behind him at Mino, who loomed over them both like a tower.
The kid followed his thumb up the massive chest of Mino, eyes widening ever further as she got to the ox-like neck and broad face. Finally realizing the sheer size of the person before her, the kid’s eyes immediately turned from shock to awe, and finally, instinctively, fear.
One arm still cradling something at her chest, the kid scurried backwards, until the trash heap made it impossible to get any further away. “W-w-wha’ you want?!” The kid’s voice cracked in her desperation to get away.
“Nothing really,” Ark said, sighing. He knew that Mino’s presence was intimidating to most people, and he knew how much it hurt his friend whenever people instinctively turned to fear at the sight of him. “Maybe we can help you?”
“Y-You… help me?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Why would you?” The kid’s voice turned from fearful to suspicious in an instant, and with good reason. No one helped anybody in Lowtown without getting something in return.
"Look," Ark said, meeting the gaze of the kids with his steely gray eyes, “We’re not saints. We’re not gonna give you food or shelter, ‘cause we barely got our own, but we can help you with that, if you’ll let us.” He punctuated his words by pointing to the small object in the kids arms.
The kid looked down into her bosom, where she cradled a small, thin, and very dead kitten. Ark figured it were one of the streetborn litters that had probably lost its mother, or maybe gotten lost during one of the epic battles for dominion over the small alleyways that the cats of Lowtown waged in the absence of human oversight.
“It… It was alive just before,” the child said, tears scraping through the filth that covered their cheeks, “I was gonna feed it… maybe keep it, then…”
“It died,” Ark finished, after the kid choked on their own words. “Weak things like that die down here, you know, just like we’re gonna die if we stop moving.”
“Is’ not right,” the kid said, words tinged with a deep-seated anger.
“It’s not,” Ark agreed.
“Why’s it gotta be like that?”
Ark shrugged. He had asked that very same question many times and received nothing but unsatisfying answers in return. He had no answers himself to give.
“What you gonna do to it?”
“There’s a patch of dirt close to the docks. Part of the old agricultural district, we think—” Ark explained, pausing when he saw the confusion on the kid’s face. With a sad smile, he tried to explain, “There were farms there once, growing all kinds of plants.” The furrow in the kid’s brow smoothed out, as Ark flavored his words with the softness of empathy, as well as the hardness of determination. “They say that our ancestors on Terra used to bury our dead, returning them to the earth that gave them life.”
“Now we burn them,” the kid noted, almost as an afterthought.
“Yeah… to fuel the fires of vengeance.”
With an awkward motion, the kid raised their hand and dried away their tears from filthy cheeks. “You’ll help me?”
“If you want.” Ark agreed, “My friend here buries all the dead cats we find the same way.”
“You do?” The kid looked up at Mino once more, fear dissipating from her small face.
“It’s what’s right,” Mino said, his rumbling voice full of emotion.
“It is,” the kid agreed and stood up, “Show me the way.”
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They stood in silence above the small patch of dirt where a make-shift grave had been hastily made with whatever tools they had been able to scrounge up. The kid’s continued sobbing was all the epitaph that the moment required. Ark stood with his arms behind his back looking down at the dirt, sensing the feeling of injustice feeding the flame in his chest. Beside him, Mino stood just as quiet, but was looking at the child with concern.
Without a prompt, the kid reached up and grabbed the giant boy’s hand—her small digits barely capable of holding onto Mino’s pinky finger. “W-What do I do now?” The kid said, drying her cheeks one last time.
“What’s your name?” Ark said, unsure why he wanted to know.
“I’m… I’m Bess.”
“Alright, Bess. There’s a place we know. We’ll tell you how to get there. You tell them we sent you, and they’ll help you find work you can do. It won’t be easy, but its honest work, promise.”
“Tha… Thank you,” the kid said, voice cracking.
“Hera won’t be happy,” Mino rumbled, his voice barely audible to Ark.
“She’ll have to make do,” Ark said, craning his neck to look up at the metallic sky, where a single line of white light from above fought the darkness below, “As do we all.”