Rikh-ma looked up and paused as he entered the trading post of Black Citadel, squinting his eyes against the early autumn sky at the inscription overhead. The trading post, clinging to the banks of the great river just east of the main city, was little more than a normal marketplace. The pillars surrounding the area supported a thin iron roof – only slightly dilapidated – which formed a somewhat sheltered forum, a comfortable place to exchange gossip, merchandise, and treasures, even human, or otherwise.
The carved inscription, Rikh-ma had heard, honored the great imperator who had the arcade built during the harmonious time between the iron and blood legion. But the wind and sand, summer sun and winter snow, and the spurts of blood between the 2 legions for generations had nearly effaced the elegy.
Rikh-ma’s pupil dilated as a shimmer obscured his sight, the sign that presaged some true-sights. He shook his head, shrugged off his uneasiness. In any case, he could not have read the inscription. Rikh-ma was an “item” for trade – a slave.
A man – not young, but not as old sa Rikh-ma, appeared from a crowd of people and sat next to his “master”. He slipped a bag of gold into the old master’s right leather pocket and smiled warmly before shifting his gaze towards Rikh-ma.
“A book……Very good” as he hold an old three-pages script with his thumb and point-finger in front of Rikh-ma’s face. The slave folded the script twice, put it inside his chest pocket, and smirked as his hand felt a dagger which he had prepared.
“This will do. Tonight, I shall have my freedom” Rikh-ma promised himself. As the night fell, the stranger and the slave left the trading post deep into the Junker’s Scrapyard.
#
The night lay silent on Rotan Street as the wind moved through the woods. Theirs was the last house on the street. Rikh-ma looked outside the window on the ground floor, uneasy. The neighbors’ dog cowered in fear.
It was happening again. It was happening because nobody warned anyone. Nobody knows. I am glad. The neighbors’ dog had watched the slave moved into the house but made no noise about the events that usually took place in it. It was of pure joy to look down the beautiful stair and see my dear one. I am glad.
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Rikh-ma rolled the window curtain downed, and took out his rusty dagger as he turned towards the stair. The three-pages script dropped sloppily from his chest pocket, revealing the author’s name on the top of the second page.
“Ymir Arushta”
As Rikh-ma squinted, skimming through the first 2 paragraphs, he grabbed the script in gasp and looked up through the seemingly never-ending dark stair. There was something similar about the script. The setting appeared to be the same as the one he was in. The wind, the cry of the animals, and even the loud echo from the three-pages script dropped on a wooden floor. However, the main character in the script was looking down the stair.
Rikh-ma rushed to the back of the room and grabbed the holder of what appeared to be an exit to the backyard. Unable to open the locked door, he peeped through the key hole only to saw pigs covered in blood. Rikh-ma had choked back nausea and dragged himself to the closet and locked the door. It was pitch dark.
#
10 minutes had passed yet it only gets darker. Rikh-ma probed his surrounding and realised he was surrounded by walls made of bones. As Rikh-ma strained to peer through the darkness, he was unable to scream, cry, or even listen as blood started to ooze from any possible pores on his body, choking him. He felt the breath of a slim figure crouching right in front of him. The pain all over his body sharpened to agony as he fell.
Rikh-ma wanted to ask the stranger many things, including his freedom, but he had no breath. And there was no time for speech, as there was no time for wonder. The Shaman floundered by his side. He grasped his hand but it slipped through his fingers. Not, not quite through. Rikh-ma saw his hand covered in blood.
The Shaman drew a dagger from his belt. It was Rikh-ma’s dagger. The slave had an instant to realise that the shaman was cutting his own fingers before all the bloods closed over his head.
When he bobbed to the surface, he found he could breath and stand again. He was starring the inscription overhead the Black Citadel’s trading post once more. The light was amazing now, the river and sky so bright he could hardly tell where one ended and the other began. His eyesight was as strong as young man’s.
“Rikh-ma!” the stranger in a wooden mask beckoned. “Where have you been?”
He stepped forward, brushing his hands off to clean them off the debris the blood has not washed away.
End
“You are a free soul Rikh-ma”
– Ymir Arushta